I have an old Dell R620 Server with 2x1TB SSD and 3 2x600gb SAS drives each in raid0 thinking of trying to turn it into a farming machine my question is I have server 2019 and server 2022 or windows 10/11 licenses available for a clean install of the OS which would make accessing the most usable processing / Ram combination for a startup farm and how many plots would it be best to set up
Im considering upgrading the amount of ram currently 16gb modules thinking of going to an additional 16 x 16gb or just upgrading to 32gb modules
any comments / advice this is my first foray into the “crypto mining” field previously custom built machines for gaming and high end architectural / engineering applications but never anything for this type of application also considering adding a fiber channel array with 2TB hot swap drives
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You should wait a bit before making any big spends as plot format may be changing soon, so the best plotter setup will also change.
2TB drives are a bit pointless unless you have cheap electric
How many plots? More plots = more reward
In fact, on re-reading your post I think you are confusing plotting speed with profit.
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Why would you farm on such a machine,it has got idle 150W…you would need 200 x hdd to make it sense.
As separate RAM plotter (assuming you can install at least 384gb ram), it may be interesting
Official plot will be always same for few more years. New compressed plots are optional. It takes at least 2 months to repay plots plotted for <0.05$
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16GB are more than enough for farming.
There are people running harvesters on a raspberry pie.
for comparison: That uses 3 Watts of power.
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Yeah, not perfect for the farming part, but if it pulls more than $20 in Chia a month (assuming about 200 watts with a handful of harddrives attached), we’re still talking profit. I vote for getting things started anyway and fine tuning the farmer setup as we go.
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I think part of the hangup is you’ll need a JBOD or something else to put some plots on for the farming part. The crew in here is better with bigger builds, so I defer to them. Usually that turns into a discussion on fitting 20 or 30 drives in one box (thousands of plots).
You could always toss a few consumer grade externals on top https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-18tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/6427995.p?skuId=6427995 just to get your feet wet. It’d be a quick 50TiB farm to see if you like this, but I’d hate to see you waste too much time on this detour if you already have a server rack (stick to SAS drives).
you can build 120 HDD server…just use old SAS2 HBAs + expanders. Even in Europe you get them for 50$ 8 ports…popular Intel expanders…I have 48 drives in old server…it may handle 120 drives…maybe one day 
I also run Monero node so those baby boxes such as Pi is no go for me.
It is all about efficiency. Repaying 18TB HDD takes 5-8 years now, assuming HDD won’t die after 4 years (BacBlaze stats). You want max. density with lowest wattage. We get lovely energy price hike this year…0.31$/kWh
You also want cheap plots. Each plot costs me 0.05$…it takes about 2 months to repay plot…unless, your HDD dies…you can use them until Chia devs decide to change something
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