Looking to buy second computer for recording gameplay

[sarasdesignwork]

Hello, my teenage son really wants to get into recording gameplay. He's not super techy, but tried it with his current laptop and discovered that it's not good enough to do this. I want to buy him a gaming pc for Christmas, and I either need to get one powerful enough to do both gaming and recording, but what I'm hoping is that his current laptop could do the recording and I can buy a cheaper gaming pc, preferably in a small form factor case so that it can be portable like his laptop. This is his current laptop, which he says is NOT powerful enough to do the recording part, but again, he's not techy so that's why I'm asking you all:

Acer Aspire E5-576G-5762:
8th Generation Intel Core i5-8250U Processor (Up to 3.4GHz)
NVIDIA GeForce MX150 with 2 GB of dedicated GDDR5 VRAM
15.6” Full HD (1920 x 1080) widescreen display
8GB Dual Channel Memory, 256GB SSD (we have upgraded him to 16GB RAM)

Could this laptop handle the recording of gameplay if we hook the laptop and gaming pc together? Could I then get a small form factor pc? Or is it better to just get him a bigger tower either way? He goes back and forth between his dad's and my house, though he could keep taking his laptop. I have one chance to get this right! My budget is around $500, there are some gaming computers for less than that on eBay, but again, he really was excited to start the game recording, only to be let down. He's at the age where I really want to help him pursue his interests. Thanks for any info!!!

 

[ebosss03]

There are some pretty good solutions to this you can buy a external capture card for around 150 that will record the gameplay sound and mic trough USB. The game will not be effected and you will not have t buy a whole new PC since that laptop is not really bad.

 

[sarasdesignwork]

Thanks for answering so quickly! So his computer is decent enough to play the games, and the capture card would be purely for recording? His laptop seems to be decent enough for games though he does have to play some one lower settings. Do you know if there are any upgrades we could do to his laptop? We maxed out his RAM already.

 

[ebosss03]

The capture card will only do recording and will not effect in game FPS. Upgrading a laptop is really diffecult and most of the time not worth it. Personally i would get a tower over 0.5 year since low is playable and i have heard AMD will release some new good hardware for low prices so that is defenitly worth waiting for. If you then order the Ryzen 3XXX and the newer AMD Gpu's you can build a PC together with your son and the help of this form or tutorials online. Building the pc yourself will cost less and is also a fun experience.

 

[sarasdesignwork]

I had thought of building a PC with him, it would be a great experience for him, but was overwhelmed with the choices. I think it's a good idea to wait on the PC like you said, get him the capture card so that he can start learning the ropes of recording and then upgrade to a better gaming PC. Thanks, I didn't know of this solution! So I would just search online for "capture card"? Is there anything else I need to know to buy the right one? Do I need a special cord?

On an unrelated note, what he really wants is an Oculus Rift. I'm very hesitant to get this for these reasons:

I'm not sure his laptop can run it (do you think it can?)
He's never actually tried one
They are expensive
Seems like we'd have to then put more money into games (he has lots of Steam games, maybe some of these would work?)

It seems like an expensive toy that would just get minimal use to me, but it's what he really wants. Any opinions on these points?

 

[ebosss03]

The Elgato HD60 and the AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2, are really good. They both include software for easy use (cables comes with it).

I'm certain that pc cannot run VR and the oculus rift uses a seperate software for games steam is usable but the oculus store games are more optimized.
The minimum sepcs for VR:
Intel i5-4590 equivalent or greater.
NVIDIA GTX 970 or AMD R9 290 or greater.
8GB RAM or more.
HDMI 1.3 and 3x USB 3.0 plus 1x USB 2.0.
Windows 7 64 bit or greater.

Build cost: 500~ new

And this is just low and some games are not even playable.

To fully play VR i would recommend this:
GTX 1070 or the vega 56 or greater.
Ryzen 5 2600x or Intel I5 8600k or greater
at least 8gb of DDR4 Ram
Motheboard has to support all components

I currently own a oculus headset and it's a very nice experience. But if you know someone that own a VR headset i will recommend o try it first because some poeple can get really sick of it.

 

[sarasdesignwork]

Thank you so much! I really didn't want to get the Oculus for him, so the excuse that his computer can't run it is great! And thank you soooo much for the capture card idea, I didn't know of this option, this is a game changer! I think it would be great to get him a capture card and also a computer monitor to hook his laptop up to for a better gaming experience. And all this will be less than a new computer! So thank you again!!!!

 

[sarasdesignwork]

So both of those capture cards you mentioned are on sale for $129 at best buy right now, with the Elgato being a higher regular price. It's not clear that the Elgato works with computers, the reviews seem to be about Xbox and Playstation. And there are mixed reviews of both of them. Do you have experience with both of them? Would you recommend one over the other? Thanks again!!!

 

[ebosss03]

It supports PC aswell as consoles. The The Elgato HD60 has much better quality however a USB 3.0.
The AverMedia Live Gamer Portable 2 works on 2.0 so if the laptop does not have 3.0 then you cant go for the Elgato HD60. There are other capture cards out there.

 

[sarasdesignwork]

I just looked at the specs and it has 2 USB 3.0 ports. Yaye! I think I'll go with that one. Thanks again!!

 

[usaveteranrealtor]

I am offering an alternative solution, since he goes between parents, you can purchase a cloud gaming solution like shadow.tech and while playing the game on whatever device you want to play it on you can then record your gaming and even stream it to like youtube or twitch at pretty high settings without investing a lot of money in a gaming desktop or laptop.

This is how my friend streams his game playing on youtube/twitch at the moment without the need to upgrade to a high end pc due to his restraints on living space since he built a tiny house and moved into it and now streams gaming on youtube and twitch via an old laptop. Basically you pay a monthly subscription and you get a cloud computer thats capable to play ultra settings in the game, the game is streamed to your device just like watching a video on youtube, but when you type or click your mouse it controls the computer remotely. So he uses OBS to record the game video on his laptop and streams it to youtube/twitch without a struggle because when you play via cloud computing the device your playing on barely works harder than streaming the internet to process the game, so you have the ability to use the computer to record the gameplay locally.

I think they typically charge $35/month but around the holidays they have sales so you can prepay a year of more time to your account, example around black friday he told me he added 6 more months to his subscription via the deal for $16.95/moth. I almost signed up for it as im adding up all the cost of building my own gaming computer at the moment to replace my 7 year old gaming rig thats starting to show its age.

 

[sarasdesignwork]

This is also interesting info! I went ahead and got the capture card, but I will keep this in mind if we need another solution. It's good to know all the technology that is out there!

 

[ebosss03]

Cloud gaming has downsides.

A fairly good internet connection is requered i would suggest 70mbps or higher for 1080p60. Also keep in mind that not all devices will work for instance VR. It's supported by some cloud services but not all altough they are improving. Cloud gaming also provides IOS and ANDRIOD so you can also play games on the TV and mobile if there is a controller attached.

Not all countries haves this is and not all parts of the USA. The comment from usaveteranrealtor is a great solution and definetly worth checking out he only said the positive things about cloud gaming.