Looking good! What’s the price of the disk racks? Do you have a link? Have you tried stacking/combining them in a rack?
The racks cost around $35 for 12x 3.5" HDD, including sata and power cables: Brand New 12 Layer 3.5 Inch Mechanical Hard Drive Bracket External Hard Disk Box Stack Rack Frame HDD Bracket Metal Storage Cage|Computer Cables & Connectors| - AliExpress
The PCIE X1 for 20 ports adaptor costs around $30: PCIE SATA Adapter 20/16/12 Port PCI Express X1 to SATA 3.0 Expansion Card Riser Add On Cards Supports PCI E X4 X8 X16 for Mining|Computer Cables & Connectors| - AliExpress
I thought about using a 4U with 24 HDD capacity pro rack like supermicro or so, but I couldn’t find one cheaper than my aliexp setup 
Besides, I have 3 PCIE slots. With 3x 20 port PCIE adaptors I can use 60 drives. I currently have 26 (additional to the ones inside the pc tower) so plenty of capacity to expand for cheap.
I’m still buying second hand HDD to remain cost effective (especially with XCH current prices). The average HDD size I have is around 12 TB. I’m trying to increase this average but I still have a lots of drives to purchase before reaching the limit
To put it into prespective and compare with a pro server rack of a few k$:
Buying 3x 20 ports sata expanders ($90) + 5x 12 bay rack ($175) = $365 you can use 60 drives. So, for 18 TB drives that’s slightly more than a PB for a reaonable cost if you don’t mind the mess…
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Thanks for the info. I prefer SAS but it’s a bit more expensive. I’m looking to make my own diy rackable servers, you can reach 90 drives in a 4u enclosure so it’s a no brainer. I haven’t looked into those drive holders, I might be able to mount them transversally with rails on the side.
Here is an update of my farm:
I tried the inter-tech 4w2-mining-rack ($130) in order to try to reduce de noise level of the fans, make it tidy and easier to move around. Besides, it makes it look server like and a bit more cool 
Here is my feedback if you’re planning to do the same:
- I can put 36 drives inside (12x 3)
- I had to cut some parts of the metal enclosure in order to fit the graphics card
- Adding more drives is a nightmare… You basically need to shut down the farm to make any tiny modification of upgrade
- It took me 8 hours to put everything inside and back farming again
- I broke one sata connector of an 18TB because of the lack of space, so be careful (I managed to fix it but it will never be the same hard drive)
- the original fans are extremely noisy! I had to replace them with “be quiet” fans
- when the rack is closed it looks cool, but give a look at the cable mess inside…
- There is a similar rack dedicated for Chia selling in alibaba but the shipping costs are huge and I think the results would be similar
- if you decide to try it, use an easier plugin HDD mount (no screws) in order to avoid to remove all the 12 drives like in my case
- I did not think about the weight… It’s super heavy to move around
hope it helps
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Hi, there. How are you doing? I am impressed by your setup! I have an olg SuperMicro server chasis with 12 bays and woudl like to build something similar to yours to mine Chia. How do you conenct HDDs to a the motherboard? What controller and cables do you use?
Hi, there. How are you doing? I am taking on Chia mining and reading around about setups. I see that you have a great knowledge and experience. I have a similar server case. I would appreciate if I may ask some questions. Cheers
Just some of the Machine that I manage doing Chia Farming, not mine. These are the Harvester Machine. Just being active here, just to learn from other guys here that have plenty of experience on Chia Farming as well as make some contribution to Chia Community if ever i have idea on things that being ask.
How did you space the drives? Did you print some mounts for them that you screwed to the case or something?
So, you know someone that esentially bought a datacenter to farm Chia?
How did you get into my garage and take pictures 
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I sneaked in when your away, sorry. 
Yah, this set up has only 1,246 drive attach on it with only 67% of drive space use, and with only 75K plus plots on it, we are still doing plotting till we reach 100K plus plots or 99.9 percent of space consume.
So, is that 10 PB running on 8 TB drives? How many drives per shelf?
Damn. That’s crazy! Yall keep this in a DC? Convert a garage? What are you guys looking like on power consumption?
That is 1,246 * 10W give or take. So, about 2.5x of 20 TB drives, but most likely with a much lower cost per TB. So, for few years, the total cost may be less than those 18-20 TB drives. Potentially, good enough to see how XCH will turn out in 2-3 years. Especially, if they pay $0.1 per kWh.
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You are one special smart rich tech guy and an inspiration to us all Thank you for the 
tour, it was worth every Chia filled minute 
. However, it’s like watching a vid listening to Buffet tell us how he makes 
in comparison to most of our miniscule 
s and making 
s over time, like more in a week than many of us in a year.
Nevertheless, onward to our Chia future!
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We all gotta start somewhere, right? I started working at age 15 for McDonalds; stayed in school, got good grades, went to college and got a B.Sc. in computer science. Got bored programming computers all day, went to law school. No one would hire me in 2008, started my own law firm. Got burned out practicing law, and built this Chia empire during COVID. Life’s good!
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Oh, hey yeah! I saw your spotlight on Poor Investor’s channel. Stellar setup; love it 8).
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That’s awesome, thanks so much for sharing.
I didn’t notice any heat venting to try to move hot air out of the garage. Are those AC units all you need and doing fine without extra ventilation?
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