Hikvision NVR vs Third-party or Self Build NVR

Agent Crimson · January 5, 2020

I am deploying about 13 Ip 4mp cameras for a friend and I was wondering if I should veer of from buying a Hikvision or Dahua NVR and rather get / make one. Which option is better? I will require smart features like line cross detection and object alarms hikvision has those but also have a cap on the maximum number of cameras it can handle and it sometimes tend to hang up and slow down.

Things to note

Full network is wired for cat 6a and gigabit switches are deployed everywhere.

Switches for clients and cameras are separate but still joined together into the whole network.

My budget is about 250-300$ (maximum)

My friend is non tech savvy and cannot diagnose anything so need a super reliable setup.

leadeater · January 5, 2020

I'd put custom PC in to the mix running Milestone XProtect but the free version is limited to 8 cameras so if you want to run more than that you need to buy license per extra camera so I don't think it's possible to do it in the given budget with that software, only if you stuck to 8.

Salacious B Crum · January 5, 2020

I run blue iris it has a ton of options but I have it running on quite an overbuilt pc (AMD R7 1800X) just keep in mind these setups require a ton of resources to work without issues so if you build an NVR keep that in mind I had a purpose built NVR (Swann) and to be quite honest it was an 8 camera unit with only 4 cameras and it was wonky at best the ui sucked I'm sure they have come a long way since then but keep this in mind try to confirm how well they operate with a full complement of cameras, oh and blue iris is not free although it will probably be the cheapest part of the build if you go that route

Agent Crimson · January 5, 2020

5 hours ago, leadeater said:

I'd put custom PC in to the mix running Milestone XProtect but the free version is limited to 8 cameras so if you want to run more than that you need to buy license per extra camera so I don't think it's possible to do it in the given budget with that software, only if you stuck to 8.

What are the recommended specs for this? I couldn't find any documentation linking that.

Agent Crimson · January 5, 2020

3 hours ago, mrbilky said:

I run blue iris it has a ton of options but I have it running on quite an overbuilt pc (AMD R7 1800X) just keep in mind these setups require a ton of resources to work without issues so if you build an NVR keep that in mind I had a purpose built NVR (Swann) and to be quite honest it was an 8 camera unit with only 4 cameras and it was wonky at best the ui sucked I'm sure they have come a long way since then but keep this in mind try to confirm how well they operate with a full complement of cameras, oh and blue iris is not free although it will probably be the cheapest part of the build if you go that route

Are you using a gou for your blue iris machine?

Salacious B Crum · January 6, 2020

On 1/5/2020 at 10:23 AM, Agent Crimson said:

Are you using a gou for your blue iris machine?

Yeah its overkill its a GTX 1080 this rig is overkill as I had upgrade to a threadripper machine so don't go by my specs

SrSuri · January 6, 2020

get an NVR, Those are cheaper than building a custom PC, for a time consuming ( your time making one) and installation point of view (its not a PC and can be put on litle box on the garage), Also your client (friend) only need something to work, and this are almost baremetal, you just need to put the disk you want ( 4,6 8 TB) turn on and they are ready to go.