I have no more ports on my existing two Windows boxes, one of which is a full node farmer, harvester, and plotter, and the other is only a harvester and plotter. I am also maxed out with add-in cards.
So I want to purchase an inexpensive harvesting rig, which will not be plotting. It will be a file server of sorts, for plot files, used strictly for harvesting. No internet access. Just used to connect more storage.
Basically, I have more hard drives, and I want to somehow connect them to my farm, probably with an enclosure such as this:
But my two existing Chia boxes are maxed out.
Since the new box that I am seeking will have a light workload, I am assuming that any old box will be adequate? Or am I mistaken?
Does anyone know the minimum specs for a strictly harvesting box?
Using a low-end box will hopefully consume less power, too, I hope.
Others brands at that price point were littered with complaints, or came with Windows 10 Home (I want Pro, so that I can Remote Desktop into it). This one has Windows 10 Pro.
I have no idea how good its Celeron N4020 processor is, but how powerful does a harvester have to be?
It is probably very low on power (electricity) usage.
It has no fan, so no noise. And no fan means it does not produce much heat, which means low power.
And it has three USB 3.x ports, and two USB 2.0 ports. With connecting Syba 8-bay enclosures to them, it should be able to handle 40 drives.
It has WiFi (which I will not be using).
Its Ethernet port is gigabit, which is good enough.
I will wait a few days, to see if anyone chimes in with additional recommendations.
I would not bother with anything Celeron when you can get ‘T’ variety CPUs, but that just me. CPU Mark of the Celeron is a fraction of a i5-6500T, and pretty sad if I must say so, but power is not much over a nightlight!
If those eBay listings that you provided were for new PCs, then I would go for it.
But they are used, and I do not want the headache if something does not work right.
And although the i5 processor is far more capable than the Celeron N4020 processor, if the latter will not struggle, then it fits what I am seeking. It is small and inexpensive.
I have 2 harvesters running Ubuntu and Chia CLI handling each close to 100Tib fine for couple months now. I’ve been adding disks as my pocket permits. Specs:
AMD Athlon 64 X2 - 6Gb Ram - 128Gb SSD for SO and Chia
Intel Core 2 4400 - 4Gb Ram - 128Gb SSD for SO and Chia
I had a N4000 Celeron laptop that ran quite fine with GUI Chia (Win10 and Ubuntu both). I even plotted a little with it when I was feeling zesty. 1 vote for good enough to farm or use as a harvester.
People still don’t understand Ebay policies, I can say that I have bought for the development lab that I supported over $150,000.00 of hardware with no issues.
It is not only about the price. Also, it is not necessarily about the return policy (although knowing that it can be returned is comforting).
If I run into problems, I will spend time trouble-shooting (I am not going to just box it up and return it without making an effort to remedy the problem).
And if it turns out that it has to be returned, then on top of the time spent trouble-shooting, there is that trip to the post office or FedEx, etc, and the cost of shipping. I just do not want spend time with the above.
I agree with the 7050 being a great harvester choice. But I think that the Mini PC with the Celeron processor will not struggle. It costs less, and @Captain_Plots-a-lot has used that processor (or a nearly identical one), and had no issues.
Even if you buy new you can run into issues, I guess I just ask why you keep wanting to go after junk and spend all this time digging fence posts with a coffee spoon???
(That’s why there’s a 30 day EBay return policy)
