There is no reliable universal wattage for the extra electricity used by software encoding on a YouTube loop stream. The increase depends on the computer, encoder and preset, output settings, scene and other work happening at the same time. To get a useful answer, measure your own computer’s average wall power in matched conditions.
What the available evidence can—and cannot—tell you
A useful bounded example comes from a 2015 Simon Fraser University study. With its test system running the Heaven graphics benchmark, researchers measured about 158 W at the wall for the benchmark alone. Recording with OBS using x264 at 30 FPS raised whole-system power by about 100 W, to roughly 250 W. That was a particular computer doing a demanding graphics workload while recording; it is not a typical estimate for an unattended loop, a modern computer, or a YouTube live stream. Read the study.
The study’s 60 FPS run drew slightly less total power than its 30 FPS run. CPU encoding interfered with the benchmark and reduced GPU utilization, illustrating why frame rate or utilization percentages alone cannot predict wall-power use. Actual draw depends on how the whole system responds.
A 2024 paper by Geetha Ramasubbu, Andrè Kaup and Christian Herglotz examines energy measurement for HEVC software encoding and evaluates estimation models for its studied configurations. The model’s reported mean absolute percentage error, averaged over presets, was 5.36%; that is not a general uncertainty range for a YouTube stream or an estimate of what a household watt meter will read. See the paper.
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A 2024 survey identifies encoding, resource use, network equipment, storage, retrieval, decoding and displays as relevant to video-streaming energy, and notes the absence of a comprehensive open measurement dataset spanning devices and coding parameters. The evidence therefore does not support a single extra-watts figure for everyone. See the survey.
What changes the electricity use
- Computer and baseline load: the same encoder workload can have different effects on different CPUs, GPUs and systems. The starting wall draw matters when calculating the increment.
- Encoder and preset: OBS explains that x264 presets trade CPU use against image quality. Hardware encoding shifts work from the CPU to a specialized GPU component; it is an alternative, not a guarantee of lower total system watts or identical picture quality. OBS generally recommends hardware encoders for performance, while noting that some earlier hardware encoders could produce lower quality at the same bitrate than x264’s default veryfast preset. OBS hardware encoding guidance and OBS x264 guidance.
- Resolution, frame rate and scene: higher output demands and scene composition can affect rendering and encoding workload. Competing GPU activity can change it too. OBS encoding performance guidance.
- What the meter includes: a reading that includes a monitor or other equipment is not a computer-only reading. Include or exclude those devices consistently when comparing runs.
YouTube accepts streams from software applications or hardware encoders and transcodes live streams into multiple formats for viewers. That platform-side work is separate from the creator’s computer electricity; YouTube’s cited documentation does not give a per-stream electricity figure. YouTube live encoder settings.
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Measure the extra watts on your own setup
- Choose a measurement boundary. Use a plug-in energy meter at the computer’s wall connection, or another suitable whole-system wall-power measurement. Keep the monitor and unrelated equipment off the measured circuit if you want computer-only power. If they cannot be separated, leave them included for every run.
- Establish a baseline. Run the same computer and background applications without the software-encoding stream. Let power settle, then record average watts over a stable interval rather than noting a momentary peak.
- Run the matched software-encoding case. Use the same loop file, scene, audio, output resolution, frame rate, bitrate, duration, network setup and background applications. Record average watts over a comparable stable interval.
- Repeat the runs. Repeated measurements help reduce the influence of ordinary variation. If hardware encoding is available, add a third matched run using it.
- Calculate the increment and energy. Subtract the matched baseline average from the software-encoding average to get incremental watts. Estimate added energy with
incremental watts × hours ÷ 1,000 = incremental kWh. - Record enough context to make the result useful. Note the machine, encoder and preset, resolution, frame rate, bitrate, duration, scene complexity and what the wall-power measurement includes. Without those details, a wattage result is easy to misapply.
This is a measurement recipe, not a published result for all YouTube streams. It follows the study’s whole-system wall-power approach and OBS’s documented workload variables.
Compare software and hardware encoding fairly
Compare average whole-system wall watts, estimated kWh over the same duration, visual quality and stream stability—not CPU or GPU utilization alone. Keep the loop and output resolution, frame rate, bitrate, scene and peripherals the same. If the hardware option produces a picture quality you consider acceptable at your chosen bitrate, its total wall draw may make it preferable; only a matched measurement on your machine can establish that trade-off.
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