I’m interested in building a bladebit system. I am having a hard time deciding which processors to get. Both systems will be running 512 gb of ram, 2666 for the intel, 3200 for the amd. The intel system will be 40 cores and the amd will be 32. Can anyone chime in on which processors would be best?
Most probably the Epyc ones. But for the price of one bladebit systems, you could have MANY madmax plotters with 16 cores and 128Gb DDR4 tho… Food for thought
Get a Threadripper Pro.
Bladebit is sensitive to overall memory throughput. Number of threads, clock speed per thread, memory clock speed.
Xeon processors are known to turbo only on a limited number of cores, when you use only some of the threads. But if you load them all, they are going to reduce to the base frequency.
Xeon 6148 is 40 threads x 2.4 GHz, so let’s call it a 96 “units of compute”. Epyc 7282 is 32 threads at 2.8 Ghz base frequency: 89.6 “units”.
L3 cache: 27.5MB in Xeon VS 64MB in Epyc. If to compare just the CPUs, Epyc looks better.
If you are willing to pay astronomical price for 512GB DDR4 3200 registered memory, then Epyc is gonna be much better.
I can tell you based on my hardware:
MadMax (108GB ramdisk):
Single Xeon 6238T + 2933 RAM at 20 threads plotting
Ryzen 5900x + 3600 RAM at 12 threads plotting
Both systems produce ~20.5 minute plot times
Bladebit:
Dual Xeon 2683v4 + 2400 RAM ~9 min plot time
2 Likes
Also worth considering:
Intel Xeon Gold 6148 - PCI Express Revision: 3.0 / Max # of PCI Express Lanes: 48
AMD EPYC 7282 - PCI Express Version: PCIe 4.0 / Max # of PCI Express Lanes: 128
Depending on what you want to install in the long term, you might want PCIe 4.0 instead so you can get really fast IO on NVMe storage or support more than a few GPUs.
1 Like
get 3x tourist stuff such as 5950x + 128gb ram for about 1500$ each. it spits 18min/plot for 0.05$/plot with right ssd. There is many kids that do not care about costs, and brag about fast/expensive plotting rigs.
If you plot for 1$/plot, how the hell do you plan to repay it in 30 years…if Chia survives so long?
Unless, you plan to plot 1’000’000 plots…I highly doubt there is any datacenter stuff that can beat the costs…once, you get fed up you sell those PCs for almost same money…where do you sell EPYC, Xeon and 512-2048GB RAM?
It is niche market with little demand - except people that cannot count costs, and need something to brag about in pub.
It is a market targeted at enterprise customers. The businesses buy these, use for certain time with a planned deprecation period of ~5 years. While being used, the equipment gets depreciated every year for a tax deduction as a cost to operate business. At the end they sell the equipment for a residual value on a public auction.
That’s where you can buy it for a lot cheaper than it was new. Once this equipment is in your hands, after you are done plotting, you can resell it to the next person. Yes, it is niche, but there are communities put there specializing in “home lab” hobby, and they buy/sell this kind of equipment all the time.
1 Like
I wanna buy one. I was told ddr3 platform is max 400$ with 512gb
Ddr4 max 1000$
I cant find anything any where in Europe 
Even popular UK shop bargain HW has nothing for claimed prices. Everything starts at 1000$ with just 256GB, which is allegedly too low for MM plotting
I have tried to research what is plotting time on those machines. People brag about 15min free RAM plotting
They do not know wattage, nor share config.
I highly doubt 400$ ddr3 system will do 15min…i have seen few, and they had like 25min per plot with 500Wh or 220W/plot or <0.05$/plot.
It is time to replot for compressed plots. I would really like 400$ server with 512gb ram that can do 15min plot.
Any suggestions, please?
1 Like
Prices for server hardware in Europe and US are very different in my experience. (anmd shipping from US is too expensive). Europe has less stuff available and hardware prices are higher anyway + VAT.
An older server with 256 GB DDR3 is already around the 300-400 point.
My advise would be: just get a server with 256GB DDR3 and add a good nvme ssd.
CPU(s) don’t matter as much anymore, since you will be using GPU to plot, right?
from MM’s github:
Example HP Z420 + RTX 3060 Ti
My test machine is a HP Z420 workstation with a single Xeon E5-2695 v2, 256G (8x32G) of DDR3-1600 memory, 1 TB Samsung 970 PRO SSD, 10G fiber NIC and a RTX 3060 Ti. It only cost around $1500 to build.
Plotting time for k32 and full RAM mode is ~190 sec, or ~170 sec for level 7+ (
-Denabled). Plotting time for k32 and partial RAM mode is ~280 sec, or ~250 sec for level 7+, using a 1 TB Samsung 970 PRO fortmpdirandtmpdir2(-Denabled, half the RAM filled with zeros). Plotting time for k32 and partial RAM mode with two SSDs is ~270 sec, or ~230 sec for level 7+, using a 1 TB Samsung 970 PRO fortmpdir2and a 1 TB Sabrent Rocket 4.0 fortmpdir(-Denabled, limited to PCIe 3.0, half the RAM filled with zeros).
sounds romantic on paper if you wanna have some fun. How do you write 700TB to HDD that writes 150-230MBs?
I have been observing modern WD Gold 14TB filling up…outside tracks 220MBs/4min/plot…inside tracks/full hdd…150MBs ~12min
I doubt anyone serious about farming purchased Kioxia 100TB SSD for 50k $ or uses many SATA SSDs
You will need large cache where you can keep Terabytes of plots until you write them to HDD.
I wanna to avoid buying yet another crap…while plots are already paid, and most of them paid at least 30% of HDD price. yet another 1500$ investment is no go for sane investor.
My workstation already have 128GB DDR4 3600MHz, 16 cores @ 4.3GHz, and AMD RX 6800 XT. once, official plotter comes out with OpenCL support…I would be happy with 5-12 min plotting times 
I already have ~17.5min/plot, but it wears down SSD.
I have contacted a guy from UK…Dell PowerEdge R720 with dual Xeon E5-2683v4 costs around 500GBP without RAM…DDR4 2400MHz 32GB modules 50GBP each…that would be another 600GBP for 384GB RAM for full RAM plotting…allegedly similar system does 9min/plot
around 1100GBP + VAT + import crap…1500GBP…Similar stuff is on German eBay 1500-1700€…for obsolete, inefficient HW. DDR3 platform may be perhaps 1000 or less…“renting” it for perhaps 400GBP/€ and 3 months of 80dB whining in my apartment
My workstation is <40dBA with 55W/plot.
1 Like
Well…you asked for fast plotter I’m not buying it, lol 
Now I am really confused what your question is/was? Why would you want to buy a high spec server with high CPU power, when GPU plotting is around the corner and much faster and much more power efficient?? that kind of cost will never be less than a worn-out ssd that costs 80 bucks.
What you need when you create plots very fast, is a buffer disk (nvme) and a script (that hopefully at some point will be included in the plotters) that moves every plot to alternating destinations.
That way you will be writing to several hdd’s at the same time. otherwise there is no point in plotting fast.
1 Like
there were some kids talking about RAM plotting around <15min. my ssd is officially worn, but still works. i doubt it survives new replotting. I am researching solution for <0.05$/plot
it will take months to become official. they are in alpha/beta stage, what I have understood. I tried official/stable Bladebit hybrid plotting, and it crashed in the first minute. I get rather married if I want problems
what is the point of fast plotting, if you need more crap to cache plots? <5min/plot would need terabytes of storage to keep up
1 Like