- As you can probably imagine, we deal with a ton of video around here. A lot of it comes from cameras
or screen recording software, but we also make frequent
use of capture cards, which are typically standalone
USB or PCI Express devices that can be used to record
from external devices, like a game console or a
camera, like on The WAN Show. Which raises the question, why haven't we made a
video about a capture card in over five years? Well, the truth is that I
wasn't ever really satisfied with any of them, but in recent years, they
have improved immensely. And when CORSAIR and AMD reached out about doing a sponsored video about their new VENGEANCE a4100 gaming PCs with included capture cards,
it seemed like a no-brainer to take a look at how far they've come and demystify this category of products. So today, we talk capture
cards, what they do, and why you should or should not buy one for your game streaming
or recording setup. (upbeat music) Before we get into whether
you might need a capture card, it's important to understand
exactly what they actually do. A capture card is a device designed to take an unencrypted video signal and convert it into a format
that can be understood and recorded by the
computer it's plugged into. If your intention is to record
TV or movies off Netflix, be warned that those signals
are encrypted using HDCP and no legal device is
gonna decrypt it for you. For consumer devices, it's
typical to see an HDMI input, like what you'd get out
of your game console, but in the professional world, SDI is preferred for its
longer maximum cable lengths, support for time code,
and locking connector. Now, typical capture card
looks either like this, a box that, (grunts) there we go, plugs into the USB port on your PC, or like this, a, well,
box that plugs directly into the PCI Express
slot on your motherboard. These two styles make up the majority of consumer capture devices, and both of them are
dependent on a nearby computer to handle the actual
processing of the data. Elgato offers both form factors for both tiers of their capture devices, their HD tier and their 4K tier. And while there are some minor benefits and drawbacks to either approach, generally, they share
the same functionality. And when you plug them into your PC, they're gonna get picked
up by your capture software in a similar way. There are exceptions to this rule, like the Cam Link series
that registers as a webcam, making it a little bit easier
to use in video chat software. In our experience, PCI
Express-based capture cards tend to be significantly more reliable, just like water bottles from lttstore.com. Now, whether this is due to not having to deal with USB driver issues because internal cards are
closer to cooling fans, or just because PCI Express
is generally a lower latency, more stable interconnect
than USB, we are not sure. USB cards though, offer
a lot more flexibility. Basically any computer with
a USB port, that is USB 3, can run them, laptops included. If you wanna switch which
system you're recording on, you just got to move which
USB port you're plugged into rather than having to shut down a system, pull a PCI Express card, shut down the other system, put it in, and then fire them both back up. This flexibility can
come with its own issues, as we mentioned before, though. And we have found these cards tend to be a little less stable. For instance, if you
rock a budget motherboard with only a single, or best case scenario, two USB controllers on it,
it's actually quite likely that you're gonna end up
overloading your USB controller by having too many high throughput
devices plugged into it. Like if you were running, say for example, a 4K webcam and a 4K capture card for your game console at the same time. Some people might not have a PC around to plug their capture card into though, like say, at a LAN party or a tournament. Fortunately, as I mentioned before, there are also capture cards that feature standalone
encoding and recording, like the 4K60 S+. In this case, a hardware
encoding chip is installed in the capture device, which does the work that normally the
attached computer would do by encoding the incoming video stream into a playable video file. That allows those to record
entirely on their own, just pop an SD card in, and
you're off to the races. They do tend to be a bit
more expensive though. Regardless of what it plugs into though, basically, all gaming-oriented
capture devices share one trait, and that is,
not the real, pass through. Pass through is an essential feature if you wanna be able to game on the device that you're recording at the same time, because otherwise you would have to deal with the crazy latency of trying to gain through your OBS preview
window or something like that. With pass through, the main
signal that you're capturing is passed through back to your display while it's being captured. So this is usually through
an HDMI output port on the capture card with manufacturers generally claiming that there is zero added latency. That was something we wanted
to investigate in this video. So we tested all three styles
of recorder from Elgato. USB with the HD60 S+, PCI
Express with the 4K60 Pro, and standalone with the 4K60
S+ on our latency tester, and, hey, good news, CORSAIR, we actually didn't find
any appreciable increase in latency when using any of them. So then, it's up to you which form factor of capture card is best for you. Though, if you have the space and you don't need the extra flexibility, we definitely encourage going with something PCI Express-based. As for the resolution, that just depends on your use case. If you're browsing Elgato cards, the price differences between
their two PCIE models, it's pretty minimal. So it's $80 to go to the
4K60 Pro from the HD60 Pro, and you gave me the extra flexibility of high frame rate 4K recording. Just make sure that your source content actually pushes that resolution. Although even then, for the minimal cost, it might be worth future proofing. And it seems like CORSAIR agrees since this happens to be the card that's pre-installed in the
VENGEANCE a4100 streaming PC that they sent over. The configuration we have here is pretty dang smack-on for streaming. The Ryzen 3700X CPU has
enough cores for gaming with some extras for video encoding, and if you want less of a CPU hit, the equipped RTX 2070 SUPER comes with NVIDIA's latest NVENC encoding chip, which allows for a
near-zero performance hit while encoding coding directly on the GPU. Our specific config also comes with both a 480 gig NVMe drive for excellent OS responsiveness and two terabytes of mass storage for games, video clips,
duh, or what have you. So now we know what all the capture cards sort of look like and what they do, but the final question is,
do you actually need one? Can't you just capture your
screen with Fraps or OBS? Well, in a lot of cases, yes. If you're strictly a PC gamer and you don't have any
external capture requirements, like no DSLR camera, Xbox,
Nintendo Switch, or the like, then there really isn't any major benefit to running a capture card in your system. Fortunately, for you
though, the VENGEANCE a4100 along with CORSAIR's other
gaming systems is available without a capture card to save
you the unnecessary purchase if you don't need it. So, thanks for watching. If you're interested in more technical
streamer recording stuff, maybe check out our video on building a streaming
setup on the cheap. And get subscribed so you don't
miss future videos like this crazy
AC-tech-PCI-Express-slot-radiator-water-cooler
thing that we've got coming very soon.
I, I don't have a PC. 😭 But if Linus is holding it then I, definitely, do not need it ever.
I thought the click bait titles stopped or at least had the product in the title