 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. [♪ Music playing and sound effects of video game capture cards playing in background. 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 going to 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 timecode, and locking connector. Now, a typical capture card looks either like this, a box that plugs into the USB port on your PC, or like this, a 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 going to 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're 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 want to switch which system you're recording on, you just gotta 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 going to 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 4K60S Plus. 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, ah, there we go, pass-through. Pass-through is an essential feature if you want to 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 game 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 HD60S Plus, PCI Express with the 4K60 Pro, and standalone with the 4K60S Plus 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 gain 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 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. Unfortunately 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 Asetek PCI Express slot radiator water cooler thing that we've got coming very soon.