£2.5k budget for a beast machine.. recommendations request

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Alitech

Member
Feb 14, 2020
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Hi guys

I am a content creator and have other power-hungry apps using up my 7700k right now. I also run 4K plex streams around the house and also have 9 4k IP cameras running with blue iris all on one PC. The PC is struggling to keep up with anything these days let alone video rendering. The most power-hungry of them all is blue iris, it uses 80% of the CPU. When a few plex streams are requested, it seems to work but only after a few tries when the CPU is able to keep up with the demand. Network bandwidth also seems to be a bottleneck with all camera/plex streams, downloads, and uploads happening on a single 1GB nic. For the occasional game, I have to shut down blue iris and plex as they both use my GPU Cuda processing to take a little load off the CPU. The PC is also up 24/7 for security purposes.

So I came up with a plan to upgrade the lot (apart from monitors and peripherals).

1. Superfast CPU like the new Threadripper 3960x
2. A competent mobo like the ASROCK Creator trx4 (no overclocking needed)
3. 32GB DDR4 ram
4. A used 1080 Ti
5. 850w PSU
6. All in one water block
7. 1TB NvME x2 in raid 0
8. Mellanox MCX311A-XCAT ConnectX-3 card for SFP+ networking (I have a brocade SFP+ switch already)
7. Some RGB to deal with subsequent depression from the huge bill

Looking for upgrades later on so would like a full tower case too so I can experiment with water cooling with EK blocks etc

Any advice on the kit list? Please let me know if I am going overkill with my wishlist and price point.

Thank you in advance.
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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Do you need to have everything in a single box?
Keep the box and build/buy a used workstation/server for the stuff that needs to be on 24/7.
Some high perf e5 v2 CPUs and ram as desired, should be significantly cheaper.

Sure you won't get 24 cores of 3.8 GHz, but maybe you don't actually need as much on (each of the) two boxes...
 
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BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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My iVideon server running 5x 720p cameras on 2012 MacMini.
Don't do Raid with NVMe cards, unless your cpu uses VROC
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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Why not? Sure, it doesn't seem to make much sense here, but is there any reason why e.g. a software RAID with NVMe SSDs should be avoided in general?
 

Jimster480

New Member
Mar 12, 2020
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Go for 64GB of ram, don't do NVMe RAID.... I would just invest in some MLC SSD's if that is a big deal to you. But if you are recording from IP cameras why not put that stuff on a HDD?
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Why not? Sure, it doesn't seem to make much sense here, but is there any reason why e.g. a software RAID with NVMe SSDs should be avoided in general?
latency will kill the performance, unless you do vroc raid (direct from cpu)
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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Haven't noticed/measured any of that, so I guess I'll just keep on with that software RAID0.
 

alex_stief

Well-Known Member
May 31, 2016
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Let's not derail this thread any further, I think OP would appreciate that.
My NVMe software RAID0 does exactly what I need it to do, and I used appropriate means to measure it. Your mileage may vary, depending on use-case. I asked not because I was worried about performance issues, but because there might have been a different aspect which I completely overlooked while planning this upgrade. Which doesn't seem to be the case.
 

Jimster480

New Member
Mar 12, 2020
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Well he basically has his system build there.
Personally I wouldn't waste time with an all in one loop as they add complexity and maintenance that you are unlikely to want to do (unless you enjoy opening your computer and messing around with it).
 

PigLover

Moderator
Jan 26, 2011
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Personally I'd just get the Blue Iris/NVR and the security cameras off onto their own system. That should fix most of the issue you are fighting with and then you can figure out how to best serve the editing/rendering/plex jobs.

Look on eBay for a little box with an i7-6700/6700T in it. You should be able to find one for ~$300-400. Then drop in a 2TB SSD to hold the recordings. That should be enough to handle 9 cameras with ease (turn on GPU transcoding in Blue Iris). Try searching for "HP EliteDesk 800 mini i7-6700". That is the exact box I use for BI with 8 4k cameras and it hums along at ~50% CPU.

Enable RDP so that you can log into it from your desktop, put in an HDMI dummy plug in it (to enable the GPU when headless) and stick it in a corner where it won't be in anyone's way...
 

Jimster480

New Member
Mar 12, 2020
27
8
3
Personally I'd just get the Blue Iris/NVR and the security cameras off onto their own system. That should fix most of the issue you are fighting with and then you can figure out how to best serve the editing/rendering/plex jobs.

Look on eBay for a little box with an i7-6700/6700T in it. You should be able to find one for ~$300-400. Then drop in a 2TB SSD to hold the recordings. That should be enough to handle 9 cameras with ease (turn on GPU transcoding in Blue Iris). Try searching for "HP EliteDesk 800 mini i7-6700". That is the exact box I use for BI with 8 4k cameras and it hums along at ~50% CPU.

Enable RDP so that you can log into it from your desktop, put in an HDMI dummy plug in it (to enable the GPU when headless) and stick it in a corner where it won't be in anyone's way...

Well since he already has a 7700K machine, he could just leave that system for recording and then build this new TR system for everything else? Or maybe if everything else doesn't need so much then he should just go with a 3900X / 3950X system and save a bunch.
This way he could have a better GPU for whatever else he wants to do.

For the camera's he shouldn't need much of a GPU at all so even if he already has the 1080ti he can pick up another cheaper GPU for whatever API he is using.