Need to stop, the over planning is killing me

Greetings!
My daily chia internet reading, and watching youtube on plotting is endless.

I have a Clevo P960 laptop specs.

It has:
2 x Two M.2 2280 PCIe Gen3x4 interface (RAID 0/1) slots (occupied but will remove)
1 x 2.5" sata that I may reserve for the OS. (unoccupied atm)
I have 2 x USB 3.0 ports type-a (UBS 3.1 Gen 1?) and 2 x USB 3.1 Gen 2 type-c (USB 3.2 Gen 2?)

It’s running Win10 on a 500GB M.2 Sata with a QLC 2TB intel NVME M.2 that is totally game over for plotting. I am willing to take out the current drives to start fresh to get some skin in the game.

  1. I was considering getting 2 x 1TB Samsung 960 Pro (over $500) to use up my 2 M.2.
  2. Or going for the faster, larger 2 x 2TB NVME route and deal with the DRAM burst recovery rates.
  3. Depending on 1 vs 2, I am tempted to try a cheaper 2 x 1TB super fast write option 128L TCL ($120 - 150 each at 750TBW)
  4. Or stick with one large 2TB/4TB NVME with high TBW and keep my current Win10 drive in there.
  5. Is there pros / cons to using Raid 0 in the Bios for the temp drive? Some say to keep them separate. If going separate aiming for a larger SDD might make more sense is some cases. This affects all of the above choices.
  6. Is buying a Gen 4 SSD to run on a PCIe 3 ok for now to future proof to repurpose later on. I had researched many decent Gen 4/3 SSD brands with 3600TBW but they sellout so fast.

I’d appreciate any feedback to help achieve an ideal SSD/RAM/12 thread combo for plotting.

Thanks.

You don’t need to be “ideal” - better start now and you will have more plots in the end vs. sitting and thinking about it too much.

My setup is not ideal but works great for creating plots over time:

  • i9 10850k + Noctua D15 cooler (that CPU will run 100% 24/7 and deserves a good cooler)
  • Asus Z490-F
  • 128gb RAM corsair DDR4 3200Mhz CL16 Vengeance LPX
  • 2x Corsair Force MP600 SSD M.2 - 2TB (striped in win 10), 1 of these is enough, I have also used Kingston NV1 2TB M.2-hårddisk that is performing fairly similar with lower endurance

I can create 46-47 plots/day with this setup. I use madmax (Release madMAx43v3r/chia-plotter build for windows v0.1.1 · stotiks/chia-plotter · GitHub) in windows 10. Everything default except changing BIOS settings for Z490 according to this guide: Chia plotting - BIOS settings for ASUS Z490 Prime and i9-10900 for 3.9TB/day - YouTube.

Edit: Noticed that I’m 2 months late to the party, but for any other person in a similar situation: better start now than thinking too much about the ideal setup for plotting.