Beginner plotter/harvester feedback

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#1

Hello all,

I used some leftover gear from the GPU mining era to construct a suitable device for Chia mining. The current setup has been up for 5 days and isn’t half way through yet with the Full Node sync ( Syncing 1,461,152/3,249,644). Additionally, the plot creation time is considerably long - around 12h per plot. Am I doing something wrong or is it because of my setup?

I currently have:
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) Gold G5420 CPU @ 3.80GHz (2 cores, 4 logical processors)
RAM: 64GB DDR4
SSD1: 120GB for running the OS
SSD2: Kingston Fury Renegade 2TB M.2 PCIe
HDD: 18TB Toshiba SATA3 7200 Enterprise

Plotting is set to run on the SSD2 and storing the plots on HDD.

All feedback welcome, thank you!

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#2

Hello,

First your OS disk is too small. here is a snap shot of mine
image
You need enough space for your OS and the database for Chia, that is going to keep growing in size, if that’s what you want to farm. You really can’t plot and farm on that setup you don’t have enough machine. Most people plot on a machine and farm on another setup. If you can upgrade that CPU for cheap. And yes 12hrs for a plot is crazy. I was making 22 min chia plots. And now I’m making MMX plots in 2.4 minutes with a little different setup, only my video card changed.

What are your plans how many plots you want to make, it will take a several, several hundred plots to really get going.

Ebay is your friend for parts and good prices, but you have to shop all over.

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#3

If @xMKx is using the standard Chia plotter (my guess is that is the case), then that is a good size chunk of slow plotting time results.

With madmax, he will probably cut 12 hours down to an hour or two. Still not a performance champ, but far better than 12 hours. Also, two CPU cores will not turn out favorable times.

@xMKx, which plotter are you using?
And are you plotting via the GUI, or via the command line?

The Kingston Fury Renegade NVMe drive does not appear to be suitable for plotting?
Tom’s Hardware’s review put:
“Underwhelming all-around performance” as one of the drives “Cons”.

Samsung’s 990 Pro will be a fast plotting drive.
But there are reports of that drive’s health taking huge hits (revealed by Magician), with only a few terabytes written. If the drive’s health values are being accurately reported, then that drive will not last long. This is bizarre, since the 980 Pro does not have that issue.

The only NVMe drive that I know of, that checks all the right performance boxes, is this one:

There are probably other good NVMe choices.
Perhaps others will chime in with recommendations?

And, yes, a 120 GB drive for the OS is too small. The blockchain, alone, is north of 100 GB.

So unless @xMKx has configured his set-up to store the blockchain elsewhere, I do not see how he can have his OS and the blockchain on a 120 GB drive, and this might be why he has been syncing for 5 days and is only ½ way done.

@xMKx, is your OS drive full?

#4

Samsung 500GB… 850 EVO…SSD…MZ-75E500… 2.5" SATA…TESTED…USED | eBay Problem solved… short money to get started.

1 Like
#5

Just as general feedback - good call on sourcing gear from the shelves, it’s “peak classic Chia” to use what you have. And the crew is right, get this dialed in (database on a bigger drive and use the madmax plotter) and you’ll be looking at 10+ plots per day. That 18TB drive will be filled in a couple weeks, no problem.

And I hesitate to even mention it, you could get this done for free by getting that database onto the 2TB unit… but it’s a cardinal sin to plot on the same drive your database is on. Another option is to use the 18TB unit for both the temp files and the final plots - it will be very slow and honestly not worth cheaping out on that $32 drive deal on ebay linked above…

Welcome to the force in any case; get them Chias.

#6

Get Mad-Max Plotter standard. That reduced my time from 5 hours down to 30 mins. It would help your SSD [but not time] if you can also have 128Gig of RAM and then use RAM-DISC as well.

