I am new to Chia

I am new. I am just curious as a hobbyist miner. I did buy some starter evergreen hd just to get exposed to it. Actually thinking of cancelling my order, really not sure. I am on the fence.
My logic is, it gets me in fast and I can see if I like mining and chia ect.

If I want to add more plots I would look into plotting myself. The general state of crypto and this bear market is playing on everyone’s mind.

What advice would you give a newbie? Much thanks…

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It’s a good way to get in and see what the project is all about. If you get serious at some point, the project is already moving toward compressed plots though - you won’t be competitive on the Evergreen unit long term (may never break even). Welcome to the club in any case :sunglasses:

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Thanks looking for some plotter builds. Will the compressed plots just be utilized with he new plotting software or does hardware come into play. I am thinking using the hpe z440 as a work station.

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Take your time buying equipment…

I would advice against the Evergreen as they are not set up for the new compressed plots…

If you’re a tinkerer, you won’t be satisfied with them anyways…

Take your time and build a plotter for Linux, and GPU plotting.

You can get a decent plotter (not the fastest) but one that can plot 5-10 min plots for 500 - 700 dollar’s depending on how good of deals you get.

Be prepared to have head banging against the wall days if you don’t know Linux… but it’s worth it in the end!

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thanks for the reply. Already having those moments haha. been scouring YouTube for diff plotter builds and will probably go budget. Lots of good info there. I need a checklist lol.

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Mind you that a lot of info out there is pretty outdated by now.

At the moment you really want to look at GPU plotting.

Gigahorse from Madmax is already out and functional. Chia’s own version is coming…soon (but actually wont be too long)

The next thing is how big do you think you want to make your farm? Because that impacts on what kind of setup you want to go for. If you want to scale up something like SAS is highly recommended.
If you stay at something like 250 TB or below, I think other options like regular SATA or USB may be easier/cheaper.

Also power usage is important depending on your kwh price. Larger volume hdd’s are much more efficient in the long term

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Perhaps don’t be so quick to dis the USB method. I’m at 740TB USB 3.0 and soon going to 900TB+. Once figured out, it’s quite simple, cheap & easy to setup & use. Same for Windows, compared to the unending Linux issues, for anyone not wanting to bang their head constantly, figuring it all out, it works well enough. Ok I await the bashers :rofl:

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I wont hit you too hard if you but me a beer. :beers: :beers:

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yeah my farm is on Windows as well…Linux is a pain to manage the disk and all. And I like the familiar tools like crystaldisk and hwmonitor
For plotting I like Linux better though.

Cool to hear you have such a big USB farm, what’s the trick? I keep reading ppl with trouble connecting too many usb devices, that’s why i mentioned it for farm size limitation.

No trick, just using the right hdw, for when your motherboard USB reaches it limit of connected devices. Not the $15 card many would got for, but it has the right stuff, so for example > 4 Port PCIe USB 3.0 Card w/ 4 Channels - USB 3.0 Cards | StarTech.com

The key things most often missed are the following referring to the above card>

  • Provides four external, independent USB 3.2 Gen 1 Ports

Many cheap adapters just act like hubs, not providing true USB controllers, and not for each connection

  • Supports up to 20 Gbps total transfer bandwidth - Up to 5 Gbps per port

true 5Gbps at each port, no sharing bandwidth

  • UASP support across all four ports

not required - but for that extra speed when used by supported devices

  • PCIe x4 interface compliant with PCI Express 2.0 specifications

works with old and new hdw alike

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I’m in a similar situation. 740TB+.
Some internal SATA via a SAS HBA with SATA splitters and the rest to large ICYBOX / Fantec enclosures with 12,14,16TB but mostly 18TB drives. Fairly painless to setup and also all on Windows. Wasn’t cheap though but I am still bullish on long term future of CHIA.

Used the same machine to do the plotting but this has changed now with GPU plotting being done on a dedicated machine and then sneaker netting them over :wink:

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Welcome !

My advice is : read and do your own research. There’s a lot of misinformation and dishonest people, but if you make sure you understand then you can’t be fooled.

Also, prices will go up in approximately one-year (halvings are coming along) so now is a good time to get into it !

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This seems pretty good. Been following this guy.
https://digitalspaceport.com/chia-gpu-plotting-workstation-guide-hp-z440/

I am really a noob and would need to follow a tutorial like this. I did cancel my evergreen miner order, and looking into hardware.

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Plotting is a one-time affair (mostly) so you want to spend as little of your budget as possible for plots, and as much of your budget as possible for storage space.

I recommend you look into Akash or plotting services, and focus on buying plots and drives, rather than plotting itself. Plotting services will become a lot cheaper.

It all depends on your budget of course. If you want to put more than $15k you can start looking into white label HDD deals, jbods and GPU plotting and farming. Less than that, you’re better of focusing on buying big drives and buy plots to fill them.

Tell that to those of us that have been at this since the beginning. I’m gearing up to plot/replot for the 3rd time (this time, compressed plots). And there is no way to tell if this will be the last time. I doubt it.

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Yes of course, I’m about to do my third replot too. What I mean is that the plotting hardware will be mostly unused, so it’s less important to buy the best plotting station than to buy more drives. I think you’ll agree to that :slight_smile:

Now with GPU plotting and compressed plots, it might become a bit less true than it was with CPU (the compression makes the GPU more important for farming). But I’d prefer having more TB in my farm than a faster/more efficient plotter.

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The first time plotting I was using new hardware, so it cost me money because I sold it at a lower price after finishing plotting.

2nd time, I bought second hand server hardware and sold it for pretty much the same price afterwards.
And this is what I will do for the 3rd time as well.

I have a desktop that can do plots if needed to add another disk once in a while but for full replot it doesn’t make much sense keeping a high end machine around. Especially like we see now, that the hardware requirements change.

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Are you going to farm compressed plots on CPU only ?

Not sure if you meant me. But sure why not, can we plot compressed plots yet? If I ever get there…

I was asking @Voodoo . The low level of compressed plots can be made and farmed with a CPU, but not as efficiently/as fast. So I’m curious to know about what he’ll be doing, since plotting machines aren’t always worth keeping around (they’re often used for a short time only) and he has usually sold his previous machines.