Beginning my build out

Optimus Prime

Getting the hang of it
Sep 29, 2014
282
30
Hi all. I'm putting together my shopping list. I'd like to open up my project to comments and feedback to help me finish planning my Camera and Low Voltage infrastructure.

Have a look at the attached PDF. Please let me know where you think I need course corrections, over spending/under spending. I also need help filling in the blanks from what I may not know yet.

View attachment Shopping List.pdf
 
That's alot of PC for 4 cams... This ~$400 PC will support 12+ cams.
 
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Why buy 2x2TB Purples @ $175 when you can get a single 4TB for less than that and it'll take half the electrical draw, while retaining capacity to upgrade storage if nessicary.

512GB >$300 SSD for OS drive? are you building a NVR or a Gaming Rig? You need a cheap ass 128GB max, the slowest one on the market will be more than fast enough to give you really quick boot time.. and thats about all your going to get out of it.. I'd not even waste money on that, buy a really nice camera instead.

and the rest seems like alot of overkill too, whats your goals and ambitions? it looks like your trying to build a nuclear powered space heater..
 
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The second purple is for backup and archive.

My thought process started from putting together an all-in-one rig to get me through this year. I need it to run the cameras, file serve and video stream to a raspberry pi (OpenElec). I don't play games (for now) and my old AMD rig cannot keep up anymore.

I don't want to buy a prebuilt HP or Dell. I prefer to use off the shelf parts. The 6700 kinda drives the other decisions...except the SSD, that one was just because I wanted NVMe for the OS drive.
 
If I return my focus to just building an NVR (12 camera support, fully loaded settings), and I stick with the i7-6700, how much RAM would you reccomend, can you suggest a reliable Skylake Mobo, and do you have a recommendation on a 1U chassis and power supply?

Would a stock Intel Skylake cooler fit inside of a 1U chasis?
 
dont try to multi-task your NVR, its a dedicated machine.. not a file server or anything else, that will just cause you to saturate something and cause recording issues.. this needs to do one thing, and one thing only.. and if your smart about it, with the least amount of electricity as you can manage.

backup and archive? isint all security video just an archive.. and unless it captures something of interest it has absolutely no value to backup.. get enough storage to retain adequate time of video for you to grab something off of.. if you need redundancy/backup, hide a simple ftp server somewhere separate from your NVR so you have a real backup that wont be stolen along with your NVR.. and that just needs a fraction of the actual, the last few hours before all the shit was stolen is enough.

storage space makes a NVR, if you dont put enough space in it your doing stupid shit like motion detection to save a few bytes.. I have 10TB and 7 cameras, I record 24/7/365 and never miss anything, ever.. and I have nearly a full month of archive, so I can take a very long vacation and still never miss anything.. youd be wiser buying more storage space and less power.

1U? why 1U? you'll get fans that run at several thousand rpm and sound like turbo jets.. and you wont be able to install anything inside not specifically designed for it. When I build my own rackmount servers, I put em in 4U chassis, its just a tower on its side and I can fill it with normal cpu, normal mbd, normal coolers, normal power supply, and even big ass gfx cards for server work... oah and there quiet, I actually have water cooling in my rackmount servers.

I dont think a dedicated BluIris machine will use much ram, 8GB would be plenty.. 16GB would be more than enough.. and 32GB is a total waste.
 
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@nayr - You're right. I wanted to save space in the closet, but trying to manage space and right angler adapters would drive me nuts...4u case it is. Thanks for bringing to my senses...lets just build the NVR...I'll build the nuclear powered space heater next year...

We've removed $650 from the NVR build.
  • I would still welcome comments on part selection for the NVR...not sure how much savings I can squeeze out while sticking with the i7-6700K
  • I'd also welcome comments on the closet build-out and the low voltage cable install from anyone who has experience.

I've punched down 1 cable with success...and I've fished that cable with success. But it's sloppy. I need advice on better tools, systems and vendors to use while running cable.

Attached is the update build-out list. Please have a look and comment.

View attachment Shopping List.pdf
 
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For cable-building, I'm a big fan of EZ-RJ45. Particularly the crimper. https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias=aps&field-keywords=ez-rj45

A continuity tester can also be helpful. Even if you know what you are doing you can still get wires crossed by accident. Something like this: https://amzn.com/B009ZXYI1U

That said, I usually buy prefabricated shielded Cat6 cables (being careful to only buy those advertised as pure copper, NOT CCA) for my cameras. Yes, there is a mess of extra cable most of the time piled around my PoE switch, but these don't bother me when they are in my garage.

So... if I was to build an NVR and refuse to buy a refurbished box to save a ton of money, I would go with:

1) Same CPU (i7-6700K). i7-6700 (non-K) looks more efficient on paper but I don't know what the real-world energy savings would be, if any.
2) Cheaper motherboard. No need for a particularly high-end board here.
3) 8-16GB RAM (ram speed mostly irrelevant). My 20-cam BI server uses up to 5.5 GB just for blueiris.exe, but this is with fairly long pre-event frame buffers.
4) Smaller/cheaper SSD. Like a Samsung EVO around 250gb or smaller.
5) Single purple drive of whatever size you like, plus a Western Digital MyCloud to hide somewhere. I recently backed up over 4 TB of data to a single-disk 8 TB MyCloud drive at full 100 MB/s speed using the SMB protocol (mapped network drive in Windows). MyCloud also has a built-in FTP server. I'm quite impressed with their value as a simple network-attached drive.
6) Much smaller power supply. Most power supplies are at their most efficient around 50% load. Your server will likely draw much less than 100 watts, so you certainly don't need an 850 watt power supply.

(note: these recommendations were based on the original shopping list -- the second list is better but I still point out #5 about hard drives.)

Also I think your i7-6700K price is wrong; nobody sells it for $309.99. Nice find with the CPU price.
 
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I was considering pre-made cables, but won't I have to cut them off anyways to connect to the patch panel?

I've seen the Platinum EZX system in some reviews...have you ever experienced issues with the connectors not clipping into a switch or jack correctly?
 
i would not buy an EZ-RJ45 tool for this job, they are nice.. Ive used them, but i've had enough practice I can make just as good of an end with a $8 crimping tool so I dont see alot of point in paying such a premium... if your using a patch panel your going to be punching down one end and crimping the camera end.. so at $60 for the tool alone it going to cost you over $5 an end.. bah.

buy a spool of good quality ethernet, dont cut ends off existing cables.. practice with a normal crimper and I bet you'll get it figured out within a handfull of crimps.. so just practice on some scrap wire, plug it into your switch and see if it runs full speed onit.. if not, cut the ends off and try it again.

I used to setup the network for big weekend lan parties (100+ ppl), and I would hold a lil class on network cable crimping as I made all the cables on the spot and discarded them at the end of the event.. even someone who never conceived of the idea of making your own network cables would be successfully making them with a cheap ass tool and just a little bit of practice.
 
Any recommendations on quality crimps? I go cheap in lots of things, but I don't mind spending money on tools I'll use the rest of my life.
 
Get the ezrj45,or in the beginning I have used a keystone jack at the camera end then put a 6 inch or longer patch cable to the camera from the jack. I just let the jack float in the wall