DIY 3node Investment Ratio

3node Investment Ratio


Hey TFarmers,

I thought I’d share some cool ratio to compare between 3node builds.

I use USD for generic purpose, but you can do it with your current situation and currency. Prices will change depending on where you are living.

Note 1: It’s not just about having a good return on investment, so check the passmark on your CPU and aim for a minimum of 1000 passmark per core.

Note 2: The optimal farming ratio in terms of resources is: 100 GB of SSD and 8 GB of RAM per Thread (or in other terms: virtual core, logical core).


Table of Contents

3node Investment Ratio

USD invested / TFT farmed per month = 3node Investment Ratio

This is a quick ratio to see if your 3node has a good return on investment, based on TFT. We are looking for the smallest number possible: this means the investment ratio is profitable.

Titan as a basic comparison

With the Titan set a 970$USD, we farm around around 353 TFT per month, we thus have the ratio:

970 / 353 = 2.75


Note that to get the ROI with a specific TFT selling price, you just need to do

3node investment ratio / TFT price when sold = ROI in months

With the Titan at 2.75 ratio and 0.08$ per TFT, we have

2.75 / 0.08 = 34 months return on investment.

Typical 3node DIY rack server

Let’s take an extreme example for this one: the @Valentine969 great DIY server

This server farms 3122 TFT per month and costs 1161 USD:

1161 / 3122 = 0.37

So the Titan is 2.75 and this one is 0.37. This is not rocket science, but it gives you the broad range of possible ROI. That’s an extreme case where you can get very good online deals. Obviously, it takes time to find such deals so take all this into consideration when building your Threefold farm.

This build has 1126 passmark per core.

DIY Desktop Dell Optiplex 7010 - 32GB ram - 480GB SSD

This desktop can be bought for around 240$ USD and it farms around 256 TFT per month:

240 / 256 = 0.94

This ratio is higher than the previous example (thus less profitable), but it’s almost a plug n play scenario: no upgrades or hardware modifications are required. Take all this into account when building your Threefold farm.

The good thing about this build is that it has straight out of the box the perfect 3node ratio (100gb ssd+8gb ram per thread), with a passmark of 1300 per core.


Scaling the TF Farm

If you want to scale your farm, make sure you have enough bandwidth. As a general guideline, you can use this bandwidth equation:

min Bandwidth per 3node (mbps) = 10 * max((Total SSD TB / 1 TB),(Total Threads / 8 Threads),(Total GB / 64 GB)) + 10 * (Total HDD TB / 2)

For more information, check the ongoing TF discussion here.

Closing Words

We can go on and on with different 3node builds. Using this ratio when looking for a new 3node build can be very effective to spot “deals”.

As stated, you don’t want to simply farm the most TFT possible, but you also want to have a great machine that will add value and use to the Threefold Grid. In this case, look for a good passmark score. It’s also a good idea to buy SSD disks with a long warranty, this shows that the manufacturer expects the product to last a long time.

Happy Farming!

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Great breakdown. Thank you @Mik.

Here it states that we need 50 GB SSD per CU. Farming FAQ Zero-OS v3

Is this no longer accurate?

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It is still accurate.

1 Thread is 2 CU.

2*50=100.

Screen Shot 2022-05-10 at 4.32.39 PM

Here’s an example with the simulator.

We have here +/- 16 CU for 8 Threads.

Good question @Rasputin_Rick !

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Ah, I missed the fact that a thread is 2 CU. Oops! :slightly_smiling_face:
Time to reorganize some drives. Thank you for clarifying!

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It’s a pleasure. Don’t hesitate to ask questions, that’s how we all grow as a community!

Happy Farming and 3node optimizing!

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