Saturday, March 27, 2021

Buying Guide: Budget Plotting Build - $500 - 1.3 TB/day

Build & Install Guide HERE

This build is aimed at providing a standalone rig that will generate plots quickly enough for a small farm, without costing too much out of pocket. It dumps the plots to an external drive that you'll have to buy separately. This is not the most efficient build, as more expensive rigs will give you better performance per dollar (and per watt), but if your budget isn't that high, this may be useful to you.

The Desktop - $195



The core of our build is the Dell Optiplex 7020, and specifically the model that includes the i7-4790 CPU . The i7-4790 was top of the line for its generation and still packs quite a high benchmark score per dollar. Buying a used business pc provides CPU, motherboard, case, power supply, some ram, and often a boot drive all in one for < $200 (Typically the going price on eBay for this model)

NOTE: You are looking for the version with a i7-4790 NOT an i7-4790S

Either the SFF or Full Size tower will work. SFF is usually cheaper.

Ebay search query with the wrong model excluded

RAM

For the original version of this post I recommended 16GB of RAM. I now recommend 24GB of RAM to get 13 plots a day. 16GB will get you 11 plots a day.

8GB should run us around $30. Factor this into your purchase. If you see an Optiplex with 16GB of ram for $20 more than one with 8GB, its worth getting the more expensive one.

If you do need additional ram remember we only have 4 ram slots so we need at minimum 4x4GB sticks for the minimal build(1.1 TB/day) or 3x8GB to get 1.3 TB/day. 2x8GB + 2x4GB also works to get 24GB total.

Ebay search for 8GB sticks. Formatted to remove the noise

Ebay search for 4GB sticks. Formatted to remove the noise.

 

Temporary Storage - $263


NOTE I've heard a lot from the community about how these drives are not optimal for long term plotting as they have shorter lifespans than some others. I recommend doing some research into SSDs with Higher TBW. One user proposed the Inland 2TB Premium drive as a way to replace all 4 drives with just one. It boasts speeds and TBW that would be plenty for this build and eliminates much of the extra configuration.but I have not tested it myself. If you have results with this drive please comment below!

The 2TB Inland build would look similar to ours but eliminate the need for 1 PCIE adapter and all SATA power adapters and cables (the Optiplex should include 1 SATA data cable from the DVD drive that we can use for a boot drive.

 

Original recommendations for hardware:

2x Western Digital 500GB NVME -  $60

2x PCIe Adapters for NVME Drives - $8

2x Hynix 500GB Sata SSD - $57


SATA Cables:

1x Sata Power Splitter (2 pack) - $7

1x Sata Data Cable (3 pack) - $6

  


Extra


Boot drive:

You will need some boot drive. It can be any small HDD or SSD. You can also install your OS to one of our SATA SSDs. This may incur a slight performance penalty and your commands wont match those in the install tutorial.

Internet

If you don't have a wifi dongle or ethernet connection available you will need some way to access the internet from the pc for installation only. Maybe pick up a cheap usb wifi dongle.



The total cost of this build at time of posting is $488 (plus tax) and currently outputs 1.1 TB/day Now 1.3 TB/day!
Hardware prices fluctuate and the total cost for you may be different.
I'm trying different configurations and will post updated builds over time.

7 comments:

  1. What plot settings are you using for this?
    Thanks

    ReplyDelete
  2. Four instances that look like this:
    chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 24 -t /path/to/ssd -d /path/to/harddrive

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hmm, why only 24 bitbuckets and not 128 as suggested?

      Delete
    2. The Buckets are -u 128 and the -n 24 is the number of times it will run

      Delete
  3. 2x Western Digital 500GB NVME - $60
    why not buy 1 Western Digital 1TB NVME - $110 which is a cheaper price?
    Is it hard to set up?
    Thanks a lot.

    ReplyDelete
  4. That would work just fine. Prices were probably different when I started made the guide originally.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I have Dell 7010 SFF with i-5 CPU and 2GPU. However, I keep getting Not Connected when I start chia blockchain. What can I do to resolve this issue.

    ReplyDelete

Build & Install Guide: Budget Plotting Build - $500 - 1.3 TB/day

 For the buying guide / hardware list view this previous post Installing the Hardware: Put your 2 NVME drives in the adapters. Put the adapt...