THE CHIA FARM

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gb00s

Well-Known Member
Jul 25, 2018
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Poland
Just wondering why nowhere ioDrives or other Fusion-io's are considered as good temp plotting destinations. Because they are PCIe2.0? Just imagine 4x 100US$ 765GB or 4x 60U$ 365GB in Raid0 with 11(!!!)PBW endurance. What am I missing?
 

Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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I actually tried getting some the other day (larger sizes), but no deals to be found for these.

For general chia use i think they lack the same as NVME - density.
Its way more efficient to plot slower on 20 sata drives than on 4 nvme's as NVME will not improve plot speed 5 times over sata...
 

msg7086

Active Member
May 2, 2017
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The point of using NVMe SSD is to plot on 1 drive in parallel. Each 765GB drive can do 3 plots in parallel, so 4 of them is 12 plots. You can however just plug 12 fast HDDs on it, and get a similar result. 18 HDDs and it's faster.
 
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Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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O/c you can scale up in parallel plots per drive, but the same is valid for sata/sas too. Sure, not as well as nvme, but lots more drive slots... also much cheaper drives :)
 

msg7086

Active Member
May 2, 2017
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For HDDs, they don't scale. I tested out 2 plots per drive, slightly higher throughput and slower for a single plot.

NVMe and SAS/SATA SSDs are both good for parallel plotting. However I just stick to HDDs because they are good enough for me.
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Last night, build my first real Chia plotter,
E5 Xeon 16 cores , 128gb ram, 3 x 1.6TB Fusion-io iodrive2 SSD

Running Ubuntu 18.0.5 , chia plot software only.
Still learning about chia plotting secrets and tricks.

IMG_1175.jpg
 
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bash

Active Member
Dec 14, 2015
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scottsdale
Currently plotting at around 120+/plots a day while scrounging together all my old xeon parts to utilize spare 4U's. Will be at 200+ plots a day by next week.
 
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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Last night, build my first real Chia plotter,
E5 Xeon 16 cores , 128gb ram, 3 x 1.6TB Fusion-io iodrive2 SSD

Running Ubuntu 18.0.5 , chia plot software only.
Still learning about chia plotting secrets and tricks.

View attachment 18576
@Marsh would be nice to see your progress, drive usage, and power utilization... I'm curious if we're talking 25% power, 50% 75% etc, of those drives\CPUs, etc, once you optimize your setup for max output and find that sweet spot. I just don't have enough HDD\slow space to make it work, have more TBs in NVME\SSD than HDD.. I did look at some HDD but big $$ now :(
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I am still learning how to maximize number of plots produce per day.

Every tweaks takes hours to produce test data, taking lots of time to tweak it.

I am off to build another E5 xeon 16 cores v3 machine with 3 x Intel P3600 SSD to experiment.
 
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bash

Active Member
Dec 14, 2015
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scottsdale
What are the configuration do 200+ plot a day?
I have mix of servers and even a 5950X cranking out plots.

One example is 7401P/128DDR4 with 2(4510 4TB's) cranking out 40-50 plots every 24 hours. Still testing settings and staggering I was hoping to push more but I think I may have been better off get 2TB 4510 and more of them vs 4TB.


edit* Not easy to tweak at the moment every little change in parallel threads or staggering times could actually hurt your 24HR numbers as your plot times can explode by 20-30% and actually turn into a decrease in plots/day
 

msg7086

Active Member
May 2, 2017
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Any good farming rig to recommend?

* Multiple bays, ideally 10+
* Hot swap not necessary
* Relatively quiet
* Blowing air towards drives, not sucking air
* Affordable

I was looking at Meshify 2 but wondering if you know anything better?
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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SSD solution

Purchased in late 2019, I been hoarding cheap enterprise SSD over the years
$100 each 1.6TB Fusion-IO iodrive2 SSD
$200 each 3.2TB Fusion-IO iodrive2 SSD

each iodrive2 SSD
Rated PBW: 17.00 PB, 99.80% remaining

I am 65 years, I probably expired before the SSD.

I also have few box full of Intel Pxxxx nvme enterprise SSD when ebay sellers dumped their inventory.

see pictures in post #9
 

gtech1

Member
May 27, 2019
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How are you guys getting 40-50 plots per day ? Does CPU speed matter that much ?
I have a dual xeon e5-2620v2 running 4 plots staggered via plotman ( Ubuntu ) on a single Fusion IO card and it barely does 8 plots per day. I can't image the Fusion-IO card being the bottleneck...or could it ?
 
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Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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I been plotting for few day, lots for me to learn and experiment.

Best I could do for now is 24 plots per day per machine
E5 xeon v3 with 16c , 32t , 128 gb ram ( actual use is 68gb ram), since I need more than 64gb , therefore, 128gb is installed.

using 3 x 1.6tb fusion-io iodrive 2 ( slightly older drive than sx300 series cards ) in each machine.
3 concurrent plots per iodrive2 card. 9 plots total completed in 8.5 hours.

I have 2 machines with 3 fusion-io cards in each machines,
1 machine is using 2 x P3605 , will add another P3605 card after tonight experiment.

This plotting stuff is all black magic to me.
 

gtech1

Member
May 27, 2019
78
6
8
So you are doing the same as me, since you have 3 fusion-io cards. With a single one you'd be doing 8, just like me.

I ordered 2 x 4627v2 cpus - 3.3ghz 8 cores each vs 2.1 ghz 6 cores each with the e5-2620

I'll see if it improves.

What speed is your RAM ?