Power Efficient Machine for dvr-scan

[DrJankenstein]

Budget (including currency): £5000

Country: United Kingdom

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: dvr-scan (more info below)

Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): 

 

I have a small business that processes security footage from various security cameras and produces footage of activity. 

 

Use Case Example: A camera surveils the fire door of a building 24/7. Once a week around 700-800Gb of footage is downloaded to a processing computer and any activity detected from the camera is put into a new, smaller, video file with a timestamp and a bounding box (a coloured box around the active "thing" in the video). 

 

We've found, using a wall meter, that apple silicon absolutely whips everything else we had on power efficiency. However we hadn't built anything that we had specifically for this job. Right now we are trying to decide if we should get Mac Studios or a small bank of Mac minis to do the work. 

 

 

 

[filpo]

51 minutes ago, DrJankenstein said:

Right now we are trying to decide if we should get Mac Studios or a small bank of Mac minis to do the work

Do you need many people working on it at the same time? If not then I'd get a mac studio with 128 gigs of ram and the 26 core cpu 
Mac Studio - Apple (UK)

But that depends if you need the ram

[DrJankenstein]

14 minutes ago, filpo said:

Do you need many people working on it at the same time? If not then I'd get a mac studio with 128 gigs of ram and the 26 core cpu 
Mac Studio - Apple (UK)

But that depends if you need the ram

Thanks filpo; no we have a script that runs and processes all of the video so only one user would be logged in. 

 

We could even run Linux and have it headless, this is purely a hardware choice and it just seems like apple have stolen the crown there just now

[filpo]

Just now, DrJankenstein said:

Thanks filpo; no we have a script that runs and processes all of the video so only one user would be logged in. 

 

We could even run Linux and have it headless, this is purely a hardware choice and it just seems like apple have stolen the crown there just now

if your going for most efficient then apple will be the best

 

With an equivalent low profile windows/linux pc you would at least draw double the power if not more

[DrJankenstein]

1 minute ago, filpo said:

if your going for most efficient then apple will be the best

 

With an equivalent low profile windows/linux pc you would at least draw double the power if not more

 

Thanks filpo; I had a feeling this would be the answer but my heart sinks when I look at that price tag (even when I know the power bill will make up for it)

[filpo]

1 minute ago, DrJankenstein said:

I had a feeling this would be the answer but my heart sinks when I look at that price tag (even when I know the power bill will make up for it)

if you don't need the 128 gig ram or the 26 core cpu you can go for the lower end mac studio 

 

That depends if you need it though. Do you?

[mariushm]

Do you really care if the machine consumes 50 watts  or 200 watts?  It runs only once a week and it's probably gonna be done in a few hours ... that's probably 1-2 kWh ... you're probably paying less than half a dollar per kWh on electricity.

 

Looking at dvr-scan, it seems like it's doing one file at a time, so you could probably speed it up by running multiple copies at the same time, each working  on separate videos.

In this case, it would help to have a system with more cores. I'd suggest going with a 5800X3D cpu (as the extra cache could help) and maybe 64 GB DDR4 and maybe a few 2-4 TB SSDs  - if you put all 800 GB on one mechanical hard drive and run multiple instances of that dvr-scan the hard drive's gonna have poor performance, so you could split those 800 GB onto multiple SSDs, each for one instance of dvr-scan.

The software doesn't seem to use video cards to accelerate decoding of videos and encoding of videos using video card, but I added a video card which can do both cuda and opencl just in case something changes in the future or you customize ffmpeg command line to use.

If it's gonna be software only you could actually downgrade the CPU to a 5600G or 5700G with integrated graphics and save around 300 pounds (200-250 on video card and 50 on cpu)

 

Here's a  configuration :  https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/msjdn6

 

