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You can start plotting on almost any machine. There is one caveat though if you use bitfield plotting or not. Originally, the plotter did not use bitfield back sorting. The bitfield back sort is theoretically faster than not using the bitfield and we already know that it saves 12% of total writes but requires more RAM. Now bitfield plotting will not work on CPUs that predate the Nehalem architecture (CPUs were generally designed before 2010) so pretty much if you want to use Core or Core 2 DUO make sure you don’t use bitfield. It can be disabled if you go to GUI and when you click to the green '+ Add a Plot'
button open 'Show Advanced Option'
and then check 'Disable bitfield plotting'
.
There are multiple options, you may go to ebay or other sites to buy servers with a bunch of enterprise grade disks which is perfect for chia, or you go and get a bunch of second hand workstations. Or if none of these options are available to you and you don’t have any machines at home that gets you a reasonable amount of plot on a daily basis then you need to buy new. Our aim is to help you with this by putting together the configs and put them into ‘plots / day’ buckets. Now the final result depends on what kind of OS (Windows, Linux) and some other factors but in general you won’t regret if you choose any of the options below. We are happy to help you once you get started just comment if you get stuck.
Some resources that might be useful:
- Wikichip: Really like this page it gives you everything you need to know about CPUs
- Chia’s reference plotting Hardware
- Chia’s SSD endurance table
If you want to diverge from the below and change the temp drive or the farming drive you can do that by using the searches below. It may happen that what we selected is unavailable. The reason why we did not go with 16 or 18 TB hard disk drives is because they are currently out of stock on Amazon.
- NVMes on Amazon, in general focus on the TBW value / TB
- HDDs on Amazon, larger is the better in general. You can use internal and external as well.
Buying guide
Bronze (Intel NUC) | Silver (Intel) | Gold (AMD) | Platinum (AMD) 3970X - 32 core / 64 thread | |||||
Plot / day | ~12-14 / day | 16-18 / day | 26 - 30 / day | 48 - 60 / day | ||||
Qty | Qty | Qty | Qty | |||||
Case | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
PSU | Built-in | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
Motherboard | Built-in | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
CPU | Built-in | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
CPU cooler | Built-in | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
Memory | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
Boot drive | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
Plot drive | 1 x | 1 or 2 | 3 x | 4 x | ||||
Farm drive | The more the better | The more the better | The more the better | The more the better | ||||
VGA | Integrated | 1 x | 1 x | 1 x | ||||
Add. card I. | N/A | 1 x | 1 x | |||||
Add. card II. | ? | 1-2 x | 2 x | |||||
Peripherial | ? | |||||||
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If you don’t have the ability to buy plotting hardware whether it’s due to price inflation or lack of stock, you could in fact just buy the plots themselves. There is this really nice service that plots for you and you get your plot within 1 hour (depending on workload) and your first plot is free! The plots are cheap at as little as $1 a plot!
If you are interested in checking out this service, here is a reference link:
https://plotting.cloud/?ref=456
Note, when ordering plots, use this link and in optional put the following along with any other details you want: “Tria456 sent me”