Looking for Low wattage PC or Mini PC to run BI and 2-3 cameras?

C

Cam-man28

n3wb
Jan 1, 2019
16
3
Canada
Good Morning.

I'm looking to setup another BI instance at a remote site that is solar powered. So low power consumption is important. Was wondering what would be some good low wattage options to run 2-3 cameras? I'm open to PC's and mini-PC's preferably with Windows installed vs a VM setup. I plan to email alerts vs having a large local storage but open to either option.

What's everyone running for low wattage options? Please let me know.

Thanks
 
VorlonFrog said:
The go-to answer used to be Intel NUC, check eBay for i5 systems.
New Beelink compact PCs seem to be popular.
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Thanks. The Beelink ones look decent. Never heard of that brand before. Are there any SFF desktops or smaller that also use very little power? Looking for something under 40-50w if possible.
 
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Cam-man28 said:
Thanks. The Beelink ones look decent. Never heard of that brand before. Are there any SFF desktops or smaller that also use very little power? Looking for something under 40-50w if possible.
Click to expand...
Intel NUC processors typically have 35W or less and use laptop-style 60-watt power supplies. I believe the N100 and newer N200 processors in the BeeLink systems are significantly lower. Dell OptiPlex 7050 SFF Desktops are well-respected, but use 150-to-180-watt capacity power supplies. Using solid state disks instead of spinning hard disks drops the power consumption dramatically, but I'd expect one to still use maybe 30-to-40 percent of that 180-watt capacity, because of the older desktop processor.
 
I bought a tiny little N100 the other day to use as my pfSense router/firewall. I think it's 6W. No idea how well it would handle BI. With just a few cams probably OK. Specs-wise it's more capable than the old 4th gen i5 I used to run a bunch on. Storage and thermal limiting are questions. I have a leftover N95 now in a similar tiny PC and some old external drives. Maybe I'll set that up in eval mode and pull in some of my cams to see what it takes to choke it.
 
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looney2ns said:
I have an optiplex with an I7-7700 cpu in it.
It averages 35-40 watts power draw with 12 cameras recording.
It would be much less with fewer cams.
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@looney2ns thanks - do you know the specific model of optiplex you're running. That is within my power budget and might be better than an NUC. I'm going to use 3 cameras max in this small setup.
 
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