Hey guys I am building a NVR for my small/med size business. I plan to run up 16 8mp camears like https://www.amazon.com/HIKVISION-DS-2CD ... 208&sr=8-8. I only plan to record for triggered events and for a 5 hour period 1 day each week. I would say traffic around the business is average for what might trigger a recording.

I have a lot of questions that even after searching around on the internet for well over a week now I still get varying answers and dont really know what is the truth.

1. how much storage do I need for a 16 camrea at 8mp setup. some calculators tell me I need 200TB (INSANE) for 30 days worth of footage others are more detailed and with fine tuning get me down to 20 to 30TB.

2. what kinda of CPU do I need to handle the 5hour period where all cameras are recording. I figure a Ryzen7 with 8 core should be more than enough and maybe 16 gig of ram.

3. is it worth adding a dedicated GPU

Thanks for anyone who is able to help with my questions.

First of all, a disclaimer--I am a relatively new Blue Iris user, so bear that in mind about my comments...

I am running currently nine 5MP cameras and an older i7 (I think it's a Gen 3) Lenova Small Form Factor sized desktop with 8 GB RAM, of which it's using a bit less than 4. If you are recording when triggered and only running the system 1 day a week for 5 hours then I would think a 4TB drive would be lots. And I say 4 TB only because that size is relatively inexpensive and good value--you probably won't need near that much but it doesn't cost much more than a 2 TB. You should also have perhaps a 256 GB SSD for Windows, the Blue Iris Software and the BI Database folder. Have the recordings in one folder on the HD.

Depending on your cabling (existing or new) I would suggest either Cat 5E (minimum) or Cat 6 and if using one switch, be sure the Uplink ports (to the NVR computer and your Router) are Gigabit ports. It doesn't hurt to have all Gigabit ports on the switch, if your buying a new one--again, not much extra cost compared to 10/100 ports. Also be sure your NVR computer has a Gigabit Ethernet port.

Your cameras will be sending out H.264 streams that are already highly compressed so that's possibly where the calculations you've seen go astray. I don't know if BI is capable (or might be soon) of handling H.265 but both are highly efficient. They do not need any further encoding to be written to disk, only when you are viewing clips and then that will depend on whether you are looking at them locally or remotely, etc.

Hope this helps a bit? Blue Iris is very powerful and I am very happy with it, so far!

There is a user database with voluntary submissions of how many pixels per second various systems are operating at. That would give you an idea.
https://biupdatehelper.hopto.org/default.html#stats

For disk storage, that is just an equation with pixels/frame * frames/sec * x bytes/pixel.

I forget the x right now but it should be easy to find.

If you mean disk calculation. Something like this https://www.cctvcalculator.net/en/calcu ... alculator/

I have been looking for a PC spec answer too, but have bot seen it answered here.

I run 6 x IP 1080p cameras (motion detect on) and find the system sluggish and sometimes unresponsive.

My CPU is maxing out and typical memory usage is 1 - 1.5 GB.

So what processor you recommend for a system that runs 24/7. Looks like my Celeron U1900 1.99GHZ just can't handle it.

Tks..... Steve J.

The answer is to look at the BI Helper Stats link provided by me above and determine what you want. There is no easy answer anyone can give you.

One of the best deals out there right now is the AMD Ryzen R7 1700X or the R7 1800X. I have a 1800X and it is fantastic. Beats my I7 6700K by a lot! You can see my performance stats in Bluie Iris Update Helper Statistics. Mine is the one with 16gb of memory with 6 cameras. The 1700X and 1800X are quite cheap and so are the MB's. An even better deal are the 2700X! I have not boosted my CPU speed or memory speed, just running at stock default speeds. May try overclocking when I have time. BTW, the BI Update Helper adds about 2-4 points to the CPU usage.