So I was aiming for is a ryzen 9 5950x with 16core with 4x Samsung NVME M.2 2TB and 64GB RAM.
But for now I have seen people only getting around 20 plots a day or less with the 5950x.
So I wonder if I need a Threadripper™ 3970X or even a 3995X. How many plots can I make with each of these CPU with 4x Samsung NVME M.2 2TB and 64GB RAM/128GB RAM per day?
If you are going to use a Threadripper you should go with the pro series (wrx80 chipset) which has 8 dimm channels and 128 pcie4 lanes. The biggest bottleneck in plotting is the bandwidth between different parts of your motherboard so you need the wrx80 chipset which is essentially a server motherboard. The asus motherboard for the wrx80 has until recently sold out and I got mine after a 3 week lead time.
I am using 3975wx (pro series - 32C/64T) and getting about 80-90 plots a day. I am still figuring out how to optimize it with stagger times.
I have a friend who is 3995wx (64C/128T) with 512 RAM and easily gets 150 plots/day. But this setup will cost you $15k minimum.
Why would you need pcie 4 lanes for? I have thought the important thing is firstly the amount of m.2 nvme slots and secondly the generation m.2 nvme slots (gen 4). So for the motherboard with sTRX4 socket. It has 3 nvme m.2 slots. So i just have to only maybe add one raid to get in total 4-6 m.2nvme.
Or are you using 8 or even12 M.2 NVME SSD on one computer/motherboard?
and it also has 8 dimm channels and 4 pcle lanes, too such as the Asus Rog Zenith ll Extreme Alpha. The Gigabyte TRX40 Designar has even 4 nvme m.2 slots.
Can you please tell me your exact build? And how much did your setup cost in total (without the cost of the HDD)?
which cooler do you use for CPU and does your CPU gets very hot while plotting (90 degree celsius)?
No, m.2 disks do not have high enough sustained write speed to use pcie gen 4 speed.
The computer I have is a workstation and was built for my work in CAD and 3d modeling/rendering and not Chia per se in mind. The main investment I have made for chia is the hard disks.
Because it has twice the bandwidth and transfer rate of pcie-3. When you moving a lot of data between CPU, RAM and SSD you need both.
There is a lot of things you need besides m.2 nvme SSD. I wouldn’t worry about m.2 slots because you can always use pcie slot to add your m.2 SSD. Asus hyper m.2 lets you jam 4 m.2 into an add-in card.
Or are you using 8 or even12 M.2 NVME SSD on one computer/motherboard?
I am using 4x 2TB Sabrent rocket plus inside a hyper m.2. I have two hyper m.2 cards.
This build costs about 10k if you don’t factor in the GPUs. Chia investment was the asus hyper add-in card, sabrent nvme SSDs and HDDs.
Thank you for providing me information about your build.
Now if I would exacty get the same build without the 2x RTX 3090. And with a Power Supply of 800W or 1000W only instead.
Does the Meshify 2xl case has also enough space for 5 HDD internal drives?
If you really use 8x 2TB Sabrent SSD. Shouldn’t you actually get way more plots per day? Because I have seen people saying they generate with 4x 2TB SSD NVME M.2 100 plots per day, also.
It can do up to 18. I am using zero hard disks in the case though. All the hard disks are in 44 bay JBOD.
You need to read the link that was provided earlier. It will clear up all your misconceptions of what the limiting factors are and you will understand why “4x 2TB SSD NVME M.2 100 plots per day” is not possible.
That sounds like an awesome system ikbodud, with an awesome price too! 44 JBOD…wOw. Lots of good advice for M931Z 
M931Z, I’ve tried smtg in the spirit of ikbodud but low cost, you might consider. Bought a Lenovo P620 TR 3955WX (16c/32t) rather than upgrade to x570 after getting initially frustrated w/my B550 and it’s lack of PCI-e lanes, lack of nvme slots @PCI-e 4.0, lack of slots in general. Also time to build/test (there is no time). As a pro workstation it’s cooled, solid, built like a tank, full of HD expansion and …wait for it…on ebay ~$2500. Add 64GB memory, nvmes, HDs, USB HDs and go! It works currently at x26plots/day (I need more temp nvme), but runs like an appliance rather than a F.O.R.D. (fix or replace daily PC). Couldn’t be happier, and I have my old B550 back to play. Good luck. 1-200 plots will take more cores, more of everything, but this is a start.
Hi @ikbodud ,
i’m building a similar config, can you give me some advice about the ram to choose ?
