After 8 years BI up for a new HW setup. Pls Advice

T

Tyfoon

n3wb
Sep 17, 2017
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After 8 years running BI on a PC that is on 24/7 I'm now up for a refresh. Driven by a very small SSD (60GB now causing issue with Win10 updates..) and also power consumption.

I use it for 6x 4k Hikvision cams at 15FPS (preferably would go to 20FPS). Now have I5 3570 with Intel Quicsync (running at about 40% CPU). 60GB SDD and due to amount of media storage and storage of BI media 6GB of HDD, now 3x 2TB). It's one of these tower PC's.

Beside BI the only thing the PC does is act as a Plex media server. PC is only managed remote. No direct connection to TV (my LG TV has a plex App)

I would prefer a very quit system, low power consumption (!). However NUC size is not needed as I have space enough to put it. Preferable passive Power supply.

Would you have any suggestions?
 
I just moved BI4 off of my WHS 2011 to a windows 10 pro machine. As the machine is headless and sits out of the way, I went with a Used Business HP EliteDesk i7-4790 with 16GB memory off of ebay. The noise is not an issue. I added a 120 GB SSD and 4TB purple drive.

I would stay away for the NUC, to high a heat load to run 24/7, also it does not allow for adding drives easily.

Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris

Buy refurbished. Don't build or buy new. The most cost-effective Blue Iris computers are refurbished business-class systems such as "HP EliteDesk" and "Dell OptiPlex". You can usually get a good deal by searching [URL='http://www.ebay.com/']Ebay[/URL] for specific CPU model numbers, and...
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If you can possibly wait a few months, AMD is releasing 4000-series APU's (built in graphics), which I will definitely be trying (because I am running i7-2600k which is still older than your setup ;) ) and can report back on performance. Recently some benchmarks surfaced where the mobile Ryzen 4800U (8c/16t/45W TDP) is outperforming the i7-9700k (8c/8t/95W TDP).

But all this stuff is so overhyped (especially coming off CES), that it's better to wait for independent reviews. If you can't wait then current-gen Ryzen is winning on performance but lacks integrated GPU, so figure in extra cost of a low-end graphics unit (and sustained power draw). 7th gen Intel or newer would be the best performance/watt with supported GPU at this time.
 
Thanks for the references to "choosing hardware for BlueIris' but I have studied this quite extensively. Really difficult to get -in my case- something out of this. For instance my I5 3570 is almost identical of an I 6500 (based on benchmarks) so purely from that perspective little value in changing anything. However as I want I silent, LOW ENERGY system I'm hoping to find some out of the box systems...
 
Tyfoon said:
Thanks for the references to "choosing hardware for BlueIris' but I have studied this quite extensively. Really difficult to get -in my case- something out of this. For instance my I5 3570 is almost identical of an I 6500 (based on benchmarks) so purely from that perspective little value in changing anything. However as I want I silent, LOW ENERGY system I'm hoping to find some out of the box systems...
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eight gen an up provide a significant increase when comparing the same i-x series processor. Any modern hp elitedesk sff will be quiet and efficient. Did you check how much your current system draws? There may not be much benefit in reducing an already low power consumption pc.
 
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fenderman said:
eight gen an up provide a significant increase when comparing the same i-x series processor. Any modern hp elitedesk sff will be quiet and efficient. Did you check how much your current system draws? There may not be much benefit in reducing an already low power consumption pc.
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Current consumption of this PC is about 85-90Watt which seems a lot although although I don't know what a modern PC would consume
 
Tyfoon said:
Current consumption of this PC is about 85-90Watt which seems a lot although although I don't know what a modern PC would consume
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Been doing some searching but really not that easy to have an improvement at a reasonable price....

What do you guys think from this (keeps linking to Dutch HP store)? I3 9100 with 500GB SSD. Just add a 6TB HDD
 
That looks to be like-for-like (4c/4t) but several generations newer. I bet it would work just about the same, and should draw (I estimate) 25% less power with the same load. I bet you’d even have very similar CPU loads as your current system so I wouldn’t consider it as buying up your overall base very much, but the huge leap in generations will definitely help you work on your power consumption goals.
 
Best deal now is AMD R7 1800X, R7 1700X, R7 2700X, or R7 3700X running on most any AM4 motherboards. Current consumption on my R7 1800X rig is 140w at the wall with console on, dual monitor on a RX480 8gb . 6 Cameras: 2mp x3, 3mp, 4mp, and 5mp at 20fps and CPU usage about 18-22% at night and 25-35% daytime average. Continuous recording. My rig also is my NAS so maybe the power numbers could be lower if it were a dedicated BI machine.
 
hotbrass said:
Best deal now is AMD R7 1800X, R7 1700X, R7 2700X, or R7 3700X running on most any AM4 motherboards. Current consumption on my R7 1800X rig is 140w at the wall with console on, dual monitor on a RX480 8gb . 6 Cameras: 2mp x3, 3mp, 4mp, and 5mp at 20fps and CPU usage about 18-22% at night and 25-35% daytime average. Continuous recording. My rig also is my NAS so maybe the power numbers could be lower if it were a dedicated BI machine.
Click to expand...