PCPartPicker Part List: https://uk.pcpartpicker.com/list/msjdn6

CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5800X3D 3.4 GHz 8-Core Processor  (£274.00 @ Amazon UK)
CPU Cooler: be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Cooler  (£59.99 @ AWD-IT)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B550 TOMAHAWK ATX AM4 Motherboard  (£129.97 @ Amazon UK)
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LPX 64 GB (4 x 16 GB) DDR4-3200 CL16 Memory  (£114.99 @ AWD-IT)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£114.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Western Digital Black SN850X 2 TB M.2-2280 PCIe 4.0 X4 NVME Solid State Drive  (£114.98 @ Amazon UK)
Video Card: MSI VENTUS 2X OC GeForce RTX 3050 8GB 8 GB Video Card  (£223.99 @ Amazon UK)
Case: Fractal Design Focus G ATX Mid Tower Case  (£55.39 @ NeoComputers)
Power Supply: Corsair RM750e (2023) 750 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply  (£99.98 @ Scan.co.uk)
Optical Drive: LG WH14NS40 Blu-Ray/DVD/CD Writer  (£74.08 @ Amazon UK)
Total: £1262.35
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2023-08-06 09:20 BST+0100

 

I added optical drive just in case you need to burn some discs for customers. Selected the case to have two 5.25" bays, one for optical drive and in the other you could maybe put a external drive bay (to slide in 2.5" or 3.25" drives without having to open the case - but you could have an external usb 10gbps based one to plug a hard drive and import data.

 

 

 

 

[DrJankenstein]

21 minutes ago, filpo said:

if you don't need the 128 gig ram or the 26 core cpu you can go for the lower end mac studio 

 

That depends if you need it though. Do you?

Probably not; or at least not within the next year or so, and if demand goes up then sure we'll get more+better rigs

 

The electricity efficiency is absolutely key

[DrJankenstein]

14 minutes ago, mariushm said:

Do you really care if the machine consumes 50 watts  or 200 watts?  It runs only once a week and it's probably gonna be done in a few hours ... that's probably 1-2 kWh ... you're probably paying less than half a dollar per kWh on electricity.

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the reply mariushm

 

We do care what the machine consumes; here in the UK our electricity prices have over doubled since "current events" began in 2022, and the forecast is gloomy. really gloomy. We have several nuclear reactors being decommissioned and the replacements are not ready. The energy market in Europe has gone nuts so buying in more is costing us a lot, and to top it all the push toward greener solutions is also costing us. 

 

We actually used a threadripper 3990x before the prices went up and after evaluation we started using M1 chips due to the energy saving. 

[mariushm]

A 5600G processor will consume up to around 80-100 watts, a 5800x3D will consume maybe 120-140 watts when running at 100% - the rest of the system (motherboard, ram, drives) doesn't consume more than 50 watts.

 

The 3990X consumes around 280 watts when all cores at pegged at 100%, and then you add the fans and motherboard and ram and you may get to 400-500 watts at the wall, so I can understand the power savings then ... but modern processors are much more power efficient, with modern 5xxx or 7xxx processors power consumption would be around 200 watts for the whole system.

 

I can understand chasing efficiency but you'd be locking yourself to a restricted environment without much upgrade possibilities, and you're paying A LOT for it.

 

The Mac Studio linked above at 4200 pounds advertises up to 140 watts of power consumption - an equivalent PC would consume maybe 200-250 watts in total and cost a quarter of the price (for the system I made above), or even a 5th of the price if you go with integrated graphics.

 

That mac studio also comes only with a 1 TB SSD that may be soldered to the board and may have low endurance, you may have to choose a 2 TB or 4 TB option (you'll have to add 400 pounds for 2 TB or 1000 pounds for 4 TB, so it would cost over 5000 pounds for a mac studio with 4 TB storage)

 

You're paying  around 0.4 .. 0.5 pounds per kWh  ... so let's say you run the computer for 8 hours ... it would be 8 x 150 watts or 1.2 kWh on Mac Studio,  or  2000 watts or 2 kWh for a PC consuming 250 watts.   It's a difference of half a pound to a pound for a day's worth of processing.  You could take the 3000 pounds you pay extra on a Mac and just pay the electricity bill for the next years and end up in the same place.

 

 

 

 

 

[DrJankenstein]

15 minutes ago, mariushm said:

A 5600G processor will consume up to around 80-100 watts, a 5800x3D will consume maybe 120-140 watts when running at 100% - the rest of the system (motherboard, ram, drives) doesn't consume more than 50 watts.

