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 adapters in the PCIE slots.

Split the SATA power cable with our splitter adapter(s). 

Then attach one power end to each SATA drive and connect each drive to the motherboard with the data cables (you'll probably have to disconnect the DVD drive. Don't worry. We wont need it.)

That's it! Close it up and let's move on.

Installing the OS:

Load up Ubuntu Desktop on a flash-drive using LiLi USB Creator (for Windows) or your preferred method.

Put the flash-drive in one of the SS USB ports on your Optiplex. 

Press power and hit the F12 key until you're at boot options. 

UEFI Boot from your flash-drive.

Follow installation instructions. If you have a dedicated boot drive, install on that, or if you don't then install on one of your SATA drives. You can select the minimal build as we don't need fancy utilities. 

If you want to be able to copy-paste commands from this build, name your user plotter1, as that is what mine is named and it will be a part of many terminal commands.

Finish install. Remove USB. 

Installing Chia Application:

Follow the installation instructions from the official Chia Github

If you're new to all this I'd recommend launching the gui once to import or create your private keys. Afterwards close out the GUI. The rest of this will be done in the terminal.

Alternatively if you're more experienced or security conscious you can pass certain arguments  to the plotter without using your private keys. We're just going to assume this is an offline machine in a secure location. 

Pre-Plotting Configuration:

Open up the Terminal and the Disks Utility

Use the disk utility to make sure your drives match the following locations:

    NVME drives should be at /dev/nvme0n1 & /dev/nvme1n1

    Sata drives should be at /dev/sbc & /dev/sdc

If yours are different you will have to change references to these labels in the commands to match yours.

In the Terminal run the following commands:

• sudo apt install mdadm -y  
  

• sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=stripe --raid-devices=2 /dev/nvme0n1 /dev/nvme1n1 

• sudo mdadm --create /dev/md1 --level=stripe --raid-devices=2 /dev/sdb /dev/sdc 
  

• mkdir $HOME/chialogs
  

In Disks format your new NVME Raid Array (/dev/md0) to ext4 and name it nvmeraid

Then format your SATA Raid Array (/dev/md1) to ext4 and name it sataraid

Click the "play" arrow button next to your 2 Raid Arrays in Disks to mount the drives.

Plotting!

I'm using a western digital easystore external drive as the destination drive for my plots. This mounts in my system as "easystore" If you are using something different you will need to change the path in the plotting commands to match yours.

IF you used the original build guide before I updated it and have only 16GB of RAM you will be limited to running only 4 plots simultaneously. That will get you 1.1 TB of plots a day on average. IF you have 24GB of RAM from the new guide you can get 1.3 TB of plots a day utilizing 6 instances as detailed below. 

If you only have 16GB of ram use only the 1st 2nd 5th and 6th tabs described below.

 

Open terminal and type "cd chia-blockchain" then click the + in the top left to open 5 more tabs

First tab:

• . ./activate
• chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/nvmeraid/temp1/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log1.txt

Second tab: 

• . ./activate
• chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/nvmeraid/temp2/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log2.txt
  

Third tab: 

• . ./activate
• chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/sataraid/temp3/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log3.txt
  

Fourth tab:

• . ./activate
• sleep  4h && chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/nvmeraid/temp4/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log4.txt

Fifth tab:

• . ./activate
• sleep  4h && chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/sataraid/temp5/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log5.txt
  

Sixth tab: 

• . ./activate
• sleep 4h && chia plots create -k 32 -u 128 -b 3400 -r 4 -n 20 -t /media/plotter1/sataraid/temp6/ -d /media/plotter1/easystore/plots/ | tee -a /$HOME/chialogs/log6.txt

 

 That's it! You're plotting. The first 3 tabs will run immediately. The last 3 will wait 4 hours before starting which should be enough time for the first 3 processes to get out of Phase 1. 

You can check logs inside the chialogs folder we made earlier, found within your home folder

Feel free to comment below with any questions or if you notice any mistakes. I'll try to get back to you as quickly as possible. 

If this helps you get started and you feel like donating a few mojos I wouldn't say no ;) 

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