12 Ways to Fix OBS High CPU Usage [Solved]

OBS has a tendency to put a heavy burden on your CPU and lag other system functions. Here are twelve ways you can fix OBS high CPU usage.

If you’re using OBS and having lagging issues, there are a number of factors that could contribute to the problem. However, OBS Studio’s (Open Broadcaster Software) CPU usage is known to be high, so it’s best to check there first. Here’s how to check if there is high CPU usage in OBS on Windows 10 or 11 or on a Mac:

Windows

You can check the CPU usage in windows via Task Manager. Press Ctrl + Shift + Esc to bring up the Task Manager window and then click the Performance tab at the top. The first usage tab is the CPU, so check the percentage in the window. If you already have a high CPU usage warning or the percentage while running OBS is over 50%, then follow the steps below on how to lower it.

Mac

Percentage-wise, Macs aren’t much different from PCs, and it’s just as easy to check your CPU usage. You’ll need to open the Activity Monitor Window application. From there, click CPU, and you’ll be able to see multiple percentages. Look at the one under System.

You can also put your CPU usage in your dock by clicking View and then the Dock Icon. Then, select any Show CPU option you want to display. Again, if your percentage is too high, then follow the steps below regarding how to reduce OBS CPU usage.

Is OBS using too much CPU and causing problems? Follow these steps to learn how to make OBS use less CPU.

The developers designed OBS to record any screen in real-time. Therefore, when recording your screen, the CPU usage will rise based on how many pixels you’re recording in each frame. And based on the power of your CPU, it will only be able to hold this level of usage for so long without issues.

If you see an ‘Encoding overload’ or a ‘High CPU usage’ notification on your screen, then it clearly can’t handle things. You may see some performance issues, or OBS may shut down entirely.

The most common way to solve the high CPU usage issue quickly is by downscaling the output resolution of your screen-recording session. This method will tell OBS it’s okay to send the video to the encoder at a lower resolution – thus taking the pressure off your CPU.

Use these steps to scale things down:

1. Click the Settings button at the bottom right of your screen – above Exit.

2. Select the Video tab and either type in a lower resolution or select one from the dropdown menu.

3. Click Apply and exit OBS Studio.

4. Restart your computer, open OBS and test your screen capture to see if that fixes the issue.

OBS also has downscale filters for customizing your capture. You can choose from Area, Bicubic, Bilinear, or Lanczos. Remember that the Bilinear filter will reduce the number of resources your system uses, but your video quality will decline significantly.

When you run different audio frequencies for screen capturing, it will load more processes onto your CPU – it has to load at each frequency. In order to minimize the amount of work your CPU has to do, it’s best to run each audio device at the same frequency. You don’t want your desktop audio to run at 44.1 kHz and OBS to run at 48 kHz as it will affect the performance of your system.

Follow these steps to check and set your audio sources at the same frequency:

1. Open the Control Panel app and select Hardware and Sound.

2. Under Sound, click Manage audio devices.

3. Double click Speaker.

4. Click the Advanced tab.

5. You’ll see a dropdown menu with the Hz level of your speaker.

6. Open OBS and click the Settings button at the bottom-right side of your interface.

7. Click the Audio tab.

8. At the top, click the dropdown menu next to Sample rate.

9. From here, either alter the OBS settings or your speaker settings to match. Click Apply or OK and see if that solves the problem.

Along with closing or uninstalling miscellaneous programs and applications that could slow down your system, you can also check the sources you're using to capture your video. For example, capture cards, external encoders, or webcams can add to your overall CPU usage significantly.

It’s worth your time to take actions around these devices to see if you can lower their processing needs. For example, you can reduce the resolution on most webcams. And if you don’t require high functionality for a particular video – usually non-gaming screen captures – then you can also balance devices, like capture cards, by lowering the resolution to match your OBS settings.

And streaming platforms might run additional applications that are unnecessary for their primary function. Check to see if those are running in the background and shut them off where possible.

Along with your overall resolution, this is one of the fastest and easiest solutions on the list. If it doesn’t work, you can move on to more labor-intensive fixes like our next suggestion.

Unfortunately, if you’re working with an older or low-power system, you may not be able to adjust your settings enough to fix a CPU usage issue. There are many AMD and Intel processors out there that developers built for base-line functionality and become outdated within a few years.

At that point, you could lower your settings to get a smooth capture. But the quality could be so low that you wouldn’t want to capture it, anyway. If that’s the case, then it could be time to upgrade your hardware. Replacing a CPU pretty much replaces the whole computer, so it’s often better to replace the graphics processing unit (GPU) instead.

In fact, OBS stands out from other programs because it makes use of the GPU to increase performance. If you’re working with a solid CPU, but an outdated GPU, then the CPU still won’t be able to handle the encoding. The most common issues with GPUs are a low processor core count or a low memory bandwidth. Take those factors into consideration when choosing a new GPU.

If you’re considering a new hardware, a dedicated graphics card can help your CPU usage situation tremendously. Outside of the settings tips listed above, this is the most common hardware solution to take the pressure off a CPU for video capture and streaming.

Dedicated graphics cards can process things faster than an accelerated processing unit (APU), which is a combination CPU + GPU processor. It works to help encode things for the CPU and frees up much-needed processing power.

From there, you can customize your usage on both the CPU and GPU to find the perfect balance that works best for your system. This can also free up your system to make use of a monitoring software that will let you know your percentage usage at all times.

It’s important to stay on top of these analytics as much as possible, so you never lose a frame when capturing or streaming.

OBS requires both a great deal of space on your hard drive and a lot of RAM to run the software. It also requires that your CPU check a variety of output files and configurations to make things capture smoothly. If you don’t have enough storage space for your CPU, then it’s time to delete some files on your hard drive.

Disk Cleanup is a Windows application that can help you free up that necessary space. It’s a quick and easy solution you can apply with little effort. However, results may vary. Some users claim it helped a lot, while others claim it had no effect at all.

Regardless, you should see an increase in performance on your machine overall, even if you don’t lower your CPU usage on OBS.

To run Disk Cleanup:

1. Type Disk Cleanup in your Windows search bar (bottom left) and open the program.

2. When opening, Disk Cleanup will run a calculation to see how much space you can free up.

3. After calculating, you can customize your clean up as you see fit and continue by selecting OK.

4. It’s also possible to run an advanced cleanup by clicking the Clean up system files button with the Defender symbol. This will even allow you to delete restore points from previous updates.

Note: This option is not available for Mac users as Macs have a built-in cleanup utility that runs automatically.

Game Mode on Windows can be helpful, but it sometimes gets in the way when you want to capture videos on your screen. If that’s the case, you can turn off this mode with no effect on your gameplay. This will free up even more CPU resources for your game and stream. Here’s how to turn it off:

1. Type game mode in your Windows search box at the bottom left of the screen.

2. Select Game mode settings.

3. Turn off the mode, restart or refresh your device and test to see if it lowers your CPU usage.

One last thing you can do before potentially swapping out your hardware is to check and see if your system is having issues with the OBS software. There are three paths to check and see if this is the issue.

1. Update to the latest version of OBS – you should do this, anyway.

2. Uninstall and reinstall OBS to remove any potential bugs in the files and start fresh.

3. Revert to an older version of OBS if your system can’t handle newer updates.

Which route to go all depends on your situation. This can also apply to any drivers in your system that may also require updates or a refresh.

There are many screen-recording alternatives available, and as stated earlier, Movavi Screen Recorder is our special pick. If OBS is putting out screen captures with inferior quality because it’s overloading the CPU, then here’s how you can use Movavi Screen Recorder to record your screen.

How to record a screen with Movavi Screen Recorder