Ecky :
My opinion, you might still consider a small SSD for the operating system, it will greatly improve system responsiveness.
Also, an i7 7700T is not any more efficient than a normal 7700 when running at the same clocks, the 7700 can just go to higher clockspeeds and finish the work sooner, before going back to a low power state. The 7700T is only good for running in cooling-constrained environments.
650 watt power supply is massive overkill for a system that would probably run comfortably on a quality 250w unit. Having a larger unit wastes power because power supplies are most efficient when they're more highly loaded.
EDIT: The most secure RAID you might consider is either RAID 0 or 5. 0 mirrors data so you lose half of your space, whereas 5 would cause you to lose only 25% of your space (as I understand it).
Wow, there is so much misinformation in this thread.... But the worst of it is in this post, so I'll begin here.
1st - RAID 0 is NOT mirrored, it's striped. RAID 0 is best for performance, but worst for data integrity. RAID 1 is mirrored, is better than RAID 5 for read speeds but worse for write speeds, and is the best protection because all data is duplicated. However, if you're using 4 drives (SSD or HDD) then you would be best with RAID 10, as it would offer striping for performance AND mirroring for integrity. RAID 5 and all other parity-type RAIDs are crap because they create more CPU overhead due to calculating parity information for all data written, they offer less redundancy than RAID 1 or 10, and they offer less performance than RAID 0 or 10. Just remember, depending on your RAID controller, you can set it up multiple ways. Some only offer RAID 10 however they do it, but others allow you to create 2 RAID 0 or 1 arrays and then do it again to tie the arrays together. Meaning, you can set up 2 RAID 0 arrays and then RAID 1 the 2 arrays together or create 2 RAID 1 arrays and RAID 0 them together. There are some distinct differences between the methods and advantages to each.
2nd - SSD vs HDD. Dude, SSD's are INCREDIBLY more reliable than HDD's now. If you're still questioning that, your information is about 7-10 years out of date. However, as with anything, you get what you pay for. Don't think money equates to a more reliable drive directly, but don't buy some unknown-name drive. That said, almost all SSD's have higher reliability rates than HDD's and, as said, will generally last for decades before the write operations wear out the drive. You will be about 99% guaranteed to need to replace the entire PC for other reasons before the SSD fails. To find a good SSD, though, do some research on SSD benchmarking and endurance. Some SSD's have very high burst read/write speeds but very low sustained speeds (still generally MANY times higher than even the best HDD's, though). I bought a pair of SK Hynix 250GB SSD's because they got a decent review (not the best, not the worst) and I got them for a price I couldn't pass on. I stuck 1 in my old PC used mostly as a file server but also for some gaming. It maxed out the SATA2 bus no problem. The SSD in my laptop is using SATA3 and can achieve about double the bandwidth in tests which were limited by the SATA2 bus. And compared to the RAID 0 array, it smoked it in all cases. Even using the limited SATA2 bus, in tests where the RAID 0 array achieved 160MB/s, the SSD pulled about 270-280MB/s (maxing out the SATA2). In tests where the RAID 0 array achieved a pathetic 0.6-3.5MB/s, the SSD achieved anywhere from 24MB/s to 270MB/s (the huge difference depends on the specific test). So using RAID 0 across HDD's can't even begin to compare to using a single SSD. After you get all set up, to test this yourself, download Crystal Disk Mark.
Another thing to consider on this is HDD's not only have higher failure rates due to the moving parts, but they also have limited write cycles the same as SSD's. You simply don't hear about it often because the moving parts tend to wear out long before the magnetic media loses its ability to be written to. SSD's have no moving parts, so that cause of failure goes out the window, leaving the other cause of failure of how much data can be written. In regards to this, not all SSD's are created equal. Most SSD's use overprovisioning to give you a fallback when the cells begin to fail. As stated before, this will probably take decades before even beginning to be noticeable. However, not all SSD's overprovision in the same manner. Some will sell you a 250GB drive but will actually give you, say, a 300GB drive, but only 250GB will be accessible to you and the other 50GB will be used for the overprovisioning. Other drives will sell you a 250GB drive which is 250GB, but use unpartitioned space for the overprovisioning, meaning if you format & use the entire drive for your partition, you end up with no overprovisioning anyways. This is also why some SSD's are more expensive than others, but it isn't the only reason so don't go simply by price. The other biggest factor of price is the type of flash they use, being TLC, MLC, or 3D, but you'll need to research the differences yourself because I won't get in to that here.
