What are the risks with not having a dedicated blue iris pc

[jayleoness]

For someone with 4 cams at their residence for simple monitoring inna low crime area, what’s the purpose of having a dedicated blue iris pc? My main desktop which is mainly used for web browsing and light gaming is over qualified to run this camera load, i7-8600 16gb ram. I’m not worried if my computer crashes once in a while and I lose some recording. Not sure of what other risks there are associated with doing this.

 

[SouthernYankee]

It crashes or reboot when you need it the most. You do not load and run multiple different programs on you NVR that are not related to the NVR. The BI machine is a single use tool.

 

[fenderman]

For someone with 4 cams at their residence for simple monitoring inna low crime area, what’s the purpose of having a dedicated blue iris pc? My main desktop which is mainly used for web browsing and light gaming is over qualified to run this camera load, i7-8600 16gb ram. I’m not worried if my computer crashes once in a while and I lose some recording. Not sure of what other risks there are associated with doing this.

The number of cams is irrelevant for blue iris. Depending on the frame rates and resolution 4 cameras can be a huge load. Read up on Murphy's law.

 

[samplenhold]

Realize that he BI PC is taking the place of your NVR. In some of your other posts you ask about using an NVR. The BI PC is that NVR. It is just more reliable, customizable, and can be easily updated as time goes by. It also helps isolate your cameras from the rest of your home network.

I’m not worried if my computer crashes once in a while and I lose some recording.

If the recordings are not important (you are not worried about loosing them), then why have a security camera system at all? Rarely do folks eyeball an issue while it is happening. It is usually after the fact, maybe days later that one tries to understand the problem and ID the perps. Finding out that your PC rebooted at 2am to install updates while they were stealing your car in the driveway is a real bummer.

 

[J Sigmo]

Plus, it's just plain more convenient to have your Blue Iris system on its own dedicated PC. As @samplenhold said: The dedicated BI PC IS your NVR.

Ideally, you set it up the way you want, and then don't have to mess with it much at all, just as you would with any other NVR.

If you have to stop and start BI when you're using your PC for other tasks, that would get to be a real pain in short order.

I really like having a PC dedicated entirely to BI. I have it set to only update Windows when I give it permission to do so. It runs without any reboots or attention for months at a stretch. .