Stupid question, if you have 25 cameras (so I guess over $2500 worth of cameras), whats the major roadblock to upgrading the computer since it is relatively old by "computer years" ? I believe a 1-2 year old Intel refurb would be a wise investment in your situation because old computers develop "old computer" problems.
- CPU paste gets old and stops working leading to overheating
- Power Supplies (especially the cheap ones in prebuilts) start to develop issues
- motherboards start to get unreliable, in particular capacitors start to dry out
- driver support and upkeep is rarely done, and bug fixes/firmware etc for very old hardware are rarely done especially past the first couple years.
- fans spinning for 6+ years start to wear out (especially if you are poor at maintenance)
- *added* they draw more power (idle and load) than their newer counterparts to do the same work --while not necessarily the main reason to upgrade depending on your power cost, it should be a consideration.
I mean I run
Blue Iris on an i7-2600k (NOT with 25 cameras), and until recently had (2) i7-9xx series (i7-925, i7-975 -- these
draw over 112w & 145w at IDLE) gaming computers so I see the benefit of not throwing out WORKING hardware, but computers are fairly old after 3 years. Your BI computer is now 6 generations behind modern tech and the possibility you are beginning to outgrow it is pretty reasonable, considering you paid $300 for it.