CPU and OS Recommendations

[XrayDoc88]

I'm not building new surveillance computers yet, but I like to plan ahead. I currently have two Blue Iris installations recording 24/7, running 9 and 10 cameras each. Both of them work fine. Both computers have Windows 10. The 7 year old CPU is an Intel i7-8700K. The 5 year old CPU is an Intel i7-10700. When I built these computers, the recommendation was to have Intel CPUs to take advantage of hardware encoding that AMD didn't support. Neither of my computers can be upgraded to Windows 11.

1. When would you consider new hardware since the OS is no longer supported by Microsoft?
2. Should you still go with Intel processors to work the best with Blue Iris?
3. Should I just hang onto these two systems until they die?

Thanks!

 

[wittaj]

8th gen should be able to be updated to Win11.

Just run them until they die. People are running BI on Win 7 LOL.

As long as you don't use it to surf the internet, older OS is fine.

With substreams, hardware encoding isn't needed and made the beefy requirements no longer necessary.

 

[XrayDoc88]

Both computers do nothing but sit in closets and run BI. I don't remember the specifics now, but I'm pretty sure my motherboards are missing something needed for Windows 11.

Off topic, but I don't really understand sub-streams and probably do not have my Dahua cameras taking advantage of them. I remember I turned off the lowest resolution sub-stream on all cameras. There were two sub-streams. It was my understanding (perhaps wrong) that BI would still record high resolution video even if you were using sub-streams. But is a sub-stream just used for live viewing of your cameras? Why would I want to look at a lower resolution image live? I'm clearly confused on this matter.

 

[wittaj]

When NVRs stream multiple channels, they are using substreams.

Bi simply followed suit. It is a lot less labor intensive.

Helps a lot during remote viewing.

Looking at x number of cameras on a monitor, I can tell if something is happening that requires pulling up the mainstream.

Substream is also used for motion detection, which takes a lot less resources than using mainstream.

If any of else felt we compromised quality or capabilities by using substreams, we wouldn't use them.

 

[XrayDoc88]

Is there a setting in BI where you choose the stream to view? Do you have to make some setting changes in the camera web interface? And am I correct, that the HDD will still record the main stream?