Reference Plotting Hardware

These are machines that work well to quickly create plots in parallel. These serve as starting points to think about acquiring or modifying existing systems to be good plotting machines on a TBs of plots created per day basis. You don't need this level of hardware to then farm plots that have been generated however. For that a Raspberry Pi is enough.

Plotting can be done on consumer systems (laptops), but is much faster done on high-end desktops, workstations, and servers. Plotting takes scaling for CPU cores to improve the parallelism (this is -r number of threads, or number of parallel processes), scaling in DRAM per process, and fast SSDs or many small 10k hard drives for temporary storage space.

each K=32 will require approximately 332GiB of temporary space, a minimum of 4500MB of DRAM, and at least a single CPU thread. For instance, a 1.6TB SSD would have 1.46TiB usable in the OS, could fit 4 k=32 in parallel (4*330 < 1490GiB), and would require 18GB of DDR4.

the actual amount of DRAM needed per K value and U value (buckets) based on b17 plotting in MB

U/K	128	64	32	16
32	4,508	9,241	18,945	38,837
33	9,241	18,945	38,837	79,616
34	18,945	38,837	79,616	163,212

The goal of a plotting machine is to create the highest TiB per day of plots, with the lowest system cost. There are many unique combinations of consumer, data center, and enterprise hardware at many different price points that are adequate for plotting. For SSDs, please see the https://github.com/Chia-Network/chia-blockchain/wiki/SSD-Endurance page

this is a spreadsheet of the community systems to compare against https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/14Iw5drdvNJuKTSh6CQpTwnMM5855MQ46/

