Hardware Recommendations for Optimal Mining Power

Conclusion: Dedicated Server + PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD

Before we begin, it's crucial to understand that the key hardware requirement is a disk with read IOPS exceeding 160k. Refer to our another post to know your disk.

Through our testing, we have evaluated the performance of various hardware configurations to determine their effectiveness in mining.

No.	Server type	Mining power	IOPS	Comment
1	VM + SSD	3-10%	N/A	Include VPS
2	VM + NVMe 3	40-80%	30k	Include VPS
3	Dedicated Server + SSD	N/A	60k	Include PC
4	Dedicated Server + NVMe 3	80-100%	176k	Include PC
5	Dedicated Server + NVMe 4	100%	349k	Include PC
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Explanation

1. VM (Virtual Machine including VPS) + SSD (Solid State Drive): Mining power ranged between 3-10%. This setup demonstrates the lowest mining efficiency among the tested configurations.

2. VM + NVMe 3 (Non-Volatile Memory Express): Mining power significantly improved, showing a range between 40-80%. This indicates that upgrading to NVMe storage offers considerable benefits over traditional SSDs in a virtualized environment.

3. Dedicated Server + SSD: We haven't tested EthStorage node, only tested IOPS.

4. Dedicated Server + NVMe 3: Achieved mining power of 80-100%. However, this mining power is unstable; our monitoring bot reports that approximately 30% of the time, it fails to achieve 100% mining power.

5. Dedicated Server + NVMe 4: Achieved mining power of 100%. This configuration stands out as the most effective, providing full mining power potential.

We plan to continue testing additional machine types and configurations. As we gather more data, we will update this document to reflect any new findings that may influence our recommendations.

Performance tuning

1. Please refer to EthStorage's official document for performance tuning. https://docs.ethstorage.io/storage-provider-guide/storage-provider-faq#what-can-i-do-about-mining-tasks-timed-out

2. For any questions related to performance tuning, we strongly recommend visiting the official Discord community first. The moderators there are incredibly responsive and helpful.

3. VM+SSD: from our practice, it's not worth the effort to optimize the VM+SSD machine which has less than 10% mining power. It means don't buy VPS from cloud provider to run EthStorage node.