If you switch between Intel generations, you mostly also need a new motherboard
10 and 11 use same mobo, 8 and 9, etc.
So I think in that case you can better go for a 10th gen i5.
I kind of chuckle at what I’m reading here. Not to sound overly cocky, but my trust i7-4790K and 16GB of DDR3 spits out a plot every 3.7 hours using the Chia GUI and Chia plotter. No magic here folks.
2 Likes
Here’s were I check out various CPUs in comparison. I threw a few in to give you an example of various ones through the generations vs yours… but you can change them to suit yourself.
Just my opinion, but you could do a lot worse for a budget build than what you bought, and alternatively, a lot better…but it will work regardless. Good luck 
!
Best plot speed to energy consumption has been my Mac Studio Ultra. Epic blazing fast - very low power consumption.
1 Like
Do you use SSD? How many parallel?
Here’s a thread that dives deeper into the actually specs
Yes, in all my glee in posting that, I forgot the best part! I should edit it. No SSD (no pun intended). Just 15K SAS drives, 4 of them. Not in parallel. Just running 4 “jobs” or “queues” all at the same time. Default RAM and 2 threads each on my 8 thread CPU. I know I can short stroke the drives as well but I’m not sure how much faster I can get out of these 15K, but in theory they can run even faster. Not time for that yet though. My preliminary findings, which I didn’t like, was the 100% full CPU usage with Mad Max in comparison to what I’m doing now. I didn’t spend a lot of time with Mad Max but it was a slug by comparison. Something on my end I’m sure. But running a CPU at 100% 24/7 for plotting? I’ll take a hard pass on that. Dare I say that a CPU isn’t designed to be running at 100% load 24/7. Maybe it can. Maybe the motherboard can handle it. I just know that when those components were developed, crypto 24/7 100% workloads were not a “thing”. Just add good cooling? I LOL at that. I don’t like killing good hardware before it’s due date for this venture.
2 Likes
haha - that’s my post.
3 Likes
I have a consumer grade HP PC with i7-6700. i7-6700 is about same speed as your i7-4790K. Speed, I mean CPU benchmark posted on websites.
Using a generic $50 500GB NvME, I could do 1.5 hour (90 minutes) a plot with Mad Max. i7 6700 is maybe a “de-tuned” i7. It runs not hot, warm at most.
I have HP Z420 takes v2 Xeon. Changed CPU to E5-2680v2 ($30 CPU now), Memory is old 128 GB DDR3. Do Mad Max in Windows 10. Temp 1 is two old 2.5 SSD RAID 0 by motherboard. Temp 2 is RAMdisk 110GB. It can do 50 minutes a plot. CPU is burning hot. Power supply fan and all three cooling fans in case are running at max speed when doing P1 stage of plotting. P2 stage all things cool down. P3 stage all things heat up again. Xeon CPU is hot but it can hold.
I know many bros get those 15K SAS for free and it runs diehard. For some low $ for solid state it can make plotting a lot faster. Also solid state uses way less power.
I’m running 7 200GB Intel S3710 enterprise SSD’s in raid 0, picked one up the other day for £16, virtually brand new, hardly any hours or use on it.
I’ve got two Xeon E5-2699v3 CPU’s and 512GB of ram, hottest day of the year the other day and I had it plotting K33’s flat out, once they were done I had Bladebit do 15 K32’s, now Blade bit actually does max out the CPU’s 100% (Madmax doesn’t even if I run two instances), CPU 1 was OK temperature wise, CPU 2 was hitting 77c, still OK but not ideal, maximum is 88c then it should throttle itself, as most modern CPU’s will.
I run a couple of E5-2695 v2 with each having a single 120mm AIO, and my CPU temps are maxing out at ~45c. However, I am fighting RAM temps as those peak at ~90c. Not sure whether you checked those on your side.
I’m running Linux Mint, so its a nightmare trying to do anything, I use Sensors which may show ram temperature - its turned off at the moment so can’t check. I do have all the cooling ducts installed, and its DDR4 so may run a bit cooler than DDR3 which I presume you’re V2 would use.
If it was Windows it would be easy for me to check, but everything seems so complicated in Linux.
What’s your point? Not asking in a disrespectful way.
Are you saying that 100% load 24/7 on any CPU is “normal” without consequence so long as temps are reasonable? At best I would call that an untested claim. I’m all ears though on other industries or use case scenarios where a CPU runs at 100% 24/7. I always look at what things are really built for. I don’t think they test cpus, I don’t think Intel runs their CPUs at 100% usage 24/7 as a way to gauge their products. I stand to be corrected though.
If your point is that an SSD is faster than SAS hard drives? It goes without saying which is more power hungry. I guess I’ll have to preface my comments on the basis that anyone who’s paying high power, I’m not really interested in discussion. I would have to do the number crunching to decide whether or not power consumption means that much to me versus how much my plotting system costs. But also I have to consider my feelings about CPU load and what it’s doing to the lifespan of those. I read a lot of conjecture and no consideration of 100% workloads 24/7. Just assumptions that it’s all good. If you tell me Intel tests their products under those conditions please let me know, along with the source link.