When you are proficient with Mad-Max standard on your CPU, you can think about plotting on your GPUs. That will take some 2 or 3 mins a Plot, depending on GPU and compression.
See Gigahorse Compressed Plots GitHub - madMAx43v3r/chia-gigahorse

#7

If you are still having to wait for days re syncing the data base; Donate $3 to this guy at Chia Database Download | chia.sponix.net All the info is on his site. It’s easy, takes about 1 hour to download and then about 10 to 20 mins to get up to date. He updates the data twice a day.

#8

Really appreciate all the feedback, links and products mentioned here and the first thing I did was clone the 120GB OS disk to a 480GB one (fortunately had some old SSDs in the shed).

I’m currently on the Chia Blockchain 1.6.2 GUI. Pretty sure this is not optimal but since the Full Node is still syncing and my drive is not plotted full I guess this doesn’t make much of a difference? I switched the plotter (on the GUI version) to madMAx Plotter 1.1.6-2092041 and I’m seeing faster results already.

So as far as I understand my 18TB HDD can store approximately 148 x k32 plots and once I’ve reached that I’d need to have a new / used HDD to store the plots. In terms of the next ones does the size of the disk really matter? In theory I could go on and store each plot on a separate drive(just an example) if the infrastructure allows it? Or are there any limitations in this regard?

@seymour.krelborn I was actually going for the Samsung 990 Pro but someone beat me to it and they offered me the Kingston one as a substitute :smiley:

@bluemoon21 I will consider increasing RAM to try out the GPU plotter. I have around 20 GPUs lying around but all of them unfortunately GTX1660 6GB Supers. They’ll most likely perform poorly but I need to figure out where to plot after I’ve finished with the 18 TB one :smiley:

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#9

On a 18Tb (16.3tb) disk you can store 165 k32 plots, standard chia or mmx plots (106gb each).

If you were to plot compressed plots with Max’s new cuda_plot_k32.exe C7 I have been putting 224 k32C7 plots with now problem. And on and on.

#10

yes a 18TB will hold 165 plots. If OS is Linux [files ext4] you can get a bit more space by using Tune. There’s too much ‘root’ space by % now on big HDDs. sudo tune2fs -m .15 /dev/XXX
Also you want to employ ‘Trim’ on your SSD every day [even ever hour when plotting] sudo fstrim -v /
and stop using any memory ‘swap’ by; sudo swapoff -a
If you using MS Windows ask others how to do this.
Don’t be in a hurry to use Gigahorse GPU. Get all the info from; Discord

#11

Have you been following on discord as MAx has been developing MMX and now the new cuda_plot_kXX.exe files?

#12

Yes been following Max since he started with the 1st Plotter. Been trialing MMX on testnet 9/10. Haven’t re-plotted my real Chia plots yet. Have a few things to do with getting space on my plotting server. My GPU takes up two spaces and just wanted to see IF Chia HQ developed a good compression [with GPU?] Plotter SOON!

#13

Have you upgraded your Chia farmer to 1.7.0 yet? I also have been using Max’s plotters for a long time. I have been plotting Max’s compressed plots since the beginning and only getting better. Chia’s compressed GPU sw has not been release as beta testing even when you had to special sign up to be a beta tester, nothing ever came about. So for me right now it’s talk and vaporware until somebody can touch it. All the issues with bladebit should say enough. One shouldn’t have to open a beer bottle and add tons of work arounds to get it to work.

#14

yes I agree. no I have not upgraded to 1. 7. I think it’s better to wait. No real improvements for farmers and usually a few ‘errors’ in the first month or so. I too volunteered for the beta test and heard nothing.

#15

If I’ve already plotted the standard chia plots and thinking of going over to Max’s new compressed ones - would that mean that I need to replot everything?

#16

You can ask over here.

#17

If you use Max’s compressed GPU plots, yes …replot everything. Depending on the C-level you chose and the ‘compression’ level you chose, you can farm them with either Max’s CPU or GPU sw, deepening on your choices.

#18

Should we let these guys in on the secret of the Lightning yellow Lan cables??

1 Like
#19

I’m not sure …are they ready for this level of advance just yet :man_shrugging: :rofl:

1 Like