I have a generic HP Elite tower (the ones used in offices) that has 8GB of RAM, 4TB of Hard Drive Space, and an i5-2400 CPU (no dedicated GPU). This machine is running 24/7 as it serves as my surveillance camera recording/alerting system that is hooked up to 8 different cameras running Blue Iris. It usually idles around at ~40-45%. I have also used the recommended configurations from this link. Lately our home electricity bill has gone up a bit and I think this PC may be one of the culprits as I very recently set this all up, and I know the i5-2400 is a bit on the older side and maybe power-hungry. As for reference, the cameras I am running generic POE SV3C 1080P 4MP cameras (from Amazon).

I came across someone who is selling a generic Dell Inspiron tower with an i5-6400 with 16GB of RAM, 1TB Hard Drive with Windows activated (no dedicated GPU, but not necessary for my use case). This machine is for $130. I was, therefore, wondering, if this kind of upgrade something that makes sense, or is it not much of an upgrade for my kind of use case? Benchmarks wise, both CPUs seem close (a matter of fact, the i5-6400 has a locker clock speed than the i5-2400), but I am also not sure with the i5-6400 being a lot more recent if it is worth it.

Another thing I am considering in all of this is the time to re-set all this up, so I also was wondering if setting up a brand new machine from scratch and setting up all my configurations and scripts I initially set up is worth the price and upgrade.

A loaded question!

Is your current machine...
- Running high cpu?
- Running out of ram? Is it paging?
- Can you use the timeline and view past records okay?
- Can you export ok?

If the box runs BI fine without hickups & running out of cpu & memory, then, why spend the money?

As MikeBwca has said, it is a loaded question.

According to https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/I ... /3512vs803 the i5-6400 is 8% faster, so it would indeed be a minor upgrade for $130. The internal HD530 gpu set up for BI5 acceleration may also help keep cpu usage down and **could** save power. i don't use Intel cpu's, so I can't comment on that.

If your original pc is beginning to fail, then this could keep you going for a few years. If you are after power savings, then an even newer chip with a lower TDP would help, but that probably wouldn't be $130 !

So many options...

If I was to do this all over again, I'd probably buy a somewhat recent vintage server off of eBay or someplace like that. Lotta bang for the buck in slightly older hardware like that.

For example, you can get a Dell PowerEdge R710 Server / 2x E5645 = 12-Cores / 32GB | Perc6i / 2x 300GB SAS for about $220. Hard to beat that for the money. I'm seriously tempted to snag one myself at that price. Just an example of what's out there. Full specs below, seems like it would be a good BI platform if you bumped up the hard drives.

Hmm, I don't think that matches the OP's aspiration for reducing power usage

I would recommend that the OP measures the present power usage, by using something as simple as the "kill a watt" plug in meter. That will show if it is using unexpected amounts of power. He can then move it from appliance to appliance to see if it is something else

Did your monthly electric bill go up by more than ($130/12 months) ?

And to put it into perspective, if I replace my old FX-8350 pc with my 3 year old Ryzen 1800X pc, then I am looking at a 58% improvement

TimG wrote: ↑Thu Feb 27, 2020 2:06 pm ... if I replace my old FX-8350 pc with my 3 year old Ryzen 1800X pc, then I am looking at a 58% improvement

improvement in what? CPU utilization? Power consumption?

My point was... who cares if the CPU runs at 80% vs 30% other than the power costs.

HeneryH,

As MikeBwca said initially, it is a loaded question, and we all have our personal view on how the OP should proceed.

I do agree with you though. The OP's query was on power consumption rather than the fact his pc couldn't cope with the BI server. He needs to find out if his pc is using more power than it should. The Kill-a-watt meter may help resolve that - but he would need to purchase the second pc to get the answer if it could reduce power consumption. It is possible that intel acceleration with the later Intel cpu may help in reducing overall power usage, but how long would it take to recoup $130 ?

I was also pointing out that his chosen replacement pc - according to a cpu comparison site - is less of an improvement than for me replacing a seven year old pc with a three year old pc. And my seven year old AMD Piledriver is also running various other media servers - gotta love those HDHomerun Quatro tv tuners. More POWER as Jeremy Clarkson would say

I was just asking what your percent improvement was measuring.