Evening all,

Just about narrowed down by second BI build (one at my parents and one at my place now) but suddenly having a tough time working out what CPU to use.
My system will be 7 x 4MP and 2 x 2MP cameras, 24/7 recording, 10FPS with a 5FPS live view one a single monitor, so around 320MP/s, using H265, direct to disk, no motion detection or anything like that.

Looking at the hardware guide on IP Cam Talk, a recommended processor in my budget range is the i5-6400, however for around the same price I can get a i3-9100 which blows the i5 out of the water on every benchmark I can find, is fully H265 compatible and has a slightly better graphics chip.

Am I missing something glaring here in terms of why I shouldn't go for the i3?

Thanks in advance! (from a now almost 4 year user of Blue Iris)!

I'd say go for the i3-9100.

Deleted - duplicate post.

The engineering answer here (which I don't have the answer to) is... which benchmark test most closely resembles the BI workload and use that benchmark to trade price/performance.

I would think any benchmark that does multiple streams of audio/video decode and encode would be the best fit.

Thanks for the advice!

I found this tool too: https://felenasoft.com/xeoma/en/help/calculator/

Which helps a lot!!

Just an update, i3-9100 with 8GB of RAM can run 7 x 4MP and 2 x 2MP cameras no issue, currently using direct to disk (with my W10 PC as the time server so all the cameras are in sync without internet access) and getting around 4GB total RAM usage and 25% CPU utilization, the onboard GPU is barely at 20% utilization either so no point in buying a secondary GPU I don't think.

Really not bad for a £105 9th generation processor.

My total build come to just over £400:
[*] 4U ATX rackmount case (plenty of room for expansion!)
[*] 256GB of SSD storage
[*] 2TB WD Purple
[*] Intel i3-9100
[*] Gigabyte H310M motherboard
[*] 8GB Corsair Vengeance RAM
[*] Asus DVD-RW drive
[*] 1 x 120mm fan, 2 x 80mm fan, cables etc.

And since I'll be using this for BI/ Smart Home/ Home Server I've got plenty of headroom left as I required (and it fits neatly in a climate controlled, secured and safely built and fixed rack).

I found this tool too: https://felenasoft.com/xeoma/en/help/calculator/

Now that is interesting. I calibrated it with my present system, and it even calculated the correct storage required for my 24/7 recording 28 day storage system.

Since these websites come and go, has anybody set up something like this in Excel ? That would be a file to hold on to

I can feel a project coming on.

The storage calculator tool is written in javascript, so you can just save the complete web page to your local drive and it'll work fine from there.