I need one of your experts advice...

[james99]

Kind of new here, hope this is the right place to post this. I have been offered a HP Z workstation for dirt cheap (it's out of warranty and ready to go to salvage). It is a huge tower, Z400 workstation with the Intel Xeon W3670 3.2GHZ cpu and 4GB of RAM. It has an almost 500 watt power supply. I want to run Blue Iris with about 10 3mp or or a mixture of 3mp and 5mp cameras, half and half. They will be POE, probably will stick to Dahua or Hikvision. I want to run at the highest resolution possible with this setup. Will this particular CPU be able to handle what I want to do? I have not taken the offer yet. There is also another workstation that is a dual quad core xeon that is available, but I only want to get one computer. p.s. the "average cpu benchmark" from the website cpubenchmark.net is 8643.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+W3670+@+3.20GHz

Thanks in advance.

 

[fenderman]

Welcome to the forum! Using these old servers is not a good idea.. They are power hogs.. You can get a modern i7 4790 for under 500. It will likely cost you more than that to run this machine for two or three years..

Sent via Taptalk

 

[james99]

Well, my house is all solar panel. So, the electric bill is not a problem. I am even selling back through the grid. But....will this setup work for what I want?

 

[fenderman]

Well, my house is all solar panel. So, the electric bill is not a problem. I am even selling back through the grid. But....will this setup work for what I want?

If you keep it a 30mp it should work....but often folks have issues with these older servers that have high benchmark scores but dont end up performing well- granted those are usually systems with dual cpu, that doesnt seem to play well with BI...
Not sure how much you make selling back to the grid but that should be a factor...personally I would not consider these machines even if they were free....
Also note that typically 5mp cameras exhibit poorer night vision and low light performance than 3mp and you gain very little in daytime picture quality...the gain is not linear...

 

[corkangel76]

I would agree with @fenderman I have a 4th Gen i5 BI server running windows 7 pro, and its only using 49 watts of power on average according to the UPS its connected to. Your processor let alone everything else in that box will use double that almost.

 

[fenderman]

I would agree with @fenderman I have a 4th Gen i5 BI server running windows 7 pro, and its only using 49 watts of power on average according to the UPS its connected to. Your processor let alone everything else in that box will use double that almost.

yeah some of those older units easily draw 200-350w....particularly the ones which high power graphics adapters..

 

[james99]

Wow...I respect your expertise. I did not know what you stated about the 5mp cams. OK....thank you and I will stick to the 3MP. Yes, the wattage on this xeon is rated at 130 watts!

 

[fenderman]

Wow...I respect your expertise. I did not know what you stated about the 5mp cams. OK....thank you and I will stick to the 3MP. Yes, the wattage on this xeon is rated at 130 watts!

Keep in mind, its a general rule...its not absolute, bosch has a 5mp camera that costs 1500 that is WAY better than any hikvision...but yes when comparing the cheaper cameras its true...also, 2mp will be better than 3, and 1.3 better than both of those...so if you intend to run cameras at 2mp you a better off with a native 2mp camera (with hikvision 2mp mode will give you a bit more horizontal FOV though much less vertical, many times vertical is not important)....
As far a power, yeah, when you combine the processor video card and the fact that the power supplies are not very efficient it adds up.