Comfy Couch Suggestions - To buy or not to buy?

[AlanOC91]

Hey all!

I love PC gaming. I have a whole room upstairs set up for it. I have a deck and a nice comfortable chair with a 32inch 4k G-Sync monitor. My PC has a 1080ti and an 8600k processor so it's pretty decent.

Having said that, I love playing games down on my couch and just "relaxing", something I can't really do up in my PC room.

So I've tried a few things but I'm always bothered by how it ends up.

- Built in Steam app on my Samsung 4k TV: My TV isn't too new so it can't do 4k streaming and has no bluetooth so I'm stuck with the Steam Controller only. Not ideal as I'd like to play 4k with my Xbox One Controller.
- Steam Link: Still 1080p but I guess I get to use my Xbox One Controller now.
- Moonlight Raspberry Pi: Limited to 1080p because of the Pi and can use Xbox One Controller. Easier to use Steam Link tbh.
- Old android box I can connect to my TV: Oof. Worst of all.

My partner and I are renting our house so I don't think I can get away with drilling a hole down into the Kitchen and then into the Living Room to route a HDMI cable across unfortunately. That would have been nice but I'm not sure how long HDMI cables hold up 4k/60FPS anyway and then I have to figure out the controllers reaching down there.

I just found out that I'm going to be a first time Father so I feel like buying myself one last "big" thing for the foreseeable future. I've been thinking about buying a mini-itx PC with a 2080ti in it just to play the odd game in 4k on my TV easily. I fee like I'm nuts for doing this and there HAS to be a better solution than dropping > €2000.

Any tips or recommendations on what I can possibly do? I feel like I'm spending for the sake of it and having two strong PCs seems like massive overkill tbh.

Another solution is upgrading my Samsung TV to have Steam streaming at 4k built in.

 

[AlanOC91]

Small bump :) Would love any possible solutions/ways of doing this I may have missed.

 

[Unicorn]

Can you not stream it the other way? As in have it closer to the TV and use something to stream day to day PC usage stuff to the office?

 

[JudgmentJay]

That would have been nice but I'm not sure how long HDMI cables hold up 4k/60FPS anyway

Click to shrink...

Just chiming in to say I have a 40 ft HDMI cable that does 4k60 just fine. The cable is rated to do 4k60 up to 50 ft so I imagine that's about as good as it gets.

It's this cable: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B015121JYC/

 

[AlanOC91]

Can you not stream it the other way? As in have it closer to the TV and use something to stream day to day PC usage stuff to the office?

Click to shrink...

My PC tower is HUGE. It's a Coolermaster HAF X that I don't want to replace since the cooling out of it is extremely good especially when I OC everything in it.

Just chiming in to say I have a 40 ft HDMI cable that does 4k60 just fine. The cable is rated to do 4k60 up to 50 ft so I imagine that's about as good as it gets.

It's this cable: https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B015121JYC/

Click to shrink...

Glad to know it's easily capable! Unfortunately I don't think I'll get away with drilling two holes in a rented house :-/

 

[Unicorn]

My tower is pretty big, but fits behind the TV.

 

[BlakStatus]

Shield TV is the answer

 

[ChristMustDie]

It's a shame you can't use the HDMI solution as that's the setup I use with my LG OLED C7. 4K 60FPS is nice and all, but 1080p/120Hz is where it's at.

As BlakStatus already mentioned, the Nvidia Shield TV looks like the best option for you. It can do the whole streaming at 4K thing, something that the original Steam Link (and the Steam Link app on Samsung TVs from 2016 and older) isn't capable of doing.

 

[AlanOC91]

How's the latency on a Sheild TV? Is it noticeable that you are streaming it? Thanks for the answers so far guys!

 

[fuzzyset]

I use a Shield TV wired, and the measured network latency is essentially 0ms in my tests. The video encode/decode @ 1080p is anywhere between 10 and 20ms. My rig is older so I mostly play 1080p on the TV which upscales to 4k through receiver just fine. In 4k tests, the encode/decode was 20-40ms IIRC. I have a 970 which is quite old at this point, so maybe the newer cards can handle it faster. I used the Steam Link app for these tests BTW. People say Gamestream/Moonlight is 'better' for latency but I've never noticed it. (edit) To add some clarity, there are 3 main ways to stream locally and each has their own pro/con IMO:

1. Gamestream. The is the 'intended' local streaming option for Nvidia GPU users. Like I said earlier, it uses an Nvidia protocol that is supposedly a smidge better than what Steam Home Streaming does. It's nice that it can (if supported) easily work with games outside of Steam (Fortnite is a big one). Basically, the games will show up on the Shield TV menu and you can launch them right there. Easy peasy. Con is that I've had issues with controller support in titles that I use a custom Steam controller config with.
2. Steam Link app. This is the app version of the Steam Link that's on various TVs. Supports 4k. More usual Steam Big Picture mode interface. I've had better success here with controllers. I also assume it doesn't require an Nvidia GPU since it uses Steam's In Home streaming tech.
3. Moonlight. The is a 3rd party open source implementation of Nvidia's Gamestream (still need Nvidia GPU), but has more knobs to tweak. I can override certain controller functions. I'm still playing around with it to see if it will become my go-to option.

Overall the Shield TV is a great piece of hardware. Word of caution is that I wouldn't mess with local streaming if you don't want to deal with issues here and there. Even outside of controller issues, sometimes games don't close properly so you need to go force quit it or something else entirely. If you ONLY play 100% controller compatible games that are 100% Gamestream compatible, maybe you won't hit any issues, but it's not guaranteed. It's never been so bad for me, but I can't see how some people might hate it. I've started playing some games on GeForce Now (their streaming service) and might just use that in the future TBH. I have a fiber connection and apparently live VERY close to one of the data centers. It's free to use as long as you own the games on Steam/Uplay (only 2 stores largely supported so far). Started playing The Division again since their servers can run the game better than my local PC.