When it comes to streaming video games, a $500 microphone won't get you 500 viewers. Most new game streamers are lucky to have 100 people watching in their first few months.

It helps to know what makes a difference on day one, whether you're buying gear for yourself or someone on your gift list.

Not even the best gear will make you a good streamer -- personality, practice, and becoming comfortable talking to an audience from an empty room will do that. Start with what you have, and upgrade to better equipment when your audience gives you a reason.

You can watch me walk through the essential streaming gear, along with other holiday shopping advice for the gamers on your list, in a new CNET Group video franchise called Holiday Office Hours From the Labs.

Here’s the short list of what you need to start streaming video games.

If your computer already runs your games well, it can probably stream them too. If you’re shopping for a new one, look for three things: At least 16GB of RAM, an SSD instead of a hard drive, and a modern graphics card.

These are important because your PC needs to handle both streaming and gaming. With an SSD, your games can load faster, and a decent-quality graphics card can do the bulk of the work. We recommend the Nvidia GeForce RTX 5060.

All the current graphics cards from Nvidia, AMD, and Intel have a built-in hardware encoder, which turns your gameplay into a video stream without slowing down the game.

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