Medium room, White
Frost RGB
$5,3057 of 8 parts sold here
8 components
Medium room, WhiteAll-white gaming hardware on a white sit/stand desk, washed in pink and sky blue.
Streaming setups that sound and look right
Viewers forgive a soft image before they forgive bad audio, so a streaming setup starts with the microphone and the room. Then comes light on your face, a camera, and a controller that lets you switch scenes without leaving the game.
Recommended setups
Real desks planned for this use. Open one to see every part.
Large room, Black
Broadcast Booth
Two screens, a broadcast mic and a key light: a black desk built to go live.
$2,77111 of 12 parts sold here12 components
Medium room, Minimal
Esports Arena
A competitive shooter desk: Rapid Trigger keyboard, 240 Hz OLED and a huge pad.
$4,0309 components
$2,9049 of 10 parts sold here10 components
Medium room, Minimal
Pastel Stream
An all-white streaming desk where the camera, the light and the microphone are as considered as the PC.
$5,95311 components
Top parts for a streaming setup
Ranked by how well they fit this use, then by our editorial score.
Alienware Monitor
Alienware 34 280Hz QD-OLED Gaming Monitor AW3426DW
- 34"
- 3440 × 1440
- 280 Hz
$649.99Setuplify score: 8.8/10
Plan your own streaming setup
Tell the Setup Builder your budget, room and style. It picks every part for this use, explains each choice and shows what to upgrade next.
Open the builder for streamingGuides worth reading first
Setup guide 8 min read
The budget streaming setup: go live from a cheap gaming desk
A budget RTX 5050 tower, a mic that ignores your keyboard, a face light, a 1080p60 webcam and a Stream Deck: the cheapest streaming desk that looks and sounds right, in the order to buy it.
How to 5 min read
How to manage desk cables, step by step
Get the power strip off the floor, route every cable along one path and cut the cables to your laptop down to one, with cheap IKEA parts and a few smart upgrades.
Setup guide 6 min read
How to build a streaming setup, step by step
Microphone, arm, headphones, light, camera, capture card and Stream Deck: what to buy in which order, with real products for each step and three ways to put it together.
Best of 6 min read
The best desk lighting: light bars, key lights, ambient bars and lamps
The right light for each job: a monitor light bar for work, a cheap lamp to start, a key light for your camera, and ambient light behind the screen or on the wall.
Questions people ask
What should I buy first to start streaming?
A decent microphone and a key light. Viewers forgive an average image much more easily than bad audio, and light improves even a basic webcam.
Do I need two monitors to stream?
Not strictly, but it helps a lot: the game on one screen, chat and streaming software on the other.
How do I keep keyboard noise off stream?
Use a dynamic mic close to your mouth, a quiet keyboard and a desk mat. Keeping the mic on a boom arm rather than on the desk also reduces vibrations.