I am not sure if this is the right place to post this but here goes nothing.
At the moment I have the following in my living room next to the TV:
It houses a patch panel and an ubuiquiti dream machine pro along with a rackmount power strip
It will soon have a 16 port HDMI kvm in it that all our video game consoles will go through to allow us to never have to rewire the various consoles to the TV
and a dedicated PoE switch is going to be installed soon.
I would like to add a 1u machine that will fit in it that will be dedicated to capturing gameplay on the various consoles.
My Idea is that the KVM output would go directly into the capture card installed in this machine and then pass it through to the TV allowing me to basically record whatever feed is currently set to go to the TV and ultimately have a 10gbit link to probably a synology NAS share (also not set up yet)
Couple of questions.
Is this a bad idea for any reason?
What machine and capture card should I use that would fit in this cabinet (it isn’t deep enough to fit just any 1u server)
what equipment outside of simply the capture card and 1u machine would i need (for example does the machine have 10gbit networking capability or do i need to by a separate add in for that? what rails would I need to properly install it into my cabinet etc)
I realize this is a big question but any advice or help is appreciated. Once I add all this my home network will be complete
Rack mount hardware is often loud and not suitable for being next to your entertainment system. I hope that you’ve accounted for this.
In fact if you have the room for it you may want a 4U sideways desktop case that is designed to be either a desktop or rackmounted. Just so that it can use large 120mm fans instead of the 40mm 1U fans. Those small fans are incredibly loud.
If you need to run Linux or BSD let us know because HDMI capture cards are not always supported with open source drivers.
A 10 Gbps Ethernet link is not necessary for video capture unless you’re trying to grab raw bits. I don’t even know of any capture hardware designed for recording the raw bits.
Capture card prices go up a lot if you want 4K@60, and I don’t know if 4K with VRR and HDR capture cards even exist. But if you’re feeding everything through it you’ll be limited to what the card supports in the future which may make you unhappy if you upgrade to a 2021 LG OLED with 120 Hz VRR for your PS5.
Update: I guess the prices aren’t as high as I had thought. Found an Elgato Game Capture 4K60 MK-2 on Amazon for about $220.
More random thoughts:
If the machine is only for video capture it doesn’t need to be super-fast and maybe even a used machine could work. I’ve seen older rackmount Xeon systems with 128 GB of RAM for $300. (However, those recycling places tend to get their money out of you by charging for the rack rails, hard drive bay inserts and hard drives.)
If you want it to be useful for a lot of other things you might want to look at ASRock Rack motherboards and build up a whole system yourself. A quick look at their site finds this thing which includes 10 Gbps Ethernet ports: ASRock Rack > 1U4LW-X570/2L2T
Anyway, if you read my random thoughts this far, thanks. Good luck!
This really.
They do exist, sort of. The Magewell cards accept pretty much anything you throw at them and they don’t really care about skipped frames either. But they are not exactly cheap, easily going into the 4-digit pricetags.
I don’t think any of the “gaming” capture cards do VRR, since their FPGAs are not designed for that.
If you’re thinking about using Linux or BSD, the choices become extremely limited very fast. For more on this, check my adventures with this:
They were a lot more expensive in the past, especially beginning last year.
Careful when buying this one for HDR, it has to be the MK.2. The original 4K60 does not do HDR at all (although I think later firmware version at least allowed pass-through).
Thanks for all the thoughts. The 10gbit portion would be less about need and more about desire I am not dedicated to linux or BSD over windows. I am perfectly happy with used hardware. I had considered the noise factor but I had thought there would be a quiet enough option. I hadn’t really thought about trying to fit a desktop in the cabinet. At the moment everything inside stays a decent temperature without turning on the cabinets built in fans which is nice since they are not silent. I am looking now and if I move my modem (which is neatly sit atop my dream machine pro) there is exactly 4U of space there. I had planned on said machine being purely for capturing video but I may have to give it more of a purpose if I am going to have it take up 4U of space the other thing I was thinking was the machine in question if it was just for capture would not be on 24/7 only when recording so noise may not be as big a concern. IDK a lot to think about. I need to finish setting up the HDMI KVM switch for now and I will keep considering the final options. Thanks for all the input and any further input y’all have
Ok so more thought has gone into it and I am thinking of rearranging my network cabinet and adding a final piece to the puzzle (the streaming/recording box)
And essentially building the lowest power cheapest micro atx build I can put together and still have it perform nicely for the job we have a pcie capture card already so this way we don’t have to buy a new one and fan speed should be able to be kept fairly low because there won’t be much in it despite the big case. Any recommendations on build? It only needs an nvme OS drive all storage will be handled by a NAS in the final set up that it will have a 10gb link to so I guess I need a 10gb nic in this setup. I’ll prolly run win 10 pro on it and just add it to my domain.
^ it’s not rare for servers to have fans with more power consumption that the CPUs they cool, a normal PC fan will use like 3w, now imagine one spinning literally 10x as fast, so now even 20% fan speed is still spinning twice as fast as your 1600rpm cooler fan
I am not dedicated to linux or BSD over windows. I am perfectly happy with used hardware. I had considered the noise factor but I had thought there would be a quiet enough option. I hadn’t really thought about trying to fit a desktop in the cabinet. At the moment everything inside stays a decent temperature without turning on the cabinets built in fans which is nice since they are not silent. I am looking now and if I move my modem (which is neatly sit atop my dream machine pro) there is exactly 4U of space there. I had planned on said machine being purely for capturing video but I may have to give it more of a purpose if I am going to have it take up 4U of space