user (optional)	System name	OS	System details	CPU	DRAM	temp drive	total time per plot (s)	time phase 1	time (min)	time (hr)	GiB written	GiB/min	processes	TiB/day	version	r / threads	-b memory	buckets	stagger	Stripe size
@storage_jm	i9 gaming desktop	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z390 Prime	i9-9900	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	16850		281	4.68	101.33	0.361	1	0.51	b17	16	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	i9 gaming desktop	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z390 Prime	i9-9900	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	18791		313	5.22	101.33	0.324	4	1.82	b17	4	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	i9 gaming desktop	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z390 Prime	i9-9900	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	30000		500	8.33	101.33	0.203	8	2.28	b17	2	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	HPE DL360 gen9 (2x 6 core)	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	HPE DL360 Gen9	Intel® Xeon® Processor E5-2620 v3	64GB DDR4 ECC 2400	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	50000		833	13.89	101.33	0.122	12	2.05	b17	2	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	i5 NAS	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	H310 ITX	i5-9600k stock	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	24389		406	6.77	101.33	0.249	5	1.75	b17	1	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	i9 high end gaming	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	EVGA X299 Dark	i9-10980XE overclock 4.5GHz	96GB DDR4 2666	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	30000		500	8.33	101.33	0.203	18	5.13	b17	2	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	Supermicro X11	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	Supermicro X11DPL-I	Intel® Xeon® Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz	128GB, 4x32 DDR4 ECC at 2666	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB x2, 4x 3.2TB in RAID 0	35137	13906	586	9.76	101.33	0.173	24	5.84	b17	3	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	Supermicro X11	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	Supermicro X11DPL-I	Intel® Xeon® Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz	128GB, 4x32 DDR4 ECC at 2666	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	30000		500	8.33	101.33	0.203	18	5.13	b17	4	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	Supermicro X11	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	Supermicro X11DPL-I	Intel® Xeon® Gold 6140 CPU @ 2.30GHz	128GB, 4x32 DDR4 ECC at 2666	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	28000		467	7.78	101.33	0.217	12	3.66	b17	6	5000	128	no	Default
@storage_jm	i9-10980XE stock	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	EVGA X299 ftw k	i9-10980XE 3.8GHz	96GB DDR4 2666	Intel SSD DC P4608 6.4TB, 2x 3.2TB in RAID 0	22300		372	6.19	101.33	0.273	6	2.30	b17	6	5000	128	no	Default
@andrewadavidson	i52500K	Windows 10 pro	ASUS P8P67	i5-2500K overclock 4.8Ghz	16GB DDR3 1600	Intel SSD DC P4600 1.6TB	27586.711	10549	460	7.66	101.33	0.220	3	0.93	b17	2	4700	128	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	Transcend SSD220S 480GB	75000	30000	1250	20.83	101.33	0.081	6	0.68	b17	1	4508	64	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	Transcend SSD220S 480GB	65600	25600	1093	18.22	101.33	0.093	6	0.78	b17	1	4508	128	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	Transcend SSD220S 480GB	72400	33250	1207	20.11	101.33	0.084	6	0.71	b17	1	9500	64	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	Kingston A400 480GB	93000	31500	1550	25.83	101.33	0.065	6	0.55	b17	1	4508	64	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	WD Red WD80EFZX 8TB	64000	24000	1067	17.78	101.33	0.095		0.00	b17	1	4508	128	no	Default
@maggel	Consumer gaming	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z97-PRO	i7-4790 stock	32GB DDR3 1600	Samsung 970 EVO	60000	29500	1000	16.67	101.33	0.101		0.00	b17	1	4508	64	no	Default
@scully_chia	Chia Farming Comp	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z270-A Prime	i7-7700	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel DC P3605 1.6TB Sun Oracle	34500	13800	575	9.58	101.33	0.176	4	0.99	B17	2	4500	128	Yes	Default
@scully_chia	Chia Farming Comp	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z270-A Prime	i7-7700	32GB DDR4 3200	Intel DC S3710 400GB	35500	14200	592	9.86	101.33	0.171	1	0.24	B17	2	4500	128	Yes	Default
@scully_chia	Chia Farming Comp	Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1	ASUS Z270-A Prime	i7-7700	32GB DDR4 3200	WD DC HC320 8TB HDD	44000	16250	733	12.22	101.33	0.138	1	0.19	B17	2	4500	128	Yes	Default
@kiwihaitch	Dell 730xd	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	Perc 730 SAS HBA	Dual E5-2680 V4	256GB DDR4 ECC	22 x HGST 800GB SAS SSD (HUSMM148 CLAR800)	61824	23800	1030	17.17	101.33	0.098	44	6.08	B17	4	4540	128	no	Default
@kiwihaitch	Dell 730xd	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	Perc 730 SAS HBA	Dual E5-2680 V4	256GB DDR4 ECC	22 x HGST 800GB SAS SSD (HUSMM148 CLAR800)	88649	36353	1477	24.62	208.84	0.141	22	4.37	B17	4	9300	128	no	Default
@kiwihaitch	white box server	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	9301 HBA	dual Xeon E5-2660 v3	256GB DDR4 ECC	24x HGST 900GB SAS2 10K HDD	58764	24958	979	16.32	101.33	0.103	24	3.49	B17	4	4500	128	no	Default
@kiwihaitch	Ryzen	Ubuntu Server 20.04.1	9301-16i	Ryzen 7 3700	64GB DDR4	6x WDC WD100EMAZ-00	86180	33085	1436	23.94	208.84	0.145	24	4.91	B17	2	9400	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-9	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG MAXIMUS XII FORMULA Z490	Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-10900K 10-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 970 EVO 1TB (PCIe v3), XFS	15764	5079	263	4.38	101.33	0.386	1	0.54	B17	4	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-8	Fedora Server 32	Asus TUF GAMING X570-PLUS (WI-FI)	AMD Ryzen 5 3600XT 6-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Intel DC S3710 400GB (SATA 6), XFS	22483	6878	375	6.25	101.33	0.270	1	0.38	B17	12	4608	128	Yes	Default
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	22489	11841	375	6.25	101.33	0.270	1	0.38	B14	1	7000	128	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16141	5451	269	4.48	101.33	0.377	1	0.53	B14	8	7000	128	Yes	1024K
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16928	6278	282	4.70	101.33	0.359	1	0.51	B14	4	7000	128	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16286	5565	271	4.52	101.33	0.373	1	0.52	B14	8	7000	128	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16331	5564	272	4.54	101.33	0.372	1	0.52	B14	8	11000	128	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16140	5416	269	4.48	101.33	0.377	1	0.53	B14	8	13400	128	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	17325	5837	289	4.81	101.33	0.351	1	0.49	B14	8	13400	64	Yes	256k
@xorinox	node-2	Fedora Server 32	Asrock X570 Taichi	AMD Ryzen 7 3800X 8-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3200	2x Gigabyte Aorus 1TB (PCIe v4), XFS in RAID 0	16141	5451	269	4.48	101.33	0.377	1	0.53	B14	8	13400	64	Yes	1024K
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	13989	3772	233	3.89	101.33	0.435	1	0.61	B17	16	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	14097	3910	235	3.92	101.33	0.431	1	0.61	B17	12	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	14202	3994	237	3.95	101.33	0.428	1	0.60	B17	8	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	15032	4783	251	4.18	101.33	0.404	1	0.57	B17	4	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	17291	7059	288	4.80	101.33	0.352	1	0.49	B17	2	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-3	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3200	Samsung SSD 980 Pro 500GB (PCIe v4), XFS	20406	10144	340	5.67	101.33	0.298	1	0.42	B17	1	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-4	Fedora Server 32	Asus ROG CROSSHAIR VIII HERO	AMD Ryzen 7 5800X 8-Core Processor	64GB DDR4 3600	LVM RAID-0, 16x 400G Intel DC S3710, XFS	11841	3381	197	3.29	101.33	0.514	1	0.74	B22	1	4700	128	no	Default
@xorinox	node-6	Fedora Server 32	Gigabyte TRX40 AORUS MASTER	AMD Ryzen TR 3960X 24-Core Processor	128GB DDR4 3000	6x LVM RAID-0, 4x 400G Intel DC S3710, XFS	26899		448	7.47	101.33	0.226	24	7.81	B22	24	4700	128	no	Default