In the asus qvl there is no ram that go over 256 gb, i need 512gb.
Thanks
I’m trying out a Supermicro JBOD with 4x Xeon E5-4650 and 512 GB RAM (See here for details: Selling Supermicro SC848 CSE-848 24x Bay JBOD (4x Xeon E5-4650/512GB RAM))
I currently plot to 16x 2 TB Disks HDDs (SATA, 7200 RPM), doing 32x in parallel with 20min stagger.
ArgumentList: 4 Thread, 3990 Buffersize, Max in P1: 16x, MaxJobsPerDisk: 2
So far the speediest Plot was 40hours (A helluva time). The bottleneck there currently are the ultra-slow, spinning, disks obviously. And 2x parallel Plots on per slow spinner might be too much. I think 1x plot is the way here.
CPU does not really care about whats going on. Sitting at max 12% usage. Almost same for RAM. I don’t know how it behaves with some much more disk I/O but I assume the result will potentially be the same CPU wise.
So with some more HDDs for parallelization and faster ones, I think there is much more room. If it can break 100 Plots a day, I’m not sure.
Tonight I hopefully manage to get an NVMe hooked up and test a single plot. I’ll report back. It has 7x free PCIe 3.0 slots, so there is much cap for NVMes. However, I prefer plotting to disks. I don’t like burning SSDs.
I have the TRpro 16/32 and a TR 24/48 and the TR is much better IMO. Has more than enough lanes and cpu can overclock. For whatever reason the TRpro plots slower in every aspect. Maybe its because I bought 2X32gb ram instead of using all channels but I feel that is not the issue…My TR got a nice boost from OC the CPU I found.
If you are plotting to HDDs, you should only be plotting one plot per HDD so that you don’t thrash the disk head around. It won’t necessarily wear out the HDD any sooner, but you will most definitely slow down your plots.
The Xeon E5 is not known to be a speed demon and only offers 4 memory channels per CPU but it will keep cranking plots all day until the cows come home without breaking a sweat. Where the E5 shines is in parallel plotting.
The secondary SFF-8087 port on the LSI HBA can be used to plug in a second JBOD expander which will give you the opportunity to run even more parallel plots. If you go that route, make sure you obtain a cheap SFF-8087 to SFF-8084 adapter card and then an SFF-8084-to-SFF-8084 cable.
The CPUs and the HBA are passively cooled, so if you are tempted to change out the case fans for quieter ones, you will need to use active cooling on your CPUs and also put a small fan on the heatsink of the HBA.
You can get cheap 300GB 10k SAS drives to run a single plot on.
Word of caution: Don’t be tempted to put SAS and SATA drives on the same bus. It’ll work just fine. Until it doesn’t. And then you will regret that decision heavily.
Scale out, not up. You want to hit the ‘value’ points of IT equipment, not the ‘premium’.
I have plotted on some SAS1 and SAS2-era Supermicros and have been able to do 8 parallel plots (from 16 disks total, one tmp and one dst per plot). On SAS2 I can do 12 but beyond that on either I was seeing clear throughput-related slowdowns. All E5-class but not 4 socket like yours (I think).
With 16 disks I’d think you should see 8 parallel take11-12 hours, maybe a little longer if you’re CPU starved for some reason.
In parallel you should be able to plot on NVMe as well to go from ~24/day to (say 2tb SSD) another 24/day - ~250gb temp with only modest staggering, and -t2 and -d to one of the destination HDDs. That might slow the HDD plotting a bit but probably not that much.
I have 256 TB ECC RAM from NEMIX. (8x of 32GB DDR4-3200 PC4-25600 ECC).
They offer lifetime warranty and their custom service is great. Also gave me a nice upgrade option if I want to upgrade to 512 TB in the future.
80-90 plots are so cool. What is your temporary and HDD drive set up in order to support this rate ?
@Kilworth Not sure how familiar you are with building computers. Whichever motherboard you get, the manufacturer’s website should have a table of compatible RAM for that specific motherboard model. I would get one of those. If this is not possible, get RAM of the same type, clock rate, and timings. When you install it on the motherboard, fill the DIMM slots in the order recommended in the motherboard manual. This might be easier if you install the RAM before you add the CPU cooler.
Thanks for the information, that link is very usefull as I use a NVMe (enterprise) SSD larger than 6TB.
Hello,
i need some help.
i have a 3970x 32c/64t ,128 gb ram, 3 * samsung 980 pro 2 tb
i need fast plotting settings. could you help me about settings ?