Small PC for CCTV videocapture - what spec should I consider

[accipiter]

Hi all,

I have a project underway to build a box for a tawny owl which is approx 200ft from my house. Near the site is a shed. I had planned running ethernet to the shed and attaching the cameras via some sort of video server box suxh as this:
Network video server
However, I go thinking that I could probably build a small dedicated PC with a capture card such as this:
EURESYS PICOLO PRO 2 (X4 VIDEO CAPTURE CARD)
But dont know how I should approach speccing the machine.
I planned to add the cameras into my home network and store recorded video on a PC in the house. The 'remote' (if you like) machine that I'm considering as an alternative to a dedicated video server 'black box' would be more flexible, and I can pick up a capture card fairly cheaply on ebay.

HD: The 'remote machine would not need much in the way of HD storage, and would need at least 1 PCI slot.
PSU: I would consider a PSU such as a PICO as I dont see it requiring much power? and would be efficient under low loads.. Is this likely to be correct ?
OS: I want to do this as cheaply as poss, so I would consider a flavour or linux if its not to technical
Cameras: AT this stage, am considering using 3 cameras.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated

Dave

[ces]

PSU: I would consider a PSU such as a PICO as I dont see it requiring much power? and would be efficient under low loads.. Is this likely to be correct ?
OS: I want to do this as cheaply as poss, so I would consider a flavour or linux if its not to technical

PSU - yes you are correct.

OS: If you have to ask, then it is too technical.

I would get the cheapest Sandy Bridge 1155 CPU/motherboard combination you can find. It will sip electricity and at the same time will provide you with great flexibility should you ever want to repurpose the machine at some later time. All the Sandy Bridge CPUs idle around 4 watts... so the speed of the particular Sandy Bridge 1155 CPU you select is not important. Just get the cheapest you can buy.

An h61 based motherboard will likely be the cheapest motherboard you can find.