Thoughts on the Dell Precision Tower 3620 as a BI Server?

[pbc]

Have a chance to pick this up for a song:

Dell Precision Tower 3620
6th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-6 700 (Quad Core 3.40GHz, 4.0Ghz Turbo, 8MB, w/ HD Graphics 53 0)
32GB (4x8GB) 2133MHz DDR4 Non- ECC
2.5" 512GB SATA Class 20 Solid State Drive
Win 10 Enterprise

Thoughts on this system to run the 7 DS-2CD2142FWD-IS Domes on BI? Right now I am using a now 5 year old Hikvision 7616-E2-EP NVR but would like to give BI a shot, and may ultimately change the cameras over time to ones with better low light capability.


Thx!

 

[SouthernYankee]

If you are buying it, if so how much.
You will need to add at least one WD Purple drive.
If you own the cameras ok, But I would not buy a cameras with a 1/3" sensor.

You need to provide the frame rate or an estimate of the MP/SEC. But the I7-6700 process will handle the load in BI.

For similar processors look at

Blue Iris Update Helper

Blue Iris Update Helper

biupdatehelper.hopto.org

 

[pbc]

If you are buying it, if so how much.
You will need to add at least one WD Purple drive.
If you own the cameras ok, But I would not buy a cameras with a 1/3" sensor.

You need to provide the frame rate or an estimate of the MP/SEC. But the I7-6700 process will handle the load in BI.

For similar processors look at

Blue Iris Update Helper

Blue Iris Update Helper

biupdatehelper.hopto.org

Well, basically free .. work has a few of them now out of warranty so we won't redeploy), maybe I'll pay a couple hundred for it. I would probably use the drives in my 7616 for now, can't even recall what they were (blue/red/purple) but 3TB each and I think were specifically for this purpose.

Also, seems it has an AMD Fire Pro W4100 graphics card on it. Is that something I would want to remove and just use the built in graphics capability of the i6700?

 

[IAmATeaf]

If you’re getting that from work for peanuts then you can’t really go wrong. Not too sure about the extra vid card but that family of CPU supports H265 so you should be good without it.

 

[SouthernYankee]

I would buy it.

I would leave the video card in, if you are nor worried about power usage. I have a I7-4790 and a separate video card. I use the intel CPU for H264 processing and the video card for display.

 

[mat200]

Well, basically free .. work has a few of them now out of warranty so we won't redeploy), maybe I'll pay a couple hundred for it. I would probably use the drives in my 7616 for now, can't even recall what they were (blue/red/purple) but 3TB each and I think were specifically for this purpose.

Also, seems it has an AMD Fire Pro W4100 graphics card on it. Is that something I would want to remove and just use the built in graphics capability of the i6700?

Definitely a keep @pbc in my book. Be certain you've got a backup of the OS install disks / iso / etc and license key.

 

[mech]

If it is Win10 Enterprise, ask your IT people if it will work outside the domain without requiring periodic contact with the key-management server. Where I work, most of our Win10 Enterprise is wired to look to our in-house KMS and would eventually declare itself pirated if it could not check in.

The system probably came from Dell with a Win10 Pro license that is independent, so an easy alternative is to use the Dell OS. Plug the system's Dell Service Tag into the Dell OS Recovery Tool you can download and install from here: Dell Windows Recovery Image | Dell US It may offer different options including a completely clean WIn10 install with practically no Dell stuffs added. The tool makes a bootable USB that you can use to do a clean install.

 

[pbc]

Thx, it came with Windows 7 Pro OA per the service tag and I think they upgraded it to Win 10 Enterprise. I believe free upgrades are still available from Win 7 to Win 10....so may go that route (that is if the link you provided above doesn't let me do a clean Win 10 install!).

How to Get Windows 10 for Free (or Under $30)

If you need Windows for a PC build, Microsoft charges a whopping $139. But there are ways to get the OS for a lot less or even for free.

www.tomshardware.com

 

[IAmATeaf]

If you download Windows using the media creation tool and do an install Windows should activate as for the newer desktops the key is held in the BIOS.

 

[pbc]

If it is Win10 Enterprise, ask your IT people if it will work outside the domain without requiring periodic contact with the key-management server. Where I work, most of our Win10 Enterprise is wired to look to our in-house KMS and would eventually declare itself pirated if it could not check in.

The system probably came from Dell with a Win10 Pro license that is independent, so an easy alternative is to use the Dell OS. Plug the system's Dell Service Tag into the Dell OS Recovery Tool you can download and install from here: Dell Windows Recovery Image | Dell US It may offer different options including a completely clean WIn10 install with practically no Dell stuffs added. The tool makes a bootable USB that you can use to do a clean install.

Don't have the server yet, but inserted the tag into the Dell OS Recovery tool, only option is Windows 7.

 

[pbc]

If you download Windows using the media creation tool and do an install Windows should activate as for the newer desktops the key is held in the BIOS.

Wouldn't the bios have the original Windows version, i.e., Win 7, and so if I install say Windows 10 it won't activate it?

 

[looney2ns]

Don't have the server yet, but inserted the tag into the Dell OS Recovery tool, only option is Windows 7.

It should activate using the Media Creation Tool.

 

[pbc]

It should activate using the Media Creation Tool.

It would activate a Windows 10 license even if the machine originally only had a Windows 7 Pro OA license?

 

[looney2ns]

It would activate a Windows 10 license even if the machine originally only had a Windows 7 Pro OA license?

yes

 

[pbc]

Picked up the 3620 today, my IT team put a clean copy of Win 7 Pro on it so going to upgrade it to 10 Pro.

Should probably ask in a Windows 10 forum ... but it has two 500gb SSD drives in a RAID setup (I think it fails over to the other drive if the main drive goes bad). Any issues with this for a BI server and anything I need to think about when I upgrade to Win 10?

 

[IAmATeaf]

It won’t hurt but for a BI machine I’d regard it as overkill and probably would reuse the 2nd drive elsewhere.

 

[pbc]

Thx.. Turns out it is a T1700 with an i7 4790/32gb ram..they thought the 3620 was in too bad a condition.

Hmmm...

 

[IAmATeaf]

Thx.. Turns out it is a T1700 with an i7 4790/32gb ram..they thought the 3620 was in too bad a condition.

Hmmm...

For a freebie I wouldn’t be complaining If they are struggling for a home for any 500gb SSDs then I’d be very glad to help them Could do with a couple for a few of my systems.

 

[pbc]

Yeah definitely not complaining. I'm just thinking if the i7 6700 is that much better I don't really care about how best up the chassis is. They mentioned not thinking it had enough drive bays (I wanted 3 in total, main drive and 2 storage drives) but it seems to based on the Dell specs.

 

[pbc]

Looking at the specs, the 6700 appears to have a better integrated card but otherwise seem to be very similar in performance.

Intel Core i7 6700 vs 4790

Noticed this in the "Choosing Hardware for Blue Iris" thread as well ' I recommended Skylake (6xxx series) and newer because this generation and newer has H.265 acceleration hardware which may be usable by Blue Iris in the future."

Any other large advantages to the skylake 6700 vs the haswell 4790? The 25% less power consumption feels significant given it will be o 24/7.