How to setup your Twitch broadcast with OBS using NVENC (With Screenshots!)

Apolagies for the images being broken, I let my old website expire and all the images were stored on that. I'll update this article with new images at some point, don't know when I'll get around to it. Obligatory self-promotion:
Be sure to go watch me live at Twitch.tv/NateSnowstorm, I'm not always live, but when I am, you should watch. Go check me out and give me a follow if you liked this article.

***Note: This guide is a bit outdated. I'll have a new one up that covers OBS Studio soon.***
The Updated Version Is Out! Here it is!

So, you want to setup your very own Twitch broadcast, huh? I'm sure you've tried to already, but are having some issues with quality, lag, performance, and all the bad stuff you don't want. You just want a good, stable stream that doesn't cause massive FPS drop. Well, unless you just have a bad PC, then you've came to the right place.

Note: My PC Specs are as follows:
CPU: i7 4860HQ
GPU: GTX 870m
Ram: 8GB
SSD: 256GB + 250GB

If you have a computer better then this, matches this, or is only slightly worse, this guide will help you.

So, without further ado, lets get to the screenshots:

[caption id="attachment_408" align="alignnone" width="1024"] OBS EncodingSettings[/caption]

Here's the encoding options I use for streaming. 2000kbps, using NVENC (Nvidia only GPUs). Quality is really good without stressing your internet connection or that of your viewers. It's just a good all around setup, if you ever get Twitch partnership or are big enough to have Twitch re-encode your stream, you might want to up it to the standard 3500 kbps for better quality.

Next up:

[caption id="attachment_407" align="alignnone" width="1024"] OBS Video Settings[/caption]

Set your base resolution to that of your game window (or monitor size if playing fullscreen.) Set your scaled resolution to 1280x720, no need to stream in anything higher than 720p for now. (Especially since your broadcast won't get re-encoded by Twitch for lower quality options for your viewers.) FPS should be set to 30, don't go 60 FPS unless you have a very powerful CPU and GPU (or you can already play in 150+ FPS).

Now for the real technical stuff:

[caption id="attachment_405" align="alignnone" width="1024"] OBS Advanced Settings[/caption]

Just copy these settings for a good quality stream.
Process priority: Should be set to high, so your OS knows not to kick or throttle that thread, setting it to low may cause the OS to close it if your computer gets overloaded.
NVENC Preset: I've tried a few of these, and this one works great. Feel free to test each one yourself, though, as your milage may vary.
Encoding profile: High. Ignore OBS telling you to set it to main, the high profile is meant for high motion, like you'd get with games. Setting it to high allows you to use a lower bitrate with better quality.

Everything else is mostly just standard configs. This setup is only meant give you a starting point, I'd encourage you to try changing one thing at a time to find one that works best for you.

Be sure to go watch me live at Twitch.tv/NateSnowstorm, I'm not always live, but when I am, you should watch. Go check me out and give me a follow if you liked this article.

[I assumed people reading this already have OBS installed and already tried some livestreaming, but couldn't get the quality right. These settings are meant to be used as a starting point, settings may need to be changed on a per system basis.]

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