140w is significant. Probably difficult to compare power consumption AMD vs Intel due to the quicksync from Intel. I guess the RX480 draws also significant power and I'm wondering what your CPU usage does when it would just run on the CPU and not on the GPU
 
crw030 said:
That looks to be like-for-like (4c/4t) but several generations newer. I bet it would work just about the same, and should draw (I estimate) 25% less power with the same load. I bet you’d even have very similar CPU loads as your current system so I wouldn’t consider it as buying up your overall base very much, but the huge leap in generations will definitely help you work on your power consumption goals.
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I think you are right. I'm almost stumped about this 'lack of progress' in either power consumption or performance. I build this I5 3750K system 8 years ago (!) and if I want something with similar performance I still need to shell a significant amount (with the HDD I would be around 700 euros/750 $) and only get approx 25% energy savings... economical not a wise move. I might just buy a new SSD for 35 euros and clone my existing boot drive, then keep running it until it breaks...
 
Tyfoon said:
140w is significant. Probably difficult to compare power consumption AMD vs Intel due to the quicksync from Intel. I guess the RX480 draws also significant power and I'm wondering what your CPU usage does when it would just run on the CPU and not on the GPU
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Yes, I might take that video card out and put it somewhere else and get a low power card. Would definitely run lower wattage. I have a 750w 80+ Gold power supply with eco mode and I have not seen the cooling fan come on yet.

I had run BI4 on a i7 6700K before and the power consumption was about the same, but it ran at about 90-100%.
 
looney2ns said:
My Optiplex I7-7700 with 11 cameras, uses 18 watts from the wall on average.
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That's in line with what I see on our 7th-gen and 8th-gen Optiplexes at work. I had a rack of them, maybe two dozen, pulling 380 watts at the master power outlet. Granted, they were idling, not running BI :) If you can find one off-lease with a SSD and give it one high-capacity hard drive, that would be excellent. The Small Form-Factor (SFF) chassis will accommodate only one standard-size mechanical drive, so if your objective is to re-use your existing drives, look for the larger mid-tower fat-body chassis.

On that note, you can use the Dell OS Recovery utility and switch it to Advanced mode, and plug in the Dell Service Tag off the system you buy (or are considering). Look for the ability to download the entire OS (as opposed to simply refreshing it from a recovery partition). Contrary to what you might expect, this is a very minimalistic OS install and not swamped with a lot of useless bloatware. What little you do get, is easily uninstalled from the Control Panel. I'd recommend running the Dell SupportAssist utility after installing Windows 10, which will update the firmware and fix critical Intel Management Engine vulnerabilities; it's worth keeping around and doing perhaps a monthly check.

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As long as I'm covering that much of the topic, I also recommend going into the system firmware and taking these steps to allow Win10 to make maximum use of the hardware-based security as you can:

Before installing the OS, set Boot Mode to UEFI Mode, Secure Boot Enabled. This will be one of the options if you press the F12 key as the system starts up.

Next, go into the firmware and:

Security section:
Ensure the TPM is both ON and "Enabled"
Enable UEFI Capsule Updates
Enable SMM mitigations
Disable CompuTrace aka Absolute on later models

Enable Intel SGX

In the Virtualization section, enable All The Things, the key being Trusted Execution.

This combination allows WIn10 to use hardware-based virtualization to increase the complexity of subverting the boot process, among other things.
 
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mech said:
That's in line with what I see on our 7th-gen and 8th-gen Optiplexes at work. I had a rack of them, maybe two dozen, pulling 380 watts at the master power outlet. Granted, they were idling, not running BI :) If you can find one off-lease with a SSD and give it one high-capacity hard drive, that would be excellent. The Small Form-Factor (SFF) chassis will accommodate only one standard-size mechanical drive, so if your objective is to re-use your existing drives, look for the larger mid-tower fat-body chassis.
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I spotted this one for a good price (Dell Optiplex 7050M MicroPC i5 7e 3.4GHz 256GB SSD 8GB). 260 euro (300$), then add a 6 or 8TB surveillance HDD. Are these the ones you refer too? You mention the dell service tag. I guess I need that. Is that a physical device that should come with the re-furbished PC?

Update: Seems it's not possible to fit extra HDD in these ones. Correct?
 
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Correct. the MicroPC cannot hold additional drives (2.5 or 3.5), only a single 2.5" (and some models a M2 drive...usually not included)
 
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Here is an example of the Small Form Factor which has space for a standard 3.5" mechanical hard drive: ≥ PC Dell Optiplex 7040 - Desktop Pc's - Marktplaats.nl The Dell Service Tag is in two locations: a sticker on the top of the chassis, and another sticker on the rear of the chassis. It would be seven characters, such as 1134CH2, and you can use that code to verify that you can get a Windows 10 OS from Dell's tool before you buy it.

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hotbrass said:
Best deal now is AMD R7 1800X, R7 1700X, R7 2700X, or R7 3700X running on most any AM4 motherboards. Current consumption on my R7 1800X rig is 140w at the wall with console on, dual monitor on a RX480 8gb . 6 Cameras: 2mp x3, 3mp, 4mp, and 5mp at 20fps and CPU usage about 18-22% at night and 25-35% daytime average. Continuous recording. My rig also is my NAS so maybe the power numbers could be lower if it were a dedicated BI machine.
Click to expand...
That power consumption is insanely high ...
 
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