Blue Iris Server Build

[Thepretender]

Thought I'd post this up here for anyone who may be interested in building a new purpose built PC / Server for their Blue Iris Setup.

I'm currently working on a project for a friend who has asked me to install a full system at his house, leaving pretty much everything up to me and a reasonable budget to work with.
As part of this, he wanted everything to be new for warranties and piece of mind - so I have put together this system to run Blue Iris. (my own system is running on an old x64 based control system for a High Volume Production print engine, so I do understand the idea of re-purposing old machines also!)
I'll add a few pictures when its finished off, still waiting for the case to arrive...

The components are:

Intel Pentium Gold G5400 3.7GHz

Corsair DDR4 Memory 8GB

Crutial BX500 120GB SSD (Boot Drive)

WD Purple 4TB Surveillance Drive

ASRock H310M-HDV (M-ATX)

Be Quiet! 400w 80+Gold rated PSU (more power than needed, but the price was too good to pass on)

Kolink Satellite Case

Before I start testing it (will be running Windows 10) - I thought it would be intresting to see peoples thoughts on how it will get on with 3x 5MP in Blue iris @15fps (H.264)...


I'll get it tested tonight and post my findings when done - Personally, I'm pretty confident it will be a really nice little system for the job, with the ability to handle plenty more cams in the future.

Pic of the case for idea of how it will look when complete:

 

[crw030]

I know Blue Iris provides an uplift using built in Intel graphics, but for this build I wonder if a Ryzen 3200g (4C/8T) would have performed better than Intel 2C/4T+Quicksync. I do know the Ryzen with iGPU is one generation behind, so it's technically year-old CPU core, but 4 real cores is my point for really close to the same price for CPU+MB.

Also I thought if you bought Dell Factory Refurbished (like from Dell), they came with some warranty even if they were a year or two old. So was something used ever in the running?

 

[Thepretender]

I know Blue Iris provides an uplift using built in Intel graphics, but for this build I wonder if a Ryzen 3200g (4C/8T) would have performed better than Intel 2C/4T+Quicksync. I do know the Ryzen with iGPU is one generation behind, so it's technically year-old CPU core, but 4 real cores is my point for really close to the same price for CPU+MB.

Also I thought if you bought Dell Factory Refurbished (like from Dell), they came with some warranty even if they were a year or two old. So was something used ever in the running?

Definitely a valid point re. AMD. I was originally planning on going team Red for this build, although having not experimented with AMD on BI before, I decided to maybe leave that to another build of my own when I can play around a little more.

It would be quite interesting to see how the rough 2000 point cpu bench score (roughly 5000 vs 7000) and extra threads would stack up against quick sync...

Re. Refurb machines - I had seen this referred to in another post, although when looking at systems that were available here, I found the price to work out quite close to what I could build something from scratch to be, albeit with perhaps a slight drop in CPU performance, although not that vast when considering these were mostly a few genarations old.

Another consideration I had; The Pre built machines I was finding to be around the right form factor and price were mostly SFF which put me off when thinking about longer term repairs / upgrades.

 

[fenderman]

Another consideration I had; The Pre built machines I was finding to be around the right form factor and price were mostly SFF which put me off when thinking about longer term repairs / upgrades.

HP business machines are tanks. I have lots of these in service for BI and a general business machines and never had to use the next business day onsite warranty. In reality a warranty that is not next day on site does nothing as you cannot wait weeks to get the system back up and running. The truth is failure is extremely rare and warranty should not be a consideration.

 

[Thepretender]

HP business machines are tanks. I have lots of these in service for BI and a general business machines and never had to use the next business day onsite warranty. In reality a warranty that is not next day on site does nothing as you cannot wait weeks to get the system back up and running. The truth is failure is extremely rare and warranty should not be a consideration.

Definitely with you on HP machines - we use them as service processors / SSL VPN hosts at work all the time - I think I've known of one hardware failure in the 5 years some of them have been deployed.

I would've been more likely to maybe have gone down that route if it was for myself. Although I have to confess to liking to be able to play with things, which is a drawback to SFF personally.

 

[crw030]

....extra threads would stack up against quick sync....

Yeah that's what I was thinking, it will be a good bit of information, just hope it covers your friends needs OK. 3x5MP@15FPS is something like 225 MP/s give or take.

The closest system I found on Blue Iris Stats is:

• Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G4560 @ 3.50GHz running 49.3 MP/s at 8% BI / 29% CPU (local video 30FPS)
• Intel(R) Pentium(R) CPU G4400 @ 3.30GHz running 117 MP/s at 76% BI / 83% CPU.

But who knows, AMD isn't represented in the charts at the extreme low end. It might be even lower performance, I'm only guessing it might be higher.

 

[Thepretender]

will be a good bit of information

I would really like to see this the more I think about it. Perhaps I'll look at putting together a comparable AMD system at some point and testing, unless someone beats me to it.

I've just got BI installed so I'll get some performance figures in the morning...

 

[Thepretender]

So far, in testing - performance has been pretty good;

In Blue Iris - running 3x 5MP Cams via H.264 @15fps, CPU usage sits around 17-20%. The planned cameras are 3x 4MP cams, so this figure will likely drop ever so slightly in the production environment.

I have tested with up to 6x 5MP cams and CPU sits around 30%.

• Testing load was 225 MP/s with 3 cams and 445 MP/s with 6.
• The system will be headless, so this is how it was tested - accessing via RDP.

CPU with BI Console open sits around 45% when unrestricted playback and 35 if set to 1fps. (this is whilst logged in)

All the normal optimizations have been made; e.g. Direct to disk, running as a service and such...

 

[crw030]

That's good news, maybe your processor has a jump in performance or maybe those example systems were not optimized equally well. You could crank up the FPS to find your breaking point for that particular system in MP/s, because it would be good to know where things will cease to perform properly for your friend. Although at that future point I assume they could upgrade to an i3 or i5 (not knowledgeable on this particular line of processors). It appears like an i3-8100 is actually a big upgrade over this processor, so that might be the next step.

A separate question, do you have a power watt meter (like a Kill-A-Watt Meter) to measure at the wall power draw under load? Some googling about this processor leaves it's "full load" operating power draw kind of uncertain.

 

[Thepretender]

That's good news, maybe your processor has a jump in performance or maybe those example systems were not optimized equally well. You could crank up the FPS to find your breaking point for that particular system in MP/s, because it would be good to know where things will cease to perform properly for your friend. Although at that future point I assume they could upgrade to an i3 or i5 (not knowledgeable on this particular line of processors). It appears like an i3-8100 is actually a big upgrade over this processor, so that might be the next step.

A separate question, do you have a power watt meter (like a Kill-A-Watt Meter) to measure at the wall power draw under load? Some googling about this processor leaves it's "full load" operating power draw kind of uncertain.

I did have an i3 9100 on standby, which will drop into this board also (so this would probably be the upgrade path I'd take if it was ever needed in the future) - from memory the performace as far as CPU score goes was very similar to my old and much loved i7 3770k CPU... was quite suprised when I saw those figures, being aware that CPU progression has been much slower of late.

I've just been adding additional cameras in Blue Iris and seeing how it takes it. I've currently got it at 12 cams whilst connected with RDP (quite CPU intensive) I reached 100% CPU whilst sitting at 720 MP/s - over three times the load this project is planned for.
Disconnecting RDP and logging out of the session, CPU is sitting at 63% and 41C on the stock cooler whilst remaining inaudible. - This raises to 80 -90% and 47C (still silent) when viewing all 12 Cams via UI3 at 1440p

I must buy a Kill-A-Watt meter, I keep finding myself in situations such as this where it would be very useful!