This is the low tier option which will give you great streaming and gaming performance.

We will now break down the setup to its core components to give you an idea of all the components you’ll need to get started with streaming. We’ll begin by parting out an AMD based system and also an Intel based variant. Some of the parts will be interchangeable between the two.

CPU - AMD Ryzen 5 2600

Price

£169.99 (CCL Online UK)
$189.99 (Amazon.com US)


Our CPU choice for the low tier AMD system is their latest offering, the Ryzen 5 2600. This CPU is an ideal for streaming thanks to its 6 cores, 12 threads, 3.4GHz base clock, and up to 3.9GHz maximum boost clock. This gives the 2600 plenty of horsepower to run not only Fortnite but also your chosen application for streaming. Plus its low 65W TDP and included Wraith Stealth cooler means that you don’t need to splash out some extra cash on a CPU cooler.

The 2600 can also be overclocked if you wish to squeeze some extra performance out of the CPU. Alternatively, if that isn’t your scene, then you could opt for the Ryzen 5 2600X which does have higher clock speeds out of the box - which are 3.6GHz (base) and 4.25GHz (boost) respectively. The downside is that you’d have to then find additional resources for a CPU cooler as the 2600X doesn’t come included with one. Plus there is the extra £37 premium over the 2600 to consider as well.

CPU - Intel i5 8400

Price

Price £161.39 (CCL Online UK)
$178.99 (Amazon.com US)


For the Intel counterpart system, we opted for the i5 8400, this like the 2600 and is a 6 core 12 thread CPU which boasts impressive out of the box clock speeds - 3.70GHz base and up to 4.7GHz boost respectively. Like the 2600 the i5 8400 has plenty of power to run multiple applications at the same time.

AMD Motherboard - MSI B350 Gaming Plus ATX

Price

£75.16(CCL Online UK)
$97.09 (Amazon.com US)


The choice for the motherboard was fairly difficult as there are a lot of good options at this price point. We wanted a motherboard that could grow with you and give you the ability to add new components as you need. We feel that the MSI B350 Gaming Plus offers a good solid feature set to base a system around. It has support for up to 64GB RAM at 3200MHz as well as support for an M.2 drive, USB Type C and solid CPU overclocking. The B350 also boasts Audio Boost for strong gaming audio. Also, it uses a user-friendly BIOS and has support for MSI’s Mystic Lighting. One thing to note is that if you opt for the Ryzen 2600 with this motherboard, you will need to update the BIOS in order for it to work.

Intel Motherboard - MSI Z370 Gaming Plus ATX

Price

£103.34 (CCL Online UK)
$119.99 (Amazon.com US)


Intel’s offerings for Coffee lake are still limited to Z370 for now, but the MSI Z370 Gaming Plus is one Z370 that is affordable. It shares a lot of the features with AMD’s counterpart and would make an ideal motherboard to get you going whilst giving you some room to grow the system in the future.

RAM - Corsair Vengeance LPX 16GB 3000MHz

Price

£162.99 (CCL Online UK)
$189.99 (Amazon.com US)


RAM choice was again tricky and given it’s pricing at the minute, it was difficult to find a reliable kit that offered great performance with Ryzen that was also not too expensive. We opted for 16GB of Corsair’s Vengeance LPX kit at 3000MHz. The reasoning behind this is that Ryzen performs better with higher speed RAM and although more expensive the performance gains we feel are worth it. The RAM also will work great with the Intel based system and provide a rock-solid companion for both speed and reliability. 16GB we decided is ideal as 8GB doesn’t provide enough headroom for both gaming and streaming simultaneously.

Graphics Card - Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 1060 6GB

Price

£299.49 (CCL Online UK)
$339.99 (Newegg.com US)


For the graphics card, we wanted to select one that we had tried and tested. The Gigabyte G1 stood out as a great card with solid price to performance. This is thanks to its great cooling performance which is beneficial as the GPU will be quite heavily taxed during any potential streams. It also has 6GB of GDDR5 which is plenty for 1080p gaming and also GPU encoding.

You can watch our video review if you’d like to see how it performs

SSD Storage - Toshiba OCZ TR200 240GB

Price

£49.02 (CCL Online UK)
$57.99 (Amazon.com US)


An SSD is a great bit of kit of any PC, although not necessarily needed for a system to work, their speed and performance outmatch any traditional HDD. The Toshiba OCZ TR200 is one of those SSDs that offer great price to performance as well as fast speeds and an impressive 3-year warranty. We’d advise you use an SSD for your operating system and applications to give them the best possible performance for the price point. Alternatively, you could opt for an M.2 based SSD, but these usually cost a slight premium over the SATA based variants.

HDD Storage - WD 1TB Blue 7200rpm

Price

£36.97 (CCL Online UK)
$44.00 (Amazon.com US)


A HDD is something that pretty much all PCs have, their price to storage ratio is something SSDs just can’t match, and although not as fast, they offer large masses of storage for little cost especially when compared to an SSD. The Western Digital Blue is a drive that I use personally and have done for many years. It’s reliable and has stood the test of time, plus the 1TB storage is plenty for your games and even to store your game highlights on if you plan to upload your videos to social media or YouTube.

Power Supply - Corsair CX550M

Price

£61.69 (CCL Online UK)
$49.99 (Amazon.com US)


Now there may be cheaper PSUs on the market, but the Corsair CX550M is solid, reliable and just works. I’ve used Corsair PSUs for years and haven’t had any problems with them to date. The 550W on offer is plenty of power for this system and will give you some good headroom if you want to upgrade the CPU or GPU down the line.

Case - Phanteks Eclipse P300

Price

£51.75 (CCL Online UK)
$50.18 (Newegg.com US)


The case we opted for again is something that could be changed to suit your preference, but the Phanteks P300 offers attractive styling, good cooling and plenty of room to expand your system. It has support for up to ATX motherboards and can easily house a large GPU meaning if you were to upgrade you wouldn’t need to change the case.

Operating System - Windows 10

Price

£83.95 (CCL Online UK)
$99.99 (Newegg.com US)


Of course with any PC build, you’ll need an operating system, we’d opt for Windows 10 Home 64-bit. This OS allows you to not only game and stream at the same time, but it will also allow you full access to software such as Adobe Premiere Pro or Sony Vegas for editing your videos. Also Win 10 is a great platform to get work done as we realise that there is more to streaming than just streaming.


The systems we’ve parted out here will give you a good quality stream at either 720p or 1080p at 60FPS. This is, however, will be heavily dependent on settings, and choosing too high a bit rate or using the wrong encoding settings will impact performance. So be sure to do your research and find the optimal settings to stream to either YouTube or Twitch.

*Note - All prices in the article are correct as of the article upload date. These prices do fluctuate meaning the parts cost could vary over time.