PC Crash with BI

[jland47]

My pc went dead one time and we thought the problem was the power supply, so we changed it out and it worked for one night. Then it went cuput again, push the power button and it would blink but then nothing. After a while the power button wouldn't even blink. Should I just purchase a whole new pc or should I change out some of the parts of the old system? I am not that tech savy either but I do have someone at work willing to help.

Old PC Equip;

Medium PC 10 cams mixed use 15-20 Max $1100 Qty. Product Description Savings Total Price 1 COOLER MASTER Elite 361 RC-361-KKR350 Black Computer Case Item #:N82E16811119258 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $54.99 1 Microsoft Windows 8.1 Pro - 64-bit Item #:N82E16832416778 Return Policy: FINAL SALES RETURN POLICY $139.99 1 GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 ATX AMD Motherboard Item #:N82E16813128514 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $129.99 $109.99 1 ASUS Radeon R7 250X R7250X-1GD5 Video Card Item #:N82E16814121853 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $99.99 1 G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-8GBRL Item #:N82E16820231314 Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy $62.99 1 Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive Bare Drive Item #:N82E16822148834 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $99.99 $76.99 1 AMD FX-8320 3.5GHz (4.0GHz Turbo) Socket AM3+ FD8320FRHKBOX Desktop Processor Item #:N82E16819113285 Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy $149.99 $139.99 1 OCZ Vertex 460A VTX460A-25SAT3-240G 2.5" 240GB SATA 3 6Gb/s MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) Item #:N82E16820228122 Return Policy: Standard Return Policy $139.99 $111.99 1 Logitech MK120 Wired USB Keyboard and Mouse - Black Design Style: Slim Keyboard Color: Black Item #:9SIA1N82853999 Sold by PC Rush $17.37 Grand Total: $814.29

 

[bp2008]

Hard to say what is wrong. I've seen my fair share of power supply failures, but never two in a row like that. Literally anything plugged in to a PC can cause problems. Just a month ago my brother discovered a faulty displayport cable was the cause of his system instability.

You might consider picking up a refurbished dell optiplex or HP elitedesk machine with an i7-4790 or i7-6700 CPU. It'll be faster and more energy-efficient than the old AMD, particularly once you turn on hardware accelerated decoding in Blue Iris. You can find these for as little as $420 or so when they are on sale, then move over your SSD and hard drive, keyboard, mouse, etc. Depending on the system you may even be able to move over your RAM (many of the newest systems use DDR4 now).

 

[jland47]

Where should I look for those on sale, any sites you recommend?

 

[bp2008]

Dell outlet is where you can buy directly from dell. You get the best warranty this way (3 years, in-home service, usually). Here is their current coupon page, where they have coupons for 30% off. http://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/28/campaigns/dell-coupons-codes-us-outlet-new

Click on Shop Now next to "Save 30% on any Dell Outlet business desktop or workstation" and you'll get a list of machines. I had to go all the way to page 14 to find any i7 machines... Sometimes they don't show up if you use the filters on the left...

Right now the cheapest I see is $659 which comes to $461 after coupon code. Tax gets added to that, making it close to $500. Not really a great deal to be honest, since it only has 4 GB of RAM.

Another good place to look, where you don't have to rely on catching a good sale price, is ebay. Search ebay for "i7-4790 refurbished" or "i7-6700 refurbished", then filter on the left to "PC Desktops & All-In-Ones". Filter to only the "Buy it now" options, and then sort by Price + Shipping: lowest first. These come with varying warranties, amounts of RAM, hard disk space, and usually have Windows included but not all do. You can also search for i5-4570 or i5-4590 to save quite a bit of money and still get something comparable to the AMD CPU you have. Better, actually, for Blue Iris, thanks to the hardware acceleration you can use with an Intel CPU.

 

[jland47]

If i was to purchase this one, could I put my 4 tb hard drive in it?

[FONT=&quot]Dell Optiplex 5040 Mini Tower i7-6700 8GB 500GB DVDRW HDMI Win10 Pro 3Y Warranty [/FONT]

 

[bp2008]

Yes. Mini tower has at least two drive bays... though the first one is likely to be in use and you'll need another mounting bracket for your second drive.

 

[fenderman]

As others have mentioned, the optiplex is a great machine. Dont buy amd and dont use discrete video. You want to harness the hardware acceleration of intel HD.

 

[jland47]

What is the differnce between these two, should I get the one with the ssd or will I be ok with the first one.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-Optiplex-5040-Mini-Tower-i7-6700-8GB-500GB-DVDRW-HDMI-Win10-Pro-3Y-Warranty-/291815750900?hash=item43f192fcf4:g:YYQAAOSwv9FXgwca

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-OptiPlex-5040-Mini-Tower-Intel-6th-Gen-i7-6700-8GB-RAM-256GB-SSD-Win-10-Pro-/331923841309?hash=item4d4833e11d:g:XiwAAOSwQupXWhh6

 

[bp2008]

You are better off with the normal hard drive. I would tell you this even if the machines were the same price. If you want an SSD, you can get one a lot cheaper than the $100 premium they want for it between those two models on ebay. And then you only need a small one to keep Blue Iris's "database" on. It would not be a good idea to record directly to an SSD because it won't make any difference that the SSD is faster for this, and SSDs have limited write endurance so you will wear it out quicker.