Tips & Suggestions on Building your DVR Card system

Building your very own DVR is a very simple task; however there are some very important things to keep in mind when doing so. We will help you to set off in the right direction.

If you are Building the PC…

This is the best choice for obvious reasons: You will have guaranteed hardware compatibility with the DVR Card that you choose. If you decide to build your PC for the DVR Card, we suggest that you seriously consider the manufacturers minimal requirements. If you are a company that is building one for a client, DO NOT build the surveillance system below the minimal specifications. If you do, you will be guaranteed to have a service call resulting from an under powered PC.

All of the DVR Cards that we sell have some basic rules to follow – all of these are listed in the manuals and documentation that is provided with the DVR Card product. However, we will list some of the most common things that you will need to be aware of when building your new DVR Card system.

AverMedia DVR Cards

• • Use motherboards based on these Intel chipsets are approved: 845, 848, 865, 875, 915, 925, 945, 955, 965, P31, P35, X38, X58, P55, P45, G41

• • Use motherboards based on AMD are approved: Gigiabyte GA-K8NSC-939, GA-M57SLI-S4, Asus M2N-E 

• • Avermedia DVR Cards generally never have any hardware compatibility problems.

GeoVision DVR Cards

• • Use motherboards that are Intel based.
  • Do not use motherboards in which the chipset is made by “SiS” or “VIA” – you will have compatibility problems.
  • Do not use AMD processor motherboards, you will have problems.

When you build the PC for the surveillance system you know exactly what to expect in terms of performance and stability. If you build it for your customer then you can expect as much reliability as what you put into it. We do not recommend building it below the minimal requirements! If anything, we recommend exceeding the requirements to a small degree.

If you are Buying the PC…

This is the easiest choice if you have the money, however we do not recommend doing this for Geovision based DVR Card systems. The reason is that although you can determine what brand the processor will be, you don’t necessarily know what brand of chipset will reside of the motherboard.

Even though we don’t generally recommend this, there are many customers that will buy a prebuilt computer and have many years of reliable service. However, we have had some problems that were reported from some customer that have done this. Basically it’s up to you.