Ram disk should be 258gb to do all phases in one single temp .
I send 2 hours try to install with CentOS 7 and Ubuntu 20.04, both can’t make it work. Do you have better detail documents on how to install? Thanks
I used a 300G for Ram disk and the performance still the same.
Nah. I haven’t messed with it any. I don’t have a machine with 512GB of RAM. I just saw that you did and thought you might be able to benefit from it.
With my 3900X I was getting a plot every 28 minutes or 1677 seconds, -t was on my OS drive (Sabrent Rocket 4 1TB), -2 was a 2 x 1TB SN750 in raid 0. -r was 20
Using the two SN750 1TB as tmp 1 and tmp 2 I was getting 2270 second plots, although this was -r 18
I have 3800Mhz ram with tight timings, which may well help.
My 2TB SSDs are already sold, finishing the last bits of TiBs of pool plots… in about 3 days, everything will be finished. Let it farm/mine and forget about it.
Will sell plotters too.
Peace is near now!!! 
If anyone interested, selling some things:
A plotter i5 10th Gen
- Core i5-10400
- ASUS ROG Strix H470-I Gaming
- SSD M2 120GB OS
- Samsung Evo Plus 1TB
- 16GB DDR4
- Power supply
- CPU Cooler
-
functional, brings 17 plots with MM per day
Selling price: 299 euros
A Farmer i5
- CPU Core i5
- Gigabit H61 LGA 1155
- 8GB DDR3
- SSD 250GB OS
- 6 USB ports
- Onboard HDMI support
- Motherboard I/O plate
- Power supply
- System in working state at the moment of sell (if use for plotting, 156 minutes per plot)
-
Selling price: 199 euros
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Dear ChiaMiner.
I am average Joe. I’ve bought on eBay for 420 doll. used Dell Power Edge R820 server with 2 Xenons CPUs (6 cores each, total 12 cores, 24 logical CPUs) and 256 GB of RAM. I am using latest MadMax plotter (with GUI ) with Windows Server 2016 standard OS. I’ve installed RAM disk and set it 130 GB for Temp2 directory. For temp1 directory I have 2 10K SAS drives in RAID 0. I set number of threads to 24 to match my logical CPUs. It takes on average 2 hours 15 min to create a plot. I believe hard drives for temp1 directory are bottleneck. I’ve heard that is possible to plot everything in memory if you have 256 GB of RAM. What would be the best setting for servers with 256 GB of RAM? Thank you.
Recommended RAM size:
Main directory 2: 110GiB ( =118.11160064 GB )
Secondary directory 1: 220GiB ( =236.22320128 GB )
=both making it 330GiB =354GB
And your system needs some RAM to function as well.
The best is to mount an NVMe SSD M.2 for temp directory 1. (Note : external SSDs disconect often. It should be mounted physically onto the motherboard. )
You can do all in one temp drive 257gb and ti have t1 and t2 same ram disk drive
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He has just 256gb, and the OS + plotting need some RAM. One cannot use 100% of all RAM as disk.
I think that is cheaper to get another 32gb of ram then to buy ssd and burn it
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I agree with you there, but:
My guess is that all the RAM lanes are taken with 256GB.
i have the same exact machine. i use 110gb ram drive and a samsung 980 nvme . ram drive is temp 2. i make a plot in around 38 min. i also bought a usb 3.2 card and installed it for fastest transfer speeds. nvme has lasted over 1000 plots so far. if yoiu switch to Ubuntu you can get the times down to around 25 min a plot. im just lazy and im good with 38 min.
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My bad. I actually have the hp z820. Ive got 40 cores. But should work the same.
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2 hrs 20 on an 8350, not to bad at all for such an old cpu.
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@ChiaMiner,
No, I have only 16 slots occupied with 16GB memory modules in each one. I have 8 slots available. I was thinking about adding another 128GB or RAM but then I saw in the “readme.txt” of MadMax: “… Combined (tmpdir + tmpdir2) peak disk usage is less than 256 GiB.” That is why I started this thread to verify if I can add only 32 or 64 GB of RAM, and plot everything in the memory. 128 GB of used RAM would cost around 240 - 260 doll., Brand new 400 GB SSD with SAS interface (not NvMe) is around 125 doll. The memory option is the best, I just need to be sure I can dedicate 256 GB to RAM both temp1 and temp2, and still have enough RAM for buckets and Windows Server 2016 OS. Currently, I have 128 GB of RAM unutilized. BTW, how the number of buckets would affect plotting speed and memory usage. From reading posts, it looks like the less number of buckets I select, the more RAM I can utilize. Is it true?
Thank you for sharing. I am software IT guy not a hardware tech. What card do I need to install into riser to be able to connect NvMe? Do you have a link to Amazon/eBay? Same for USB3. I used network to transfer files, and it takes around 30 min for each plot.
just heads up, I have 288G RAM and use 260 G for ramsdisk for temp and 2 in Ubuntu &win server 2016 , both works just fine with Madmax. 256G is a little bit tight, but it surely not requires 300G above.
Just in windows (45-50 minutes),the performace for ramdisk sucks… use Ubuntu(28-30 minutes)…with same machine setup,. you see how big the difference it is, not 10%-15% at all.
I didnt buy a internal card. I bought a enclosure for the nvme. Just make sure u get one for the card u buy. There not all the same. All just depends on the card you buy. If u buy the 980 samsung just search for a enclosure for a 980 samsung. Mine isnt in the enclosure tho. It was getting to hot in it. No issues. There are card readers but most cant handle the speed of say the 980. Tis y i bought a usb 3.2 thunderbolt card.
Here is data for size of ram disk
257 is peak