My box is Ubuntu (atm), but may I be switching to Rocky Linux soon, and that is DDR3 indeed. On my box not just checking the temps is a pain, but I have 8 sticks of RAM, but only two sensors are showing (I guess, one per CPU side). I use pfSensors, though.
Anyone here have either a 12400, 3700x ? (and some madmax/bladebit results)
I’m trying to decide my next desktop plotter cpu and I can’t really make up my mind.
(actually I was going to go for a 3800xt but thee seller hasn’t responded yet so I might be back to having to choose)
I’d go for one of these > Intel Core i7-12700 vs Intel Core i5-12600K vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3955WX vs AMD Ryzen Threadripper PRO 3945WX [cpubenchmark.net] by PassMark Software They’re starting to get up into 3000 series Threadripper territory … and on a decent motherbd with Gen4 ssd space they’'d do good as they have excellent single/multi core speeds.
I hate to come at this as a contrarian, but has anyone stopped and thought about what Chia is supposed to be all about? Green. A green choice. To me that doesn’t = buying new hardware. I think this should be a contest to see who can plot the fastest on the oldest hardware so that new entrants can get bargain equipment that is at EOL and needs a new forever home. To me there is far more pride in pushing old hardware to an amazing level rather than buying some new hardware and then boasting about that $1,000 investment in said plotter. But I digress.
I suppose I’m a bit out of place in this thread discussing a 4th generation Intel i7-4790K, 16GB based computer for plotting. I see myself as being noble by using such hardware. Far more impressive to me to read about somebody pushing old hardware to really fine tune things to an impressive level. Yes, I get it. You can go really fast in a really expensive system.
Other people want to put the pedal down on their 100K car, with their wheels blowing blue smoke into the air, while leaving a long patch of rubber, stained on the road. To prove what exactly? I can get from point A to point B without all the smoke and bravado.
This should be titled how to spend the most amount of money to get the fastest plot speed on earth. All this while Chia is at its all time lowest value. Interesting strategy!
1 Like
Yes those are both good cpu’s for plotting.
But im looking at a lower price point though.
I’m not really building a plotter, in fact I just sold dual xeon system.
Just building a desktop/gamer for about the money that i got for selling all the old plotting hardware i had accrued.
If I do any more plotting it will be one hdd in a while. But I still dont want it to take three weeks to get full otherwise i’d prolly just go with a i3-12100f
interesting but fair point, I imagine it all depends on one’s goals. I have a 1.7GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 (Turbo Boost up to 3.3GHz) with 4MB shared L3 cache and 8GB RAM creating plots for my solo side of the farm.
But if my goal is to reach one pe·ta·byte overall farm size within a year then I transition to focusing more on a slightly faster plotter/gaming CPU or the fastest that my budget would allow along with the larger 16TB (~146.7 plots) & 18TB (~165.1plots) HDDs although perhaps skipping that new 20 TB (~183.4 plots) in lieu for 22TB (~201.8 plots) due to the amount of free space left over.
I would gladly trade my slowest CPU and smallest 7x 5TB (~45.8 plots) and 13x 14TB (~128.4 plots) HDDs today. Knowing what I know now and several dust storms later, I would have been more patient.
It’s going to come down to patience. Right. Spend a lot less vs. having to wait longer to get those plots into service. I would respectfully suggest that at $40 XCH it’s a vastly different decision than when it was a $100+ XCH (that time period when 99% of the posters here in the forums were faced with decision making). If you create a money pit, what’s the big deal about burning a bit more cash?
If my plotter is 75% cheaper than something faster but can get to the finish line just like yours, then is that worth disregarding because you aren’t laying a patch of rubber on the road? I say 75% but I could probably say 90% in some instances. I could build 3 or 4 plotters to 1 super plotter. Add the benefit of making use of older so-called EOL hardware? That’s a noble choice in my opinion.
I personally disregard the bravado discussions about plotting records. Oh wow, Mad Max is creating or has created GPU plotting. I don’t recall Chia farmers complaining about plotting times. Yes, plotting times was the greatest focus on earth when Chia was $200+ or even at $100+ value.
To close this out there is also nothing to guarantee that Chia sticks around at $40 and why isn’t going back to $30 or even $20 possible? It is possible. ETH might be creating more issues for other coins if the merge actually works out. I’d say it won’t help XCH pricing. So to me it’s still about making smart purchases. But I do get the thrill of that smell. The blue smoke from the tires spinning so very fast. But I would also point out, you aren’t moving forward at that point either. You’re technically just sitting there, albeit in a cloud of smelly blue smoke that would be considered impressive by the crowd of 3 people watching.