Best Ryzen Cpu for Streaming

In an ideal world, everyone eager to experiment with streaming has a large budget to sink into obtaining a high-end CPU. The reality of most budding streamers means that budget will have the most significant impact on what CPU they opt for. This isn’t necessarily as prohibitive as it sounds: the type of content also has a part to play in how efficient a CPU will be.

Streaming the most demanding games on a single setup PC requires a high-end CPU to match, while putting the world to rights in a cozy creator-to-audience stream is more than possible with a more affordable CPU option.

As such, we recommend curbing the natural desire to opt for the very best out there, and instead, buying within your means and for the content you plan to stream. All the CPUs above are perfectly suitable for streaming, so don’t hesitate to jump down to a lower price bracket if it suits your plans.

Barring some odd quirk, you’ll be well aware of AMD and Intel’s tussle when it comes to processors. For better or worse, the retail space is dominated by the two chip powerhouses, limiting the choice of which streaming-fit CPU to one of the two. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but choosing one camp over the other can very much feel like picking sides.

While we aren’t here to side with one or the other, they each have their strong points, and arguably the race has never been so closely fought after years of Intel leading the charge. A few years ago, the thrifty builder invariably veered towards AMD’s more competitively priced products, while those eager for all-out performance threw their cash at Intel. Intel’s dominance, especially when it comes to gaming performance, isn’t what it once was with AMD products now more or less on par, if not better (looking at you multithreading).

Running a single or dual PC streaming setup places significantly different demands on the CPU and should mostly guide your final decision.

Should you fall into the dual PC camp, then you have some leeway when it comes to the chip for the PC charged with encoding and streaming video. In this case, a lower-spec and more affordable CPU is more than enough (unless you’re dipping into quality higher than 1080p), allowing you to invest in a high-end CPU for the PC used for the actual gaming.

For single PC setups, we recommend going big and spending more money on the CPU to ensure there’s enough power there to handle encoding as well as games or other CPU hungry applications you may want to incorporate into your broadcasts. Not doing so invariably leads to dropped frames and choppy in-game FPS, a perfect recipe for bleeding viewers and sapping the enjoyment out of streaming. A CPU with the chops to allocate sufficient resources to both is crucial.