Chia crypto mining spurs 500% jump in Adata SSD sales, warranty warning from Galax

midian182

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In brief: As if the GPU/CPU shortage wasn't enough of a headache for PC owners, it appears concerns that Chia mining would impact the storage industry were warranted. According to a new report, Adata has seen its solid-state drive orders increase 500% this month, with large-capacity SSDs experiencing exceptionally high demand.

The Chia blockchain uses a 'proof of space and time' model instead of 'proof of work' (Bitcoin) or 'proof of stake' (Etherium 2.0). People can mine or farm the crypto by allocating their unused disk space, along with a time factor tied in for increasing the blockchain's overall security.

Chia isn't tradeable until May 3, but there's already been a surge in demand for large capacity hard drives and SSDs in China. DigiTimes reports that orders for Adata's high-capacity SSDs have risen 400% to 500% in April compared to the previous month

Earlier this month, Jiahe Jinwei, China's fourth-largest memory manufacturer, said all its Gloway and Asgard-branded 1TB and 2TB NVMe SSDs were sold out.

We're hearing more reports that demand for drives is starting to expand outside of Asia. Given that component shortages are increasing the price of SSD controllers, Chia mining could exacerbate the problems of low drive availability and high prices.

There is a glimmer of hope. Galax has placed a warning (via Tom's Hardware) on its Chinese website stating that using their SSDs to mine crypto or other operations where the data write volume is higher than standard will void the warranties. Hopefully, this might discourage people from buying vast quantities of drives.

There's always the chance that Chia or other storage-based cryptos won't be as popular or lucrative as, say, Bitcoin. However, with people panic buying in case it is the next big thing, Chia could become another reason why there's never been a worse time to build a PC.

Image credit: Sergei Elagin

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I just think all Crypto Currencies should not be a thing, I understand people think its a great thing to beg things to for the future but its going to be mostly used my criminals day to day. Then economically Inflation needs to be controlled and given the instability of Crypto this doesn't make sense and just seems to be another way for PC components to be all used up which causes more Energy use and waste products because I imagine most miners don't care after they have got there money back.
 
I wonder what they consider daily use.

Regardless, I have a potentially failing 1TB WD Blue SSD I'll sell them.
 
I'm here for the "wah crypto should be banned because I need my bing-bing-wahoo toy" comments.
I just think all Crypto Currencies should not be a thing, I understand people think its a great thing to beg things to for the future but its going to be mostly used my criminals day to day. Then economically Inflation needs to be controlled and given the instability of Crypto this doesn't make sense and just seems to be another way for PC components to be all used up which causes more Energy use and waste products because I imagine most miners don't care after they have got there money back.
the US dollar is used by criminals everyday, should we ban that too? What about gaming? That causes tons of energy waste and produces nothing of value.

Just because you see no value in crypto doesnt mean it doesnt have its uses. So long as payment processors and banks want to play moral guardian, crypto's importance will only skyrocket.
 
I don’t know why all the governments don’t just ban this and put measures in place to make this illegal

Well the government could create crypto currencies people could use if they don’t want to use bank. And have direct to direct payment

But stop this mining.
 
It the government is not going to make this illegal than all the computer companies should put measures in place to detect mining and shut the computer off. Be at BIOS level or Intel management engine.

Make special computer hardware just for mining and other hardware can go for office, businesses, schools, government, science, home use and gamers so on with out major shortage.

And put energy tax for miners.



 
Covid, scalpers and miners are the plague of the century.
Century is not nearly over... Decade perhaps...
all the computer companies should put measures in place to detect mining and shut the computer off. Be at BIOS level or Intel management engine.
Um, no. That would open a very nasty version of Pandora's Box none of us need. Just no.
And put energy tax for miners.
Now that is a great idea! Heavy taxes for mining..
 
I'm here for the "wah crypto should be banned because I need my bing-bing-wahoo toy" comments.

the US dollar is used by criminals everyday, should we ban that too? What about gaming? That causes tons of energy waste and produces nothing of value.

Just because you see no value in crypto doesnt mean it doesnt have its uses. So long as payment processors and banks want to play moral guardian, crypto's importance will only skyrocket.
I'm not planning on buying any PC parts anytime soon so I'm certainty not complaining regarding that. I would also agree regarding gamers.

