Cheap Plotters I built (Mad Max)

Bros, me no computer expert. Has been Learning and experimenting hard on Chia since March. Want to share some thoughts with you.

I started with a new Lenovo PC 10th i3 10100 8GB 1TB (mechanical). I use this website for CPU benchmark comparison. PassMark - Intel Core i3-10100 @ 3.60GHz - Price performance comparison
All those passmark websites give difference numbers. For comparison purpose, I look up CPU performance at this website only.

10th i3 10100 benchmark is 8829. This computer costed $320. Soon after I got that office depot deal. HP Ryzen 7 5700G 16GB 256GB (NVMe). This one costed $550. Back ordered. It took two month to ship.

In the mean time, I acquired some NVMe and SATA SSD. And some used mechanical HDD also, 7200 rpm, 10K rpm, 3.5 and 2.5, all those stuff. Also I got an HP Z210 off eBay for $130. Started with Chia build-in GUI plotting, to SWAR, now I do all by Mad Max. Here are the plotters I am running now. All are running full power to make NFT plots, replacing those OG plots.

Plotter 1. Ryzen 7 5700G (CPU benchmark 23663) one 500GB NVMe as -2 and one 1TB NVMe as –t. Cost is $730. 50 – 55 minutes / plot.

Plotter 2. i3 10100 (CPU Benchmark 8834) one 1TB NVMe as -2 and one 1TB SATA SSD as –t. Cost is $570. 95-100 minutes / plot.

Plotter 3. XEON E3-1230 (CPU Benchmark 5010) one 500GB NVMe as -2 and one 500GB SATA SSD as –t. Cost is $250. 120-125 minutes / plot. –d is 4x500GB 7200rpm mechanical hard drive as RAID 0, write speed can be 400MB/s. I inserted –w in the Mad Max line. Plot file dumping is very fast.

Plotter 4. Thinkpad L430 my very old working laptop. CPU is i5-3210M (CPU Benchmark 2434). Computer itself is no value. I added a $100 1TB SATA SSD. 255-260 minutes / plot.

After several months of experimenting. I think I can forget about using mechanical hard drive. Yes, those old hard drive is cheap. Unless you can get them for free, old hard drive still cost money. I paid $8 each for Seagate 500GB SATA3 7200 rpm. With chia plotting those hard drives are slow. If I do RAID 0, two hard drive RAID 0 doesn’t produce 2x speed. For plotter 3, I tried a RAID 0 (2x 10K rpm 2.5 WD veloraptor SATA, $25 for two) as –t and NVMe as -2. Mad Max plot time became 180 minute.

And, can’t do Mad Max with mechanical hard drive. CPU load was never high and all those hard drive became heating bricks.

So, $50 a 500GB NVMe is the best from cost / performance point of view.

I am keeping looking at $100 old computer with CPU benchmark 6000 or so to build more plotter. Adding solid state NVMe or SATA to make it a $200 machine, making 12 plots a day.

2 Likes

Let me also shares some of my plotter(from 1000-3000 USD range),
but for MAD MAX totally change the games as below.
Currently the old server is much cost effective than powerful PC now than previous plotting.

Under MAD MAX:

  1. Dell 720xd :E5-2670v2*2 ,288G DDR3 1600 RAM ,ramdisk as temp-- - under 27-29 minutes in Linux (1000-1200 USD)

2.5800X. 2T 970 Evo plus *2 as temp and temp — 38-41 minutes in windows.
(2000 USD)
3. 5900X,Intel optane 280G as temp 128G DDR4 3000 RAM as temp 2 ---- 30-32 minutes windows , 26-29 in Linux
(3000 USD)
It is clear that Machine 1 is way cheaper than 2&3 and still manage to get close to best performance .

My Setup:
Lenovo Thinkstation P500 with 1*2697v3 14Core, 64GB RAM, Optane P4800X as Temp1+2
Gets 32-33 Minutes Plots
Cost me €960 which is about $1100

I got pretty lucky when I was looking around for a second plotter, Madmax had just come out and got a good deal from a guy selling of his old home server/eth miner:

  • Asrock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 mainboard
  • 2x Intel Xeon 2680v2
  • 16x16gb ecc rdimm (256gb total)
  • Dell perc H300 (hba)
  • Corsair RM1000X psu
  • 2x Scythe Mugen 5 B
  • Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4408 case
    This was 500 Euro

added a ssd for boot and one of my nvme’s from 1st plotter as temp1
So the total system cost is like 675 Euro for 50+ plots/day

Here is btw also a nice list with systems and times (from @SlothtechTV I believe) where I now see I made the conversion from EUR to USD the wrong way :joy:

This is very cheap. 32GB DDR3 ECC memory goes $50 - $60 USD. You have 256GB.

  • Asrock Rack EP2C602-4L/D16 mainboard
  • 2x Intel Xeon 2680v2
  • 16x16gb ecc rdimm (256gb total)
  • Dell perc H300 (hba)
  • Corsair RM1000X psu
  • 2x Scythe Mugen 5 B
  • Inter-Tech IPC 4U-4408 case
    This was 500 Euro

Your $2000 $3000 machines, are their CPU fully loaded during Mad Max?

Under MAD MAX:

  1. Dell 720xd :E5-2670v2*2 ,288G DDR3 1600 RAM ,ramdisk as temp-- - under 27-29 minutes in Linux (1000-1200 USD)

2.5800X. 2T 970 Evo plus *2 as temp and temp — 38-41 minutes in windows.
(2000 USD)
3. 5900X,Intel optane 280G as temp 128G DDR4 3000 RAM as temp 2 ---- 30-32 minutes windows , 26-29 in Linux
(3000 USD)
It is clear that Machine 1 is way cheaper than 2&3 and still manage to get close to best performance .

well, sometimes.
for 5900X ,it sometimes reach 90-95%
for 5800X, it sometimes reach above 95%