Looking to start a new plotting rig.
I’ve tried 3 rigs with the following results:
AMD Threadripper Pro 3955x
256gb Very slow DDR4 RAM (220gb RAMDRIVE)
WD_Black NVME drives ~3 plots per hour (2 at a time)
Intel Xeon E5x2697v3
160gb Very Slow DDR4 RAM (110gb RAMDRIVE)
WD_BLack NVME drive 1 and 1/3 plots per hour (1 at a time)
Dell Precision T7810 Workstation
2X Intel Xeon E5-2670 V3 2.3GHz 12-Core
128GB DDR4 (110gb RAMDRIVE)
WD_Black NVME drive 2 plots per hour (1 at a time)
What results are the rest of you getting? I no longer have the AMD rig, but thinking of making another one, but I feel like it was just so expensive that I’d like to find other alternatives.
Please tell me what stats your INDIVIDUAL rigs have and what speeds you’re getting. Very curious. Preferably formatted similarly as I have done as well so people can easily peruse this thread to get some ideas, as I’ve seen other similar threads, they’re usually a mess.
AMD Ryzen 5900x 12c24t
128GB DDR4 3600CL16 (107GB ramdisk)
Intel p4610 1.6TB nvme 2.3 plots per hour (1 at a time)
Intel i7 8700 6c12t
128GB DDR4 3200CL18 (107GB ramdisk)
2x Intel s4610 480GB RAID-0 SATA 1.1 plot per hour (1 at a time)
On the first rig, CPU is the bottleneck during phase 1, the other phases SSD appears to be a bottleneck.
On the second rig I use only 5 threads, because it is also busy farming.
AMD Ryzen 9 3900X 12c24t
64 GB DDR4 (No RAMDRIVE)
Samsung - 970 EVO Plus 2TB Internal PCI Express 3.0 x4 (NVMe) Solid State Drive for Laptops with V-NAND Technology ( Qty: 2) 2 plots per hour (1 at a time)
I got this on EBay: new Lenovo ThinkStation P620 Workstation: Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3955WX, 16GB 512GB WiFi (no graphics card). It was ~$2400, sadly, they’re no longer avail cheap. Nice quiet, small workhorse.
Then optioned it up w/64GB 3200MHz memory and a bunch of nvmes (SG US70 1tb, 980 Pro 1tb, GIGABYTE AORUS Gen4 7000s 2tb, plus a x4 nvme M.2 x16 Gen 4 card. Also got best times of ~3 plots per hour, 2 at a time for best @61 p/d, but 3 at a time got best @65 p/d. No RAID, no RAMdrive
You could overclock a non-Pro TR. Might be faster and cost less.
All of my nvme drives are using cards that are in pcie 3.0 (except on the amd build). But, I think technically, if you look at any mentioned builds you would be able to confirm that too (as my 2697v3 and my dell only have pcie 3.0 if you look them up)
As far as I have seen from different posts I get the feeling that after a certain performance level you get a diminishing return for extra money spend on a better system.
Price/performance I still think (older) dual Xeon has it. I have:
Dual Xeon E5-2680v2
256 GB DDR3 1600 (110gb RAMDRIVE) (don’t need that much ram but came with the system)
WD_Black 1TB NVME drive 2.1 plots per hour (1 at a time)
P.S. this is on Ubuntu, on Windows because of the crappy Ramdisk there I only got 1.4 plots/hour
Ryzen 3900x
32GB DDR4 3200
2x 1TB WD black (no raid) 2 lots per hour (1 at a time)
Also server boards tend to come with lots of PCIe and sata/sas connectors.
You don’t need PCIe gen 4 anyway because you will never reach that speed with a nvme
You can also have a look at these sheets (not mine I dont know how accurate they are)
Have you tried setting it to a 220gb RAMdrive (or 2 separate RAMdrives of 110gb though idk if that’d do anything special) and done two separate windows to two separate NVMEs? I’d think you’d increase your plot rates? That’s what I did on my AMD system (though it was DDR4 and not DDR3). It only increased the speed by about 50% though
haven’t really tried, I was happy with the speed and also farming on the same machine so didn;t want to push it too far.
I’m done plotting for now, so I switched back to windows for farming because i’m not so familiar with Linux and managing vm’s and such in Ubuntu was just costing too much time to figure out.
I did try to run on 2x wd black vs ramdisk + 1x wd black, there was near to no difference. So ramdisk (at least for this setup) was only to save the wear on the ssd’s not really a speed advantage.
My HP Z230, i7 4770, 8GB DDR 3. Bought as no hard drive incomplete computer, for $80 at eBay. Motherboard has five SATA III ports.
Added $5 HDD for system.
Added four 250GB old 2.5 SATA SSD, bought at eBay for $60. I made them two 2x250 RAID 0. One 500GB RAID 0 for -t. One 500GB RAID 0 for -2.
Added other small items for $5. So the total cost of this rig is $150.
It can do one plot for 115 -120 minutes. That is 2 hours for one plot. Stable running 24/7.
If I have 4 of this running, that is $600 hardware 48 - 50 plots a day.
I tried two Crucial P5 grade NVMe as -t and -2 on this rig. It can do one plot in about 100 minutes. Given the fact that those second hand SSD’s are way cheaper, I am happy with 120 minutes.