Although more of a point could be made that there are more than just gamers that need components Hospitals, Police forces etc all need equipment and increasing prices for them doesn't not help anyone.

My Main point is, you need to be able to control currency to be use realistically, Some people think Crypto is very anti establishment when in reality people are just creating there own fake online currency to make money. But noting positive comes out of it at least you could argue gaming is an art form, I wouldn't but someone would
 
I'm not planning on buying any PC parts anytime soon so I'm certainty not complaining regarding that. I would also agree regarding gamers.

Although more of a point could be made that there are more than just gamers that need components Hospitals, Police forces etc all need equipment and increasing prices for them doesn't not help anyone.

My Main point is, you need to be able to control currency to be use realistically, Some people think Crypto is very anti establishment when in reality people are just creating there own fake online currency to make money. But noting positive comes out of it at least you could argue gaming is an art form, I wouldn't but someone would


All currency is fake now.

The US moved of the gold standard long time ago so has most countries. No one trades gold and the US government has never audited Fort Knox. The US government is not even allowed to audit them.

The US dollar is highest in world only because we have faith in it. The faith in paper system that some fed say forth some thing. It nothing but paper.


It gone from gold standard to paper system. They just print money out thin air.

Now they don't even print money these days it all electronic money now.

Yet the people, small and medium banks must play by the rules.



 
Century is not nearly over... Decade perhaps...

Um, no. That would open a very nasty version of Pandora's Box none of us need. Just no.

Now that is a great idea! Heavy taxes for mining..
Century is not nearly over... Decade perhaps...

Um, no. That would open a very nasty version of Pandora's Box none of us need. Just no.

But we do have that. The company nvidia is implementing ways to detect that in the new GPU coming out.




 
All currency is fake now.

The US moved of the gold standard long time ago so has most countries. No one trades gold and the US government has never audited Fort Knox. The US government is not even allowed to audit them.

The US dollar is highest in world only because we have faith in it. The faith in paper system that some fed say forth some thing. It nothing but paper.


It gone from gold standard to paper system. They just print money out thin air.

Now they don't even print money these days it all electronic money now.

Yet the people, small and medium banks must play by the rules.
To my knowledge the gold standard was abandoned years ago, quite a bit of the world during the Inter war years and US in the 70s. The reason people have faith in the currency is that it is the countries economy is relatively stable and so is the the conversion. £ used to be one of the most stable and used but now less so because it is a lot less stable.

I'm talking about Quantitative easing and increasing and decreasing interest rates to help the economy is not really feasible if you have a limited number of a resource then you end up getting a different current to match it up against.
 
I'm confused here why SSDs are in prime demand for this. What is Chia rewarding for - volume of storage or speed of storage? I'd rather enlist old HDDs out of mothballs than sink a bunch of money into SSDs to mine it, especially when the latter suffer the most from extensive rewrites and the former is cheaper per TB across the board.
 
As for the mob of usual teeth-grinding epic gamers ITT, this is a cloud storage service that is peer-to-peer that rewards the users providing the god-damn storage. The mining isn't even like POW where the energy does nothing but support a network - a tangibly useful service, not unlike the ones you already probably use, is being provided. Are you this upset about Dropbox or Mega too? I'm pretty sure the receipts for their silicon purchases are quite a ****ing bit higher than whatever speculative bump has been covered here.

Mining is basically just becoming a dog-whistle here and it's kind of tawdry that Techspot keeps leaning on it for clicks.
 
I wonder what they consider daily use.

Regardless, I have a potentially failing 1TB WD Blue SSD I'll sell them.

Just a guess? But I would guess that there is information written to the firmware or somewhere else of the drive that the manufacture can read to tell them the full usage of the drive.

Bit like my monitor. In the menu there is an option to tell you how many hours it has been used.
 
I'm confused here why SSDs are in prime demand for this. What is Chia rewarding for - volume of storage or speed of storage? I'd rather enlist old HDDs out of mothballs than sink a bunch of money into SSDs to mine it, especially when the latter suffer the most from extensive rewrites and the former is cheaper per TB across the board.
An SSD is recommended for plotting, while HDD is recommended for farming.
Plotting is quite slow with an HDD, so, basically, you need the SSD as a temporary storage drive, to use the HDDs as the permanent storage. The quicker you do it, the larger your piece of the pie on the storage network.
You can technically use the SSDs for storage, but the developers warn that only enterprise SSDs should be used for farming, because wear will be quite high, and the SSD will fail prematurely if used for farming.