 

The 3990X consumes around 280 watts when all cores at pegged at 100%, and then you add the fans and motherboard and ram and you may get to 400-500 watts at the wall, so I can understand the power savings then ... but modern processors are much more power efficient, with modern 5xxx or 7xxx processors power consumption would be around 200 watts for the whole system.

 

I can understand chasing efficiency but you'd be locking yourself to a restricted environment without much upgrade possibilities, and you're paying A LOT for it.

 

The Mac Studio linked above at 4200 pounds advertises up to 140 watts of power consumption - an equivalent PC would consume maybe 200-250 watts in total and cost a quarter of the price (for the system I made above), or even a 5th of the price if you go with integrated graphics.

 

That mac studio also comes only with a 1 TB SSD that may be soldered to the board and may have low endurance, you may have to choose a 2 TB or 4 TB option (you'll have to add 400 pounds for 2 TB or 1000 pounds for 4 TB, so it would cost over 5000 pounds for a mac studio with 4 TB storage)

 

You're paying  around 0.4 .. 0.5 pounds per kWh  ... so let's say you run the computer for 8 hours ... it would be 8 x 150 watts or 1.2 kWh on Mac Studio,  or  2000 watts or 2 kWh for a PC consuming 250 watts.   It's a difference of half a pound to a pound for a day's worth of processing.  You could take the 3000 pounds you pay extra on a Mac and just pay the electricity bill for the next years and end up in the same place.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'd actually *probably* get the bottom spec studio at around £2099 rather than the upper spec one. 

 

Hmmm... I wonder if anyone has benched the 58000x3d on dvr-scan - that would be really useful because the m1 was performing as well as the intel/AMD chips we ran it against (so roughly same speed but less energy) 

[mariushm]

Well if you give me a copy of the program (your configuration I mean) and some video to test (a few GB uploaded to google drive or something like that) , I can do a test  on 5800x  (without the extra cache).

 

I have a watt meter I could use to tell you the actual power drawn from the mains, but my numbers would probably be 30-40w higher due to having 4 mechanical drives in the system.

[KaitouX]

At idle Apple silicon is king, but at load it might not be. In some loads both 13900K and 7950X can be more efficient when optimized for efficiency. It also depends if GPUs are usable or not, in some cases a Nvidia GPU could be multiple times faster than the M2 while using similar amount of power at load, but again at idle it would be significantly less efficient than the M2, as you would be looking at around 50~80W usage on idle for a PC with a dGPU compared to about 20W for a Mac Studio.

4 minutes ago, DrJankenstein said:

We actually used a threadripper 3990x before the prices went up and after evaluation we started using M1 chips due to the energy saving. 

An example that may or may not be helpful to you, on Cinebench R23 at stock the 3990X(280W) seemingly achieves ~58000, the 13900K while limited to 88W achieves ~28000 and the 7950X achieves ~30000 while limited to the same 88W. Both are apparently roughly on a similar efficiency level as the M2 Ultra, at least when looking at CPU only, the entire system might give Apple an advantage, but you could build a 7950X system for much cheaper than a Mac Studio, that price difference could compensate for the slightly higher power consumption.

[DrJankenstein]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

Well if you give me a copy of the program (your configuration I mean) and some video to test (a few GB uploaded to google drive or something like that) , I can do a test  on 5800x  (without the extra cache).

 

I have a watt meter I could use to tell you the actual power drawn from the mains, but my numbers would probably be 30-40w higher due to having 4 mechanical drives in the system.

 

Hey mariushm

 

That would be perfect and thanks for that kind offer - let me see what I can rustle up

[DrJankenstein]

@mariushm @filpo sorry for the hold up; it's been brought to our attention that there's a serious problem with the current apple silicon configuration that concerns us specifically:

 

The whole Mac dies if the SSD dies 

 

We are going to be almost filling, processing, copying to storage and overwriting the entire internal SSD of the machine on almost a daily basis. We'd be fine if we could run the OS on an external SSD, but we can't (going by the video). 

 

It does look like we'll be using Linux + SSD + AMD/Intel by default. It's a real shame, one of the forgotten values of the Mac was it's form factor.

 

I'll need to make another post because I think the parameters of the question have changed significant. 

 

Thanks for you input @filpo, @mariushm and @KaitouX