Hardware advice for dedicated Manycam PC

1

I’m configuring a new PC dedicated for hosting zoom webinars with Manycam. I have the following requirements

  • feed in of two or three USB HD webcams
  • feed in of one HDMI 4K videocamera
  • Most likely, only one of those camera’s will be streamed simultanously
  • sufficient remaining CPU power for applying chromakeys to the cameras
  • feed in NDI enabled 2nd PC running a powerpoint presentation or animation movie.

Any suggestions for the hardware requirements I need? I’m thinking of:

  • CPU: Intel i9 or AMD Ryzen 9 series
  • Motherboard: USB 3.1 gen 2 (or better if I can find it)
  • HDMI: Elgato 4K60 PRO capture card or Elgato 4K Cam link (my consideration between the two: the 4K60PRO feeds into the PCI bus and as such does not interfere with the USB bandwidth of the webcams. The 4K Cam link on the other hand is cheaper and more versatile for other uses)

My question:

  • Does Manycam recognize a the Elgato 4K60 PRO as video source?
  • Any insights for choosing between Elgato 4K60 PRO and 4K Cam link?
  • Am I right with the choice of CPU? Which would be better manycam: the Intel or the AMD?
  • Am I right not to include a GPU (or only a moderate one)?
  • Any other considerations I forget?

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Joost

2

I noticed that ManyCam consumes lots of memory and CPU and caused my Macbook overheated which is the reason I am not able to use it much, can I get a refund?

3

Hi JoostH

I’m using an Alienware Aurora R8 [ Core i7-9700K | 16 Gig Ram | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti] with two Elgato capture cards: one HD60 S+ and one CamLink 4k, and a Logitech HD webcam. We are live streaming our church services thru YouTube and Facebook simultaneously, lots of prerecorded videos, live music, active NDI out/in, etc. That PC does not flinch! Everything runs nice and smooth with no problems at all.

4

Yes, I think Apple can issue you a refund

1 Like
5

Hi JoostH,
I can’t comment on your overall application; but I noticed your reference to GPU.
ManyCam makes use of my NVIDIA Quadro K4000 GPU.
With one active WebCam, ManyCam uses ~30% GPU.
Adding Background Blur brings ManyCam up to 58-60% GPU.
Roger

6

Thanks for the replies so far. I have done quite a lot further desk research and some testing on my current system (laptop) with an i7-7700HQ 2.8GHz plus NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1050.

My intermediate conclusion is that a good high-end manycam system has as core:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 39000X (its 12 cores can well be used by manycam for video processing)
  • Motherboard based on AMD X570 chipset (providing onboard USB 10Gbit/s and PCI-e 4.0 support for maximum bandwidth of peripherals)
  • GPU: GTX 1660 super (or better) providing hardware acceleration for a variety of tasks plus a hardware encoder (still to be checked if the NVENC encoder is actually used by Manycam

other hardware choices (memory, storage, exact motherboard are more determined be other usage of the system

Any thoughts or comments?

7

An update for the those with a similar question. In the end, I went for a system with:

  • CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 39000X

  • GPU: RTX 2060 SUPER

  • Motherboard: MSI X570 Creation (mainly for the extra connectivitu options)

In the end I’m not using a capture card but 4 USB camera’s. I also use NDI quite heavily for connecting other PCs on the same LAN. CPU load seldom exceeds 25%, GPU load about 40%. So perhaps a somewhat lighter sytem would have worked as well, but I’m happy with the extra headroom.