Smallest computer that I could get for BI

[S0619212]

Looking for smallest computer I could possibly get in today's market without sacrificing performance for BI which would monitor 4 - 6 cameras.

 

[Flintstone61]

Hp Elitedesk G4-800 SFF is a great, small unit. about the same footprint as a 15" laptop width and depth wise. I have one in a rack shelf running 20 cameras. Supports W11 natively.

HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Small Form Factor Business PC Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Specifications page for HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Small Form Factor PC.

support.hp.com

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[Flintstone61]

Also the Dell Optiplex 3040 SFF, is something to consider for a single drive video storage system. you say 4-6 cams. Easily done with one video storage Hdd. I'd have to research as to whether or not the 3040 has onboard M.2 NVME drive bay or not.
But its slightly smaller than the Elitedesk, Not exactly sure of the dimensions without digging. Dell has not provided drivers for Windows 11 for this hardware. and possibly the TPM module is too old to support W 11.

https://dl.dell.com/topicspdf/optiplex-3040m-desktop_owners-manual_en-us.pdf

 

[Flintstone61]

Here is an 8th Gen Dell compareble to the Elitedask, Has M.2 slot on Motherboard, so youcan run BI from that, and use the 1 SATA port and remove the blue plastic 2.5" HDD caddy and set a 3.5" Spinning rust WD Purp in there.

Dell OptiPlex 3060 Small Form Factor Service Manual | Dell US

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[Boyturtle]

I run an HP EliteDesk 800 G6 Desktop Mini, it uses many of the same internals as its SFF sibling mentioned above, but is smaller still. Dell and Lenovo also have similar offerings.

At only 17.7 x 17.5 x 3.4 cm, it's very small, but its 2 limiting factors are thermals (it gets hot in there very quickly) and hard drive choices. I have a large NVME drive installed as the system drive and store the contents of my New folder, continuous recordings and database there, but I save my Stored folder on a WD Purple drive on a server elsewhere on my network. The PC hangs on a bracket on my garage wall in a well ventilated area; in the summer months I use an additional external fan velcroed to the top of the unit to force more air into the unit on warm days.

My unit has worked very well for me for 2 years now, once I recognised and dealt with the thermal limitations. Depending on your particular circumstance, this form factor may be unsuitable for your needs and a slightly bigger box may be a better solution.

 

[actran]

Good advice above. If you decide to run AI for better detection (to eliminate false alarms), you may add an Nvidia card at some point (to get fast AI speed). Make sure your SFF has enough room for a low power graphics card (<75 watts).

 

[ipmania]

Hp Elitedesk G4-800 SFF is a great, small unit. about the same footprint as a 15" laptop width and depth wise. I have one in a rack shelf running 20 cameras. Supports W11 natively.

HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Small Form Factor Business PC Specifications | HP® Customer Support

Specifications page for HP EliteDesk 800 G4 Small Form Factor PC.

support.hp.com

HP EliteDesk Computer 800 G4 SFF i5-8500 3.0GHz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Win 10 Pro | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HP EliteDesk Computer 800 G4 SFF i5-8500 3.0GHz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Win 10 Pro at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

That little HP looks great. How much RAM is needed to run as many as 9 cameras? Will 8GB do?

I see you are running 20 so it's good that this unit has more capacity than I need.

 

[Flintstone61]

8 will run.....But I havent tried it. Sometimes you have to have a little more patience when you have 8 Gigs of ram....things will happen,,,,,,sometimes they are not as snappy.
But BI only eats 0.99 GB of ram on my Home machine. So you can start out with 8.

Mine came with 16 and that was enough for the 13 cameras that were running at that time.
Windows Movie player or Whatever VLC video player.,,,,any of that stuff will use resources.
LIke playing back recorded video,

 

[ipmania]

8 will run.....But I havent tried it. Sometimes you have to have a little more patience when you have 8 Gigs of ram....things will happen,,,,,,sometimes they are not as snappy.
But BI only eats 0.99 GB of ram on my Home machine. So you can start out with 8.

Mine came with 16 and that was enough for the 13 cameras that were running at that time.
Windows Movie player or Whatever VLC video player.,,,,any of that stuff will use resources.
LIke playing back recorded video,

Thanks again. Your signature suggests that you are using a WD80PURZ hard drive. Google seems to think it's a 3.5-inch hard drive and I don't believe that fits in the little Elitedesk G4 800.

 

[ipmania]

Thanks again. Your signature suggests that you are using a WD80PURZ hard drive. Google seems to think it's a 3.5-inch hard drive and I don't believe that fits in the little Elitedesk G4 800.

Actually, my mistake. The SFF Elitedesk G4 800 does indeed fit a 3.5-inch HDD. It's the little micro G4 800 Elitedesks that accept only a 2.5-inch laptop hard drive.

 

[Flintstone61]

I have a WD white label WD EZRZ 5 TB and a WD PURZ 8 TB in my Elite desk. Roughly 2/3 of the cams are on the Surveillance drive. and Some space is alloted on the 5TB for Macrium Reflect back ups.

 

[The Automation Guy]

Looking for smallest computer I could possibly get in today's market without sacrificing performance for BI which would monitor 4 - 6 cameras.

