Blue Iris on Ryzen mini computer w/ dual HDD USB 3.1 enclosure?

[AveryFreeman]

@bp2008 What do you think of this new Asrock Ryzen mini as a system for running BI?

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

• AMD Ryzen Embedded R1505G, DC, 2.4 GHz, 12-25W
• AMD Radeon Vega Graphics
• 2 x 260Pin SO-DIMM DDR4 2400, up to 32GB
• Dual GLAN
• 1 x HDMI, 2 x Displayport
• Supports Triple Displays
• 3 x USB 3.1, 2 x USB 2.0
• 1 x M.2 Key M, 1 x M.2 Key E
• 2 x Realtek LAN
• Intel 802.11 ac Wi-Fi + BT 4.2
• 12V DC-in

I thought it could be paired with this enclosure over USB 3.1:

Amazon.com: Archgon MH-3622-PRD USB 3.0 Dual-Bay 3.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure with JBOD/Raid 0/Raid 1: Computers & Accessories

Amazon.com: Archgon MH-3622-PRD USB 3.0 Dual-Bay 3.5-inch Hard Drive Enclosure with JBOD/Raid 0/Raid 1: Computers & Accessories

www.amazon.com

• Support 3.5-inch SATA hard drive x 2 (NOT for 2.5-inch hard drive)
• Support Individual, JBOD, Raid 0, Raid 1 Configurations
• USB 3.0 Transfer Speed (USB 2.0 compatible)
• 40mm Cooling Fan/Power and activity LED for HDD 1 and HDD 2. Aluminum Solid Casing
• Support up to 8TB SATA Hard Drive Per Bay

Obviously it wouldn't be as good as a full-size computer, but it's cute and little

What do you think the implications are of using USB 3.1 opposed to SATA3? My thoughts are it probably isn't that big of a deal for streaming large files because latency is less of an issue than say, running an OS, but I'm curious how much more CPU processing power the USB bus will require vs SATA (?)

Any ballpark guess how much bandwidth or, say, 5MP streams one could get with something like this on BI?

It's a good deal, even new! Gotta love Black Friday...

 

[bp2008]

That looks like a nice little PC, but it isn't going to be great for Blue Iris.

PassMark - AMD Ryzen Embedded R1505G - Price performance comparison <-- With this score I wouldn't try to make it handle more than 150-300 MP/s of video. That is 2-4 5MP cameras at 15 FPS each.

USB is more than fast enough. The only issue is reliability. I tried running BI for a while on a similar kind of system several years ago, recording to a hard drive connected by USB, and the drive would simply disappear off the system every few months and I'd need to reboot.

You're better off buying a used small form factor box from Ebay. Like an i5-4xxx. Make sure it has at least 8 GB of RAM and includes Windows. It should be good for at least twice as much video, have room for an internal 3.5 inch HDD, and be a lot cheaper besides.

 

[bp2008]

Examples:

Dell OptiPlex 7020 SFF | i5-4590 3.3GHz | 8GB | 500GB | Windows 10 | eBay

Product: Dell OptiPlex 7020. Hard Drive: 500 GB (1x 500 GB). Bluetooth: Not Included. Wireless LAN: Not Included. LAN: Gigabit Ethernet (1000BASE-T).

www.ebay.com

HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF Core i5-4570 @ 3.20GHz 8GB DDR3 500GB HDD DVDRW Win10Pro | eBay

Monitor is NOT included, for image purposes only.

www.ebay.com

 

[AveryFreeman]

That looks like a nice little PC, but it isn't going to be great for Blue Iris.

PassMark - AMD Ryzen Embedded R1505G - Price performance comparison <-- With this score I wouldn't try to make it handle more than 150-300 MP/s of video. That is 2-4 5MP cameras at 15 FPS each.

USB is more than fast enough. The only issue is reliability. I tried running BI for a while on a similar kind of system several years ago, recording to a hard drive connected by USB, and the drive would simply disappear off the system every few months and I'd need to reboot.

You're better off buying a used small form factor box from Ebay. Like an i5-4xxx. Make sure it has at least 8 GB of RAM and includes Windows. It should be good for at least twice as much video, have room for an internal 3.5 inch HDD, and be a lot cheaper besides.

I was thinking that as I wrote it ... and no QuickSync

I think I will just throw some old hardware at this project if I can get away with it.

How is the CUDA acceleration these days, would it be worthwhile for me to get a decent video card for acceleration, or just stick to the iGPU? I need to get one if I'm going to drive a TV @ 4K , but I could just get a 1030 GT for the GUI and use QuickSync for all the cameras

How's the H.265 working in BI these days? Does NVidia card w/ h.265 hardware assist decoding? I wasn't able to get h.265 working ages ago when I first tried BI 3 or 4 (can't remember which)

Thank you

 

[bp2008]

Both Nvidia and Intel hardware acceleration reduce CPU usage by a similar amount, but where Intel Quick Sync reduces overall power consumption a little bit, Nvidia acceleration raises power consumption by quite a lot. So Nvidia acceleration should be a last resort to get CPU usage down, whereas Intel acceleration is simply the most efficient way to do it.

H.265 doesn't work with Intel Quick Sync in Blue Iris still. It does work with regular software decoding or with Nvidia acceleration.

 

[AveryFreeman]

Both Nvidia and Intel hardware acceleration reduce CPU usage by a similar amount, but where Intel Quick Sync reduces overall power consumption a little bit, Nvidia acceleration raises power consumption by quite a lot. So Nvidia acceleration should be a last resort to get CPU usage down, whereas Intel acceleration is simply the most efficient way to do it.

H.265 doesn't work with Intel Quick Sync in Blue Iris still. It does work with regular software decoding or with Nvidia acceleration.

Awesome, thanks for the quick synopsis, very helpful.