 Bihira lang na I can try a new type of hardware for the first time. What's up internet? I think the last time I did that was when we reviewed the HTC Vive back nung nagsimula pa tayo sa channel na to. But considering a lot of our customers and our audience are gamers, I thought it would be a good time to start getting interested or at least knowledgeable about captured cards. Fortunately, ASUS sent over a very easy to use one, the CUK430. And while they sent it to us for review, they had no say in what we had to say about it. Super noob about these things. I remember a few months back, someone inquired hardware sugar about using a capture card to stream PC games. And I told them he didn't need a second computer. Which is completely wrong. Sorry about that. Just want to emphasize that this is really all new territory for me. So hindi ako magbamaro nung dito and say that I'm an expert about capture cards because I don't need to. Even though the CUK430 is new in the Philippines, releasing next month, April 2023, it's already a known commodity, a known item abroad. And while I don't know a lot about streaming, I do watch a couple of YouTubers who do. If you're looking for an expert level review of the CUK430, I do recommend the review by EposVox, very knowledgeable guy about streaming and streaming hardware and he was pretty impressed with this capture card. So this is a beginner level review of the CUK430 and also just a general overview of the kind of situations that you would want to use a capture card in. But for any capture card, there are two basic specs. That's pass through rate and capture or record rate. Pass through rate refers to the resolution and the refresh rate that the capture card can output to whatever TV or display you have attached it to. Basically, this is what the gamer sees. And for the CUK430, that's 4K at 60Hz, 2K at 144Hz, and 280p at 240Hz. Now the capture or record rate has lower settings and this is what the viewer who's watching the stream will see. For this capture card, that's 4K at 30Hz, 2K at 60Hz, and 1080p at 120Hz. Again, not an expert but comparing it to other capture cards, those numbers, those specs are pretty good. Usually you would use a capture card to stream console games and that's what we did. We tried the CUK430 with three different consoles. The PS4, the PS5, and the Nintendo Switch. For all the consoles, the process was very easy. First, you connect the console to the capture card and then you connect the capture card to your TV or display and this is where the pass-through rate comes in. Finally, you connect the capture card to your PC and this is where the capture or record rate comes in. It's a PC which will actually be streaming your game to the internet. Again, super new but all of this but it was super easy because the CUK430 is automatically recognized in OBS. OBS is free software which a lot of streamers use including us here at Hardware Sugar to stream our various content. The CUK430 simply appears as another possible source input in OBS and you can add it to any scene just like normal. Any half-width like me can figure it out and that's always a good thing. And the CUK430 also comes with a dash of RGB in front and this is functional because the basic status of the hardware is displayed through color. Red means there's no connection RGB means that everything is functioning properly. So you can tell at a glance if the card is working without having to go through any other software. Super important when you're in the middle of a game and you don't want to have to toggle in or shift your attention you can just glance at the card to be assured that everything is working properly. So how was it? On all three consoles, I didn't notice any image degradation as well as any stuttering meaning that the capture card was not getting in the way of the signal from the console to the TV. In fact, if I hadn't been the one to install the capture card I wouldn't have known that the console wasn't just directly attached to the TV. There was nothing subpar about the performance which would indicate that there was another layer between the console and the TV. The recordings were also very smooth and the refresh rate did seem to be what was advertised for those particular resolutions. Now, I do need to apologize why we don't have any of the captured gameplay footage it's because I lost the USB on which we saved it on. Whoopsie, I guess we could have played some Genshin footage as a substitute but let's not go there. You can see us recording it through OBS though and we did review the gameplay footage before I lost it and the recording, nothing really to criticize. Graphics quality, resolution, refresh rates all depend of course on the specific game that you're playing as well as the console that you're playing it on. But you can be rest assured that the capture card will work as advertised and will capture that gameplay fairly well. The PS5 is one of the top dogs currently in the console world and the CUK 430 can meet most of its output. For example, at 2K gaming the PS5 can pump out a maximum of 120Hz which is well within the maximum pass through rate of 144Hz for this card at 2K. 2K gaming on a PS5 is relatively new I think it was only enabled in a firmware update last September 2022 but still well within the capabilities of the CUK 430. The only outlier is at 4K for the PS5 the PS5 can do a maximum of 120Hz at 4K whereas the pass through rate of this guy is only up to 60Hz at 4K although it's very rare for a PS5 game to be outputting 120Hz at 4K so it's a very niche use case for most of the users out there this card will be able to pass through basically anything that your PS5 can pump out. Now you can also use the CUK 430 to stream PC games but you would need two computers for that you would need a computer that actually runs the game so in our previous example it's sort of like the console the one that's actually generating the game and the graphics and then you would need a second PC to stream that data to stream that game to the internet this is usually only for very hard-core streamers where it's really your business your life's work to stream because even medium-range builds or even old computers can stream pretty well on their own you don't usually encounter a dual computer setup for streaming even for novice or amateur streamers we didn't try out this particular function it's not a use case that you would see often here at Hardware Sugar we started streaming PC games with an i5 4690K Intel 5th generation which is kind of a sign that you don't really need the latest and the greatest to stream properly more so you don't actually need a second computer to do your streaming unless you are in that very top percent of streamers where you want the user or the viewer to be able to appreciate 4k graphics higher refresh rates and you've set up something professional and so you're really gunning for hardware that would allow you to do that it's also possible to connect cameras to the capture card there are some older cameras which don't allow you to connect the camera directly to the computer so if you want to use those kind of cameras as web cameras basically as cameras for source input to your OBS or to your zoom or other software which resides on your computer you will need a capture card like the Cuk430 to be able to connect your camera to your computer and this is a trend kind of pushed by the pandemic a lot of the newer cameras now do already have software which allows you to access them immediately just plug them in like normal for all into your computer and the computer will usually recognize that newer camera as a video input I won't rank this one as I don't feel like I'm qualified to do so but I will say it was super easy to use even for a complete beginner and I look forward to experimenting with the CU430K in the future finally at the end of the review I got the numbers right pa minsan may nagtatanong kumikilala ba kaming computer shop na trusted yung hindi ka-lolo ko hin kame full service PC store ang hardware sugar nagbabenta kami ng PC components nagbabenta rin kami ng fully assembled rigs we clean computers nasama na rin yung excellent cable management namin and CPU cooler repasting sa cleaning we also clean and repaste GPUs na sa makati yung physical store namin and you can also buy from our site www.hwsugar.ph 100% palaging up to date yung inventory kung instock yung item sa amin available yung sa site we also ship nationwide thanks for watching and maybe one of these days magkita tayo sa shop