Pumped to do this - got a few questions

Seed88_

Internal or External? Internal hard drives seem to have better specs and may even be cheaper - isn't it easy to set up 10+ internal drives with Sata cables?

I have a gtx 970, i7 2600 - will I be able to use my desktop pc for intensive gaming etc while the mining is happening? I also have a crappy laptop that just about runs chrome/mozilla (5 years old) - would that be better on its own?

Any other pieces of advice you have for me? I'm looking to bulk up on 120 to 200 TBs of storage.

iKnow0

@Seed88_ said in Pumped to do this - got a few questions:

Internal or External? Internal hard drives seem to have better specs and may even be cheaper - isn't it easy to set up 10+ internal drives with Sata cables?

It depends on you level of IT experience,
less experience external
more experience internal
Note: most mother boards only come with 6 SATA slots so an additional SATA controller will be required.

I have a gtx 970, i7 2600 - will I be able to use my desktop pc for intensive gaming etc while the mining is happening?

Yes / No / Maybe It depends on your setup
CPU or GPU miner?
On average you miner will do a read every 4 min, so for the majority of that read time you will experience lag

I also have a crappy laptop that just about runs chrome/mozilla (5 years old) - would that be better on its own?

Big NO

Any other pieces of advice you have for me? I'm looking to bulk up on 120 to 200 TBs of storage.

Start small, read, learn, then learn some more then expand, as with most things there is a learning curve.

Good luck on your adventure...

Seed88_

@iKnow0 excellent - thanks for the advice.

To be honest, my current rig is all exposed ( I built it years ago and never bought a case lol) so my internal hard drives are actually external already...connected to SATA. My level of IT experience is reasonable - I'm guessing the SATA controller is like a multiplier - but what I'm wondering more about is the power. I don't want to buy a power supply to run multiple HDDs - is there a way to have power the HDDs externally - without a standard mobo power supply?

Do you think it's worth going completely internal or will the difference be minimal at best? In which case external more worth it.

iKnow0

@Seed88_ your current PSU should run up to 14 drives with out an issue, get a few 4 X SATA power splitters. For the SATA controller you will need a free PCI-E slot. SATA is faster than USB 3.0 so you will have quicker read times. All exposed is ok if there is good airflow (ambient cooling).

Do you think it's worth going completely internal or will the difference be minimal at best?
In which case external more worth it.

Its a personal choice, i go internal as the more parts to the system the more that can go wrong.

Seed88_

@iKnow0 thanks again - time to find some appropriate HDDs and do the math.

If anyone has any recommendations for 5TB (or more) HDDs that are optimal - feel free to suggest.

sevencardz

@Seed88_ 5TB drives are so 2016. 8TB is where it's at.

Seed88_

@sevencardz noted

how long do you think we have until mining is so difficult we're gonna need proper stations i.e 500 TB or more - in which case the average joe won't be able to do it.

ZapbuzZ

@Seed88_ when blocks run out but not so large maybe

Seed88_

@ZapbuzZ any guesses time-wise?

Just found out my mobo doesn't have USB 3 - if I install a USB 3 PCI card - will that be less effective than having on-board USB3? IF so I may have to upgrade the mobo entirely.

ZapbuzZ

Block availablility is listed i forgot the link to burst-team.us about it. That time wise has been asked on the forum before i'm guessing several years but they get less often won. USB3 addon cards are usually better than built in ones they usually have the added feature of sata-power or molex-power connection to PSU that ensures stable power throughput which is especially useful for bus powered external disks. Also, PCIe USB3 add ons with 7 ports have more independent lanes in the chip circuit design.

sevencardz

@Seed88_ If your mobo doesn't have USB3.0 then it's a total dinosaur. Go with a new Ryzen 7 1700 and build a system around that.
Get 2 - 4 8TB 7200RPM NAS drives for plotting (avoid Seagate NAS).
Get 2+ 8TB Seagate Expansion externals (note: these use SMR tech).
Get this mobo and have expansion for days: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157757
Use Xplotter to plot with the Ryzen 7.
Plot to the NAS drives, copy to the externals (faster this way due to SMR tech).
Use jminer with the 970 to mine.

Seed88_

I appreciate the swift and detailed responses guys. Many thanks to you all.

Still pumped to do this thing!

Seed88_

@sevencardz I've been studying quite a lot. Honestly, yesterday I couldn't fully understand what you meant but tonight I see the logic.

Great advice to buy fast drives for plotting. But, since I'm going to copy the plot data to the other drives, why did you recommend 2 to 4 NAS drives - wouldn't 1 be enough to plot and copy each time?

IncludeBeer

@Seed88_ Depends on how fast you wanna go. With cpu plotter (XPlotter), you can plot to multiple hdd's at a time (assigning a few threads and some RAM to each instance). The copy between the drives can take some time by itself, so having multiple will allow you to parallelize the process.

IncludeBeer

@sevencardz said in Pumped to do this - got a few questions:

@Seed88_ If your mobo doesn't have USB3.0 then it's a total dinosaur. Go with a new Ryzen 7 1700 and build a system around that.
Get 2 - 4 8TB 7200RPM NAS drives for plotting (avoid Seagate NAS).
Get 2+ 8TB Seagate Expansion externals (note: these use SMR tech).
Get this mobo and have expansion for days: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157757
Use Xplotter to plot with the Ryzen 7.
Plot to the NAS drives, copy to the externals (faster this way due to SMR tech).
Use jminer with the 970 to mine.

With a Ryzen cpu, I'd use the 970 to mine some gpu coin, and mine burst with cpu miner like Blago's. Frees up the 970 to do other work since Burst mining is trivial compared to PoW.

Burstde

If you are on a budget.
My laptop dell E6510 did okay to mine selling under 50 used. with 2 8tb drives before I burned out the controller on the thermal black dual drive dock. Still use laptop from time to time and sometimes plot at 2400 nonces per minute

working Desktop Build low budget all used from ebay.
ASUS H97-Plus Socket LGA1150 ATX Motherboard ($55)
i5--4570 cpu
16gb ddr3

85-212 mb/s speeds in blago
Soon adding one sata controller as I have too many drives now

sevencardz

@Seed88_ I guess if enough parties were interested, I could just do the plotting for you guys as a service for a reasonable fee (and shipping). It's true, there's no need for everyone to buy a high-end CPU or GPU just to plot a bunch of drives for a few weeks. Once you're done plotting, you can mine on any decent machine with enough ports and a $100 GPU or even less if you only have a few dozen TB or so.