3rd - The belief SSD's wear out faster because they write faster. This is utter nonsense. All it means is they write faster and stop writing sooner. Actually, Ecky's statement on this using the stomach/food/eating analogy was actually perfect, you simply don't seem to understand it, so I'll try to explain it better. Whether it is an SSD or HDD, the same amount of data is being written to it based on whatever you are doing with it. The speed at which it is written is irrelevant to how fast the drive will wear out. Whether an SSD writes at 250MB/s or 550MB/s or 2500MB/s (the last only being possible with a PCIe SSD), if it will last around 150TB of data written before it wears out, it will last around 150TB of data written before it wears out. However, another difference between causes of failure to be aware of, SSD's are basically only active while being written to or read from. Meaning, as soon as they are done performing the read/write operation (which they finish MUCH faster), they go into a sorta standby state until the next operation comes through. In contrast, HDD's must spin up to do anything (which takes several seconds), and therefore tend to be kept on for long periods. In the case of your use, for a surveillance system, this means HDD's will always be on. The SSD's *could* always be on, depends on how your software uses the drive. If it constantly writes, the SSD's will also always be on, but it really isn't a problem in terms of causing extra wear on SSD's as it is with the HDD's. However, if the software doesn't write constantly, say it builds up a specific amount of data or length of time in a recording buffer before writing it to the drive, then the SSD will be able to go into standby in-between read/write operations, but the HDD will ALWAYS be active because they generally have around a 10-30 minute wait time before they go into standby and stop spinning needlessly. HDD's also wear out more during changes between active/standby than when running, but running 24/7 will also wear them out faster.
4th - Power usage. You must now know the difference between SSD's & HDD's in terms of power usage. SSD's typically consume only about 2W during usage, and somewhere around 0.02-0.2W during standby, whereas an HDD typically consumes around 10-12W during usage and 1-2W during standby. Meaning there will be a HUGE difference in power consumption between using SSD's and HDD's, both because of the direct difference in power consumption AND because the HDD's will needlessly spin for long periods of time before going in to standby whereas the SSD's consume very little power relatively and can go into standby frequently without it causing any extra wear on them.
5th - RAM. Yes, you will use more energy by having 64GB of RAM installed than 16GB of RAM. For your use case, 16GB would almost certainly be perfectly fine. RAM these days is becoming much more efficient than older RAM, though, both by using less power and by doing more work for the same power.
6th - Your original question, is the 7700T a good enough CPU. Yup. For what you're doing, you don't need anything better than that. However, another piece of incorrect info is the 7700T & 7700K would use the same amount of power to run at the same clock speed. The best example I can give for this is using cars. If you compare 2 engines, say both from the same car but tuned differently, 1 engine could hit its peak power much lower in the RPM range than the other would. They would also have vastly different peak efficiency points. For instance, 1 engine could be tuned for low-end torque, but the other for high-end horsepower. Along those lines, Intel has stated this is basically how their CPU's work. Some are designed to run at higher max clock speeds, but they are less efficient at lower speeds. An easy thing to Google for examples on this is the Nvidia Tegra line of mobile processors. Look for their reasoning on the early versions of when they began building the 4+1 core SoC's (which is 4 high-powered cores + 1 low-powered core). They did it for this exact reason. So if what you want is raw processing power, go for a higher clock speed i7. If you want enough power to do what you plan and then want more efficiency, go with the 7700T. If it was me building a PC for what you're planning, or any sort of always-on server/system, I would go with the 7700T. The claim a 7700T being fully utilized would only run at the 3.0GHz-ish mark is nonsense. While it won't run at its highest 3.8GHz speed when maxing out all cores, it would be around 3.5-3.6GHz. In other words, roughly the same drop as the 7700K. Intel basically drops the clock speed 0.1GHz for each 1-2 cores the CPU maxes out, usually being a 0.2-0.3GHz drop when the CPU is being fully utilized.
7th - Back to the SSD/HDD comparison. As stated by somebody already (didn't pay attention to who said it), which is better for your use in terms of performance could also be based on your specific use. For instance, there is a HUGE difference in the stream size of a 480p 30Hz video stream than a 1080p 30Hz stream, let alone a 1080p 60Hz stream or a 4k/2160p 30Hz or 4k 60Hz stream. And whether you're software is writing the raw video stream or using compression. I once tried a screen capture software which wrote uncompressed video to my RAID 0 array. Yeah, it nearly maxed it out, something like 100-120MB/s constantly. An SSD could handle this MUCH easier than any HDD, whether in a RAID 0 or not.
8th - SSD/HDD again. Price. IF #7 isn't a problem because your software is compressing the video stream so you aren't writing huge amounts of data constantly which virtually require an SSD, so you could use HDD's if you want, then price becomes another factor. Before we get to that, how much history do you want? Do you only need the last 1-3 days, or do you need 3 months? Because back to the price point, HDD's are still around 8-12x larger for the same price. In other words, a 500GB SSD is around $150, but you can find 4TB HDD's for around $130-150. Another possibility is to use 1 or 2 SSD's for the performance, then use a single 4TB HDD for backup/archiving.
That last method is what I tend to use in all my systems. It works fine for me, but doesn't provide as good of protection from loss as a RAID 1 would. For instance, even if you back up every day, or every hour, if your main drive goes down, you lose all data since the last backup, but a RAID 1 would still have all your data unless both drives fail before you replace the failed drive. However, there is also plenty of testing which proves your chance of HDD failure goes up insanely for each drive which fails before being replaced when using any form of RAID with redundancy (RAID 1/5/10/etc). In fact, replacing the drive actually causes the higher failure rate, because the RAID array must rebuild the lost data on the new drive which causes all the other drives to work overtime trying to rebuild the new drive. This doesn't affect SSD's as much, because writing is what wears them, not reading.
I didn't intend to write such a wall when I started, but hopefully it helps.
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