There are plenty of small form factor and mini computers being sold now. Some are as small as 4"x4"x2". You can even get modern CPUs in them like recent generations of i5 and i7 chips with lots of installed RAM too (16-32gb is possible in some units). In other words, you can get as powerful as a computer as you want in as small of a form factor as you want.

There are downsides to these small form factor machines however. The biggest one being the lack of PCIe slots. For pure BI use, this isn't a big deal. But if you wanted to get into computer based AI, then you might regret not having a PCIe slot to add a graphics card. (AI can offload a lot of it's processing to an installed GPU - it's not required, but it can certainly help make processing times lower). The other downside is the really small units may not have room for a second HD (especially a full size drive) which is desirable in a BI machine.

Of course you can get small form factor computers that have PCI slots and room for an extra hard drive. They will just be larger than the machines that don't have any these options.

 

[CanCuba]

There are plenty of small form factor and mini computers being sold now. Some are as small as 4"x4"x2". You can even get modern CPUs in them like recent generations of i5 and i7 chips with lots of installed RAM too (16-32gb is possible in some units). In other words, you can get as powerful as a computer as you want in as small of a form factor as you want.

There are downsides to these small form factor machines however. The biggest one being the lack of PCIe slots. For pure BI use, this isn't a big deal. But if you wanted to get into computer based AI, then you might regret not having a PCIe slot to add a graphics card. (AI can offload a lot of it's processing to an installed GPU - it's not required, but it can certainly help make processing times lower).

Of course you can get small form factor computers that have a PCI slot too. They will just be larger than the machines that don't have any PCIe slots.

Do these small form factor cases have fans? I live in a hot climate and need to think about loss of AC in a closed room for a few hours.

What about the move to Coral TPUs? Despite the shortage, it seems far cheaper to buy two Corals, overkill for most residential applications, than a GPU which runs much hotter and draws far, far more electricity than a Coral. The Coral draws only 2 watts, if I'm not mistaken.

CPAI seems to be working toward Coral support which would be ideal for small form factor computing.

 

[wittaj]

The NUCs typically don't have fans, which makes them less than ideal for BI. Especially with a large load and the CPU gets throttled to favor temperature control over performance.

Some here claim to be using them fine while others have had nothing but trouble trying to use it for BI.

 

[The Automation Guy]

Do these small form factor cases have fans? I live in a hot climate and need to think about loss of AC in a closed room for a few hours.

That's a great question that needs to be considered when selecting devices. There are absolutely some mini computers that don't have any fans and are only passively cooled. They are also going to have lower powered CPUs and drives to ensure they can passively cool the unit. There are also plenty of options that have fans. Certainly something with a high power i5/i7 CPU is going to have to have some active cooling. Of course the smaller the case, the fewer fans there will be and the size of the fans will also be smaller which makes them less efficient. In a warm environment, you might want to consider some of the larger SFF options like the Dell Optiplex 3XXX/5XXX/7XXX series or the HP 800-G2. Something that has enough room that it has multiple PCIe slots (even if they are only half height) and room for multiple hard drives. These cases are large enough that they are also going to provide more fans/cooling than the smaller mini computers and therefore will be able to run at cooler temps than the smaller units (all things being equal).

 

[Mike A.]

Do these small form factor cases have fans? I live in a hot climate and need to think about loss of AC in a closed room for a few hours.

Some do. The tiny thing that I have running as my pfSense box does. But I don't think that I've ever heard it turn on with that little of a load on it and it's just a low-end processor to begin with. Currently shows 97F/36C degrees. BI running hard on an i5/i7 would be a different deal.

 

[CanCuba]

Thanks @The Automation Guy and @Mike A.

I'm just starting down the rabbit hole as I'm planning on moving to BI from a Dahua NVR. I'm happy with the NVR but I like how CPAI and BI are developing together for object/face detection. My goal is to have every face captured that appears within 10m of my property. Lots of foot traffic but with some good camera placement at street level, it's definitely doable. I'll end up with close to 20 cameras and be running face detection on at least half of those. So, going to need some decent hardware for that.

Is it not better to run the hardware as cool as reasonably possible? Longer lifespan and better reliability at 36C than 70C, no?

 

[Mike A.]

Likely so. As above, for BI the SFF boxes just make more sense all around. Cheaper and more practical.

You're going to end up with a big-ass POE switch next to it and a fist full of cables coming in so having a small box doesn't matter much vs something like a media center PC that you might have sitting our somewhere.

 

[looney2ns]

IMHO, I think the Elitedesk SFF 8th gen and above is a hard machine to beat for BI.
Room for two spinning drives, pcie slot's. And room on the motherboard for one or two m.2 drives.
Good cooling. But near silent.

 

[JK200SX]

I use one of these with 6 cameras and no issues whatsoever.
I have 16gb ram. OS and initial recordings on a 512GB NVME SSD, and after a week recording are moved to a 500GB 2.5" SSD.

HP EliteDesk 800 G5 DM Micro i5 9500t 2.10Ghz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Wifi Win 11

HP EliteDesk 800 G5 DM Micro i5 9500t 2.10Ghz 16GB RAM 256GB SSD Wifi Win 11

www.australiancomputertraders.com.au