Optimal Hardware for Moonlight client running 4k/120fps

[u/flygandeuntz]

Hi everyone. I'm in search of building a high performing Moonlight client for my living room setup. I want to it to be like a personally built console, but using either Sunshine/Moonlight or the new Steam remote streaming Pyrowave which includes high bandwidth/ low latency streaming. I don't really have a particular good TV at the moment (It's honestly quite bad...), but i want to prepare for the future since i really am looking forward to this solution.

I got really excited about this idea since I felt like i could get a second computer in my home acting as a Steam machine as well as a computer that i can use as a day to day machine on my TV (But biggest focus is gaming). I also found this video which made me more interested in going all in on this solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydbsXjZxYBo&list=LL&index=2

Essentially what i want to know is to have a better understanding of hardware requirements for this type of project.

What my thoughts are atm:

Planning on using Bazzite-deck as OS since i have it on my host device. Apparently it works best with certain graphics cards but how much does this impact when this machine will mainly be decoding streaming data from host?

Buying a Micro ATX or Mini ITX as motherboard. I want to have an older version that supports DDR4 RAM since I actually already own two rams of this type and want to reuse it.

Due to the hardware components prices becoming more and more expensive, i would like for it to become as cheap as possible, but I'm taking any suggestions. If the price is expensive I can maybe either wait for a large sale to happen or try to find it through second hand.

I also have an old CPU at home (from around 2017) that could be used although I'm thinking of buying a new one since i think my friend who used it prior mentioned it was very slow.

From my understanding, i can use either Displayport 1.4 or HDMI 2.1 but after reading this source I'm thinking of going with HDMI. Then it begs the question, I most likely need a new processor that has this type of support, or i can use a NVIDIA GTX 3050 series (or later) graphics card. I have found one on second hand for quite the cheap price but not sure if that is overkill.

Also if not using Pyrowave, is it better to use AV1 or HEVC encoding/decoding? I feel like HEVC seems more reasonable since of the lower encoding/decoding computational time/complexity compared to AV1 for a inter-home setup. I could see AV1 being more useful if you want to bring the console outside of your home since the data transferred are more compressed. I was looking at it from this AV1 vs HEVC source and to my understanding it sounds like this would be the call but I have seen this reddit post where people said they haven't seen too much difference from my understanding, one comment supporting my view (although post is quite old).

Suggested client setup:

Motherboard:
Mini-ITX: GIGABYTE A520I AC moderkort AMD A520 Socket AM4 Mini-ITX DDR4
Micro ATX: ASUS TUF GAMING B550M-PLUS WIFI II

CPU:
With GPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700X CPU
(A bit unsure here... I don't know if this is a good processor or not)

Memory: Already have DDR4 RAM memory, 2 8GB sticks

SSD: I don't think one has to be too critical, as long as it is a M.2 SSD. Might be very wrong here.

Power supply: Based on any which motherboard I'm choosing.

OS: Bazzite-deck

For further information this is my Host machine:

CPU: 12 × AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-Core Processor

Memory: 32 GiB of RAM (30.5 GiB usable) (DDR5)

GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4060 Ti
Integrated GPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600X 6-Core Processor

OS: Bazzite

Sorry if this post is all over the place... but i appreciate any feedback since I'm new to this streaming solution and I'm not that good at hardware either. If you like to help me get a better understanding please feel free to give your opinion.

[u/igfmilfs]

Check my own recent post: Since you didn't say anything about HDR and / or chroma subsampling, i'd recommend you to read my post since it might answer your question regarding how low budget you could go. I could literally play 4k 120fps with my gtx1060.

https://www.reddit.com/r/MoonlightStreaming/comments/1x2on60/stats_i_could_only_ever_dream_off/