PC for HDD Burst mining and HDD plotting

Altaren · June 25, 2017

So a friend asked me to build for him a pc that would be specifically used for mining using many external hard drives (and some internal ones too i suppose). Ive only ever built gaming PCs so im slightly out of my comfort zone here. Am i correct in thinking it needs as many PCI-E lanes as possible to support USB 3.0 expansion cards? Speaking of, can i get any recommendations for those?

I was thinking ryzen 7 on x370 and a decent GPU for plotting tho im not sure how much RAM and VRAM it will need. Would be very glad of any addition comments on this as like i said ive never done anything like that before. Is it true that its possible to daisy chain a crazy amount of usb 3.0 hubs thru just one port as long as those hubs have their own power supply? If thats the case then do i even need to bother with extra pcie lanes?

Thanks

Thunderzzu · June 25, 2017

17 minutes ago, Altaren said:

So a friend asked me to build for him a pc that would be specifically used for mining using many external hard drives (and some internal ones too i suppose). Ive only ever built gaming PCs so im slightly out of my comfort zone here. Am i correct in thinking it needs as many PCI-E lanes as possible to support USB 3.0 expansion cards? Speaking of, can i get any recommendations for those?

I was thinking ryzen 7 on x370 and a decent GPU for plotting tho im not sure how much RAM and VRAM it will need. Would be very glad of any addition comments on this as like i said ive never done anything like that before. Is it true that its possible to daisy chain a crazy amount of usb 3.0 hubs thru just one port as long as those hubs have their own power supply? If thats the case then do i even need to bother with extra pcie lanes?

Thanks

For an entry-level BURST mining rig, a dual core i3 kaby lake is sufficient, and you also need just 8 GB of RAM. For the plotting i'd take a RX 470 GPU (4 gigs are enough) and the just fill all the slots on a mobo with the discs and all PCIe lanes with usb 3.0 expansion cards. Also make sure to check prices of 4 and 8 TB drives because often, the 4TB variants are cheaper when bought in pairs than the single 8TB would be. Going ryzen 7 is a bit too much IMO, but it depends on how much your friend is willing to invest in the hard drives.

Also, if you want to build a high-end burst mining rig, a Ryzen 5 1600X and 16gigs of ram is also fine

Altaren · June 25, 2017

1 hour ago, Thunderzzu said:

For an entry-level BURST mining rig, a dual core i3 kaby lake is sufficient, and you also need just 8 GB of RAM. For the plotting i'd take a RX 470 GPU (4 gigs are enough) and the just fill all the slots on a mobo with the discs and all PCIe lanes with usb 3.0 expansion cards. Also make sure to check prices of 4 and 8 TB drives because often, the 4TB variants are cheaper when bought in pairs than the single 8TB would be. Going ryzen 7 is a bit too much IMO, but it depends on how much your friend is willing to invest in the hard drives.

Also, if you want to build a high-end burst mining rig, a Ryzen 5 1600X and 16gigs of ram is also fine

Thanks for your reply! How many disks in total do you think he could run on a regular ryzen 5 system?

Something like this https://de.pcpartpicker.com/list/xKBLNN

Would a different mobo be better?

Thunderzzu · June 25, 2017

If you're using a GPU, a strong CPU isn't really needed because you're using jminer for plotting. If you really want to do the plotting with the CPU, you need to use xPlotter in that case.

I know for a fact that you can easily do 60TB with a dualcore i3, but anything other than that, I'd just be speculating...

Altaren · June 25, 2017

5 minutes ago, Thunderzzu said:

If you're using a GPU, a strong CPU isn't really needed because you're using jminer for plotting. If you really want to do the plotting with the CPU, you need to use xPlotter in that case.

I know for a fact that you can easily do 60TB with a dualcore i3, but anything other than that, I'd just be speculating...

Yea but i believe he wants to go much further than 60tb. I might have to ask in another section, i guess what i really want to know is if there is a difference between how many external HDDs can be connected to a ryzen 5 or a ryzen 7 (or i guess i3 or i7). If there is no difference then i guess i can go with an i3 and a strong gpu for plotting.

Thunderzzu · June 25, 2017

1 minute ago, Altaren said:

Yea but i believe he wants to go much further than 60tb. I might have to ask in another section, i guess what i really want to know is if there is a difference between how many external HDDs can be connected to a ryzen 5 or a ryzen 7 (or i guess i3 or i7). If there is no difference then i guess i can go with an i3 and a strong gpu for plotting.

Nope, doesn't matter at all. When you're mining, the cpu usage will NEVER go above 5% when using a GPU, and a RX 470/480 is probably more than enough. There are a lot of builds on the internet using just a dualcore and one GPU for 1PB builds, so the only thing really worth spending your money on is a power-surge protector for the discs.