Motherboard recommendations for video surveillance recording?

[fpbear]

I originally started configuring Dell Precision Workstation T7600 so I could have 4x 3TB drives, but started getting into the $6,000 price range! So I decided I can custom build my own system much cheaper for my purpose, maybe for around $2,500.

This computer will be running Milestone XProtect to record video streams from 8 security cameras. It will need around 10TB internal storage (separate drive volumes, doesn't have to be RAID or hot swap).

I'm now overwhelmed by motherboard choices. Not sure if I should just pick a gaming motherboard for high performance video encoding, or a workstation Xeon motherboard, or even a server motherboard.

I'm leaning toward a workstation motherboard and then I'd hook it up with 4x 2TB SATA drives. Some of the server motherboards look good as well, but I am trying to avoid having to run Windows Server OS because of the added cost. I'd rather run Win7 Ultimate.

What are some of the top motherboards that excel at hard drive I/O and graphic encoding? I will probably skip using a RAID card, and use a mid-range graphics card for around $300 to also keep the cost reasonable. Not sure of the benefits of Xeon based motherboard vs. the consumer models for this purpose.

 

[tweakboy]

You don't need a special motherboard. You just buy the survelience kit and it will have USB connection and off you go.

What computer you have now ? A C2D can handle easily what your doing. Video card is as important... Grab a 460 1GB ... ?

You don't need a XEON to do this that is a waiste of money.

All you need as I said is a C2Q or higher and a 460 1GB since its the best bang for the buck pound for pound.

OR

gosh buy a Sandy Bridge 2600k with 16GB RAM and a P79 ASUS motherboard and OC it to 4.6Ghz and enjoy life. 8 Threads will help alto the software I doubt supports HT. For sound you can use the onboard audio. For OS ,,, The best OS is Win7 and there will never be another Win7. I will never upgrade OS unless it says I cant play games or apps with this.

 

[Raincity]

For what it’s worth. The current big boy surveillance VCD's, Honeywell, Pelco are using Supermicro 1155 boards with I5. Your storage needs will depend on compression, time retention and redundancy.

 

[Broheim]

is this just a home surveillance system or are we talking a corporate environment? with a home system you can cut some corners if you want to since it's not really "mission critical" but in a corporate environment you really should go with a workstation board (with a xeon), ecc memory, enterprise class drives (doesn't need to be 15k rpm SAS drives, but something along the lines of a WD RE). With a 24/7 surveillance system stability and reliability is obviously the most important thing. RAID is a good idea to improve reliability, it would be sad to lose important footage because of a dodgy drive.

but again, if this isn't "mission critical" you can cut corners and still have a fairly stable and reliable system, it all boils down to what compromises you're willing to make (like all things in life really).

another big plus with a workstation/server MB is that they usually have dual NICs, meaning you can keep the surveillance network physically separated from the rest of the network instead of using vlans or nothing at all, this leaves only one point of entry to be secured.

I'd personally get a supermicro c216 board or an asus.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

is this just a home surveillance system or are we talking a corporate environment? with a home system you can cut some corners if you want to since it's not really "mission critical" but in a corporate environment you really should go with a workstation board (with a xeon), ecc memory, enterprise class drives (doesn't need to be 15k rpm SAS drives, but something along the lines of a WD RE). With a 24/7 surveillance system stability and reliability is obviously the most important thing. RAID is a good idea to improve reliability, it would be sad to lose important footage because of a dodgy drive.

but again, if this isn't "mission critical" you can cut corners and still have a fairly stable and reliable system, it all boils down to what compromises you're willing to make (like all things in life really).

another big plus with a workstation/server MB is that they usually have dual NICs, meaning you can keep the surveillance network physically separated from the rest of the network instead of using vlans or nothing at all, this leaves only one point of entry to be secured.

I'd personally get a supermicro c216 board or an asus.

Exactly. I would look at the ASUS P8C WS with a Xeon E3-1230/40v2 and 8-16GB ECC RAM. You could also look at WDs AV-GP line. They are specifically designed for video surveillance...

 

[Iron Woode]

my $.02 worth:

My friend runs a restaurant and is using 9 cameras (7 internal and 2 external) for surveillance.

He runs Grandtec X Guard (pci card) under win XP pro. All this was originally using an old socket 423 p4 system and a 500gb hard drive. Worked flawlessly untill the mb died. I replaced it with an AM2 setup using an old 2.2 single core cpu. I put 2 gig of ddr2 in it and again it runs great.

granted this isn't some corporate level security system but it works.