I need to run 10 - 20" LCD's

[Cygnus X1]

I'm building a security camera Monitoring system for my work. What Kind of components would I need to make this work? It will be used for basic apps and CCTV Cameras.

10 LCD Monitors
Case?
Motherboard?
Video Cards?
Memory?
HDD?

Could I just design a gaming type dual core system off newegg and add a bunch on PCI graphics cards in addition to the PCI-e one? Would SLI help me here? Thanks!

 

[Hanpan]

Really I would use something quite simple.

I would get a used northwood cpu they run quite cool
A motherboard with 6 pic slots plus agp such as ASUS P4P800
Case I would go with a cheap atx case. Get a reasonable PS but nothing special.

512mb of ram should do it 1 gig if you really want.
HDD again something small and cheap will work.

Then get one agp ATI 9250

4 pci ATI 9250 and you should be set.

I have actually set up a number of multimonitor system for Securities traders etc and have found this configuration to work quite well. If you want all dvi however, then you need a bit better system.

 

[Cygnus X1]

How many monitors could I fit with a SLI PCI-e rig...8 monitors? Then add PCI cards as needed. Would that work.

 

[Sunner]

You could always look into Matrox's MMS offerings.
They're made more or less for just what you're wanting to do.
Linky here.

 

[Cygnus X1]

Originally posted by: Sunner
You could always look into Matrox's MMS offerings.
They're made more or less for just what you're wanting to do.
Linky here.

That's 699.00 Bucks. Couldn't I do better with SLI setup and PCI-e cards?

 

[nsafreak]

Originally posted by: Cygnus X1

Originally posted by: Sunner
You could always look into Matrox's MMS offerings.
They're made more or less for just what you're wanting to do.
Linky here.

That's 699.00 Bucks. Couldn't I do better with SLI setup and PCI-e cards?

Umm most boards don't have enough PCI-e slots to support that many cards. Plus you will run out of even regular PCI slots eventually. What cards do you plan on using for capturing the video? How many cameras? Because most setups I've seen would take 3 cards (4 inputs apiece) for 10 cameras if you're going to have that many. This is not going to be a cheap setup fyi.

 

[nsafreak]

Did some quick browsing. May not be the best deal but the least expensive 4 channel (30 fps) card I found was $160 apiece. So you're looking at $480 for the cards alone and that doesn't even factor in the cost of the cameras. If you're using IP based cameras then you won't need the capture cards but it still won't be cheap to setup a system to properly capture 10 network video feeds.

 

[Cygnus X1]

It's not for video capture. We are ordering (DVR's) Digital Video Recorders, about 5 or 6 of them. They can record 16 cameras each and have 500 gig hard drives. Thats not the problem. The company is blowing it's wad on these DVR's and then trying to go cheap for the dispays. The DVR's are like 5 or 10k apiece:Q

We have about 100 cameras we monitor locally and remotely off site.
I can save some money for them and have some decent displays to look at if help them out. They don't know about newegg and stuff and I have to work with this crap so I want good diplays. We allready have 8 to 10 computers that are all HP pentium 4 3.2 gig and 512mb ram. Onboard video

So I'm trying help buy buying the displays and all wireless keyboards and mice on the cheap.

 

[Tostada]

If you want to do it right (and you should, since it's for your work), you should really get two FireMV cards which are actually made for quad DVI. You could also get a Parhelia card, but those cost even more.

The FireMV 2400 is a great card which doesn't take up much space and supports quad DVI.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102659
http://www.zipzoomfly.com/jsp/ProductDetail.jsp?ProductCode=321344

You only need two, then you can get just about any dual-DVI PCI-E x16 card you want, like a $90 Radeon X1300. You don't want to mix FireMV cards with GeForce cards. Last time I did that, installing the GeForce drivers seriously screwed up Windows.

I don't understand why you would need to save more money than that. If you can't spend $900 on video cards, how are you building a system with ten 20" LCDs? It's totally unreasonable to spend $4000+ on LCDs and not be willing to spend $900 on the hardware to drive them.

That said, if you don't need room to expand, you won't be able to get much cheaper than getting four of the FireMV 2200s then one dual-DVI X1300. The cables would actually be a little easier to plug in on five separate cards.

The cheapest system I can imagine being practical for that type of thing would be:

CPU: Intel Pentium D 930 Retail $178 (ZipZoomFly)
mainboard: MSI 945PL Neo-F $83.66 (newegg)
video: ATI Radeon X1300 512MB $99.45 (newegg)
video: ATI FireMV 2200 PCI $139 (ZipZoomFly)
video: ATI FireMV 2200 PCI $139 (ZipZoomFly)
video: ATI FireMV 2200 PCI $139 (ZipZoomFly)
video: ATI FireMV 2200 PCI $139 (ZipZoomFly)
HDD: Western Digital 250GB SATA WD2500KS $83.99 (ZipZoomFly)
HDD: Western Digital 250GB SATA WD2500KS $83.99 (ZipZoomFly)
RAM: G.Skill 2 x 1024MB DDR2 533 $143.98 (newegg)
CD: NEC ND-3550A black DVD-R $35.99 (newegg)
case: Cooler Master Centurion 5 ATX $64 (ZipZoomFly)
PSU: SeaSonic S12 500W $129.99 (newegg)

I probably wouldn't want to go with a single-core setup. As far as dual-core, the Intel 805 runs a lot hotter, and doesn't perform very well unless you overclock it. Nothing wrong with going with AMD, but that'll be more expensive.

You don't seem to have a very firm grasp on the whole situation, though, so I'd be really careful about just going out and buying parts before you talk to someone who has done this kind of thing.

 

[pkme2]

How about something like this?
http://www.video-insight2.com/cctv/cctv.htm?gclid=COnSmJLGyoUCFUQxIgodrEyD3w
I think you might be able to go with a wider LCD to accomodate your needs and still be within your budget.

 

[GrammatonJP]

Once you run out of room you can always expand using this

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/offhome/th2go/home.cfm

you can add more w/o adding to your pci slots..
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardware/matrox_triple_head_2_go_preview/

 

[Cygnus X1]

Thanks fellas! You have given me some good ideas.