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Maybe I am stupid for not being able to find it.

 

But, I was wondering. For the cost of a decent NVR ($500)

Are there NVR cards for a Desktop tower?

 

I ask because I notice some pretty decent towers with screens and monitors for sale for cheap. Like $155....

 

Example

205458_1.jpg

 

1GB DDR2 RAM and an 80GB SATA Hard Drive. Includes Windows XP Professional, 8 USB Ports, Ethernet, CD Burner, Monitor, Keyborad and Mouse

 

Now I can easily swap out and get more gb ram, and hard drive etc....

 

Would this not be a better than the costco qsee dvr? I hear it's having trouble with 30fps on 4 cams when something is actually in frame moving around.

 

I'm wanting 8ch min, 12ch Ideal 1080P 2MP cams. If I could use something like this I'd be estounded.

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You don't need an NVR card, only NVR software, since everything connects over the network. One network cable to your NVR PC is all it takes.

 

Now, some NVR software is more efficient than others. You're talking about 24MP of cams, and at 10 FPS, that's quite a load for a cheap PC. Blue Iris is inexpensive, but needs a powerful PC to run that much - I'm not sure if a gen 3 I7 would handle 12 1080P cams at a decent frame rate.

 

I've got an Aver NV6240e16 hybrid card in an i3-540 box, and it'll handle that many MP at 10FPS, no problem. I don't think the card is actually doing anything except acting as a dongle for the software, since I don't have any analog cams connected, but I could be wrong.

 

Unfortunately, a 16 channel Aver card, bought new, is as expensive as a high-end PC. You can find them used pretty cheap, but you have to look and wait.

 

I don't know if Aver sells their CMS-3000 software with a dongle for use without a card or NVR.

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You're just recording the stream, so any PC will work. But with that many cameras and the megapixels you want, you're going to want to go with a decent performer. You can probably build a nice machine for about $300-$500 (either a quad-core Intel or six-core AMD).

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Okay thanks.

 

I have a custom tower I built. 530 i7 core, 4gb ddr5 ram, 1gb radeon 8500 card, 3TB hdc... But its my

Main computer and didn't rly want.to use it since its my main home computer.

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it depends on the nvr software - at its most basic, all it needs to do is receive the video data and save it to disk; all the heavy processing is done by the vms (video management software), which you can run on your fancy desktop system. an older machine like this should have no problem doing that for a number of cameras. something like exacq would probably work well... the catch is whether the cameras are supported by it.

 

and the other catch with almost all nvr software is, you usually pay a per-channel license fee. between $50 and $150 is not uncommon... but with 8 cameras, that drives your cost up by at least $400 right there.

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I have a custom tower I built. 530 i7 core, 4gb ddr5 ram, 1gb radeon 8500 card, 3TB hdc... But its my Main computer and didn't rly want.to use it since its my main home computer.

 

Best bet is to get some demos going on your home PC. If it handles the cams you're interested in without any problem, you can figure a cheaper PC will do, but if you hit high CPU utilization with your main rig, you'll need similar power for the NVR box.

 

If you start out with one cam, some packages will let you connect the same cameras to multiple channels, so you can set up one cam 8 times to see how the system handles it.

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I would much rather just purchase a dauhua 8ch nvr for $350 and have a dedicated seperate nvr.

 

Thanks though guys!

 

 

Be sure to read the specs on the Dahua you're looking at. I've seen some that drop to 4channel mode once it goes to 1080p, even if you buy the 8ch or 16ch.

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Be sure to read the specs on the Dahua you're looking at. I've seen some that drop to 4channel mode once it goes to 1080p, even if you buy the 8ch or 16ch.

 

That's not true anymore. They support a set number FPS at different resolutions, I believe 120FPS at 1080P. So if you had 8 1080P cameras for example, you would have to run them at 15fps. If you have a mix of 1080P and 720P cameras, you could run them at a higher frame rate. Also, keep in mind that you are limited to 1080P so if you buy a 3MP or 5MP camera, you would have to run it at 1080P resolution.

 

I would say wait until Black Friday, get a killer deal on a modern day computer with an Ivy Bridge i5 processor and run BlueIris or NVR+.

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