As someone that is farming on Chia, it has grown crazily fast. Last week when I started, there was about 1 PiB of space available through Chia. Now, it is 1.2 EiB, and that is crazy. 10x in a week.

Lastly... If you ever wondered how people like Stalin and Hitler end up in power, all you have to do is look at all the people in this comment section asking for oppression of their fellow man.
 
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I'm here for the "wah crypto should be banned because I need my bing-bing-wahoo toy" comments.

the US dollar is used by criminals everyday, should we ban that too? What about gaming? That causes tons of energy waste and produces nothing of value.

Just because you see no value in crypto doesnt mean it doesnt have its uses. So long as payment processors and banks want to play moral guardian, crypto's importance will only skyrocket.

Actually yes the US dollar is banned from criminal use. Spend or move too much of it and you'll get a knock at the door and have it taken from you. Games produce nothing of value? Maybe but I'd rather play a game than watch the price of bitcoin on a screen for the same amount of time. The only use case I've seen for Crypto is a small improvement to wiring money and if you're in a country with high inflation it can protect your funds. Everything else screams pyramid scheme... I mine at home though, if people want to give you money I'm not going to say no but honestly bitcoin is worth all of 50 cents maybe up to 99 cents from what I can tell.
 
Actually yes the US dollar is banned from criminal use. Spend or move too much of it and you'll get a knock at the door and have it taken from you. Games produce nothing of value? Maybe but I'd rather play a game than watch the price of bitcoin on a screen for the same amount of time. The only use case I've seen for Crypto is a small improvement to wiring money and if you're in a country with high inflation it can protect your funds. Everything else screams pyramid scheme... I mine at home though, if people want to give you money I'm not going to say no but honestly bitcoin is worth all of 50 cents maybe up to 99 cents from what I can tell.
I'll also add crypto has had over a decade now and is still looking for that killer application that's just around the corner. It brings nothing new or interesting to the table as a replacement to money in a positive way. The only major thing it has going for it is it's going up which persuades more people into buying it and creates a feedback loop. The interesting thing to see will be how many coins can be made until people figure out that that process is the dilution of value seen in fiat currency. How many coins is too many?
 
I'll also add crypto has had over a decade now and is still looking for that killer application that's just around the corner. It brings nothing new or interesting to the table as a replacement to money in a positive way. The only major thing it has going for it is it's going up which persuades more people into buying it and creates a feedback loop. The interesting thing to see will be how many coins can be made until people figure out that that process is the dilution of value seen in fiat currency. How many coins is too many?
If you don't understand or value the worth of censorship resistant mediums of exchange and stores of value, it's probably because you have no views worth censoring, a position that can only be maintained by constant servility and doublethink in the present day.

Your arguments had merit in 2004. The world has moved on.
 
I don’t know why all the governments don’t just ban this and put measures in place to make this illegal

Well the government could create crypto currencies people could use if they don’t want to use bank. And have direct to direct payment

But stop this mining.

Governments are also using crypto for their own purposes.
The whole thing is a madness,they will need to either regulate them or shut them down.
The price jumps are ridiculous.
Euro for example moved like 0.2Euro from its stable value that it had for years or decades and it had a tremendous impact.
Bitcoin goes from cents to 60k dollar and somehow no one cares regulating it.
 
I'll also add crypto has had over a decade now and is still looking for that killer application that's just around the corner. It brings nothing new or interesting to the table as a replacement to money in a positive way. The only major thing it has going for it is it's going up which persuades more people into buying it and creates a feedback loop. The interesting thing to see will be how many coins can be made until people figure out that that process is the dilution of value seen in fiat currency. How many coins is too many?
So.... To you, being able to monetize the free space on your hard drive is nothing new or interesting...

Alrighty then.

Governments are also using crypto for their own purposes.
The whole thing is a madness,they will need to either regulate them or shut them down.
The price jumps are ridiculous.
Euro for example moved like 0.2Euro from its stable value that it had for years or decades and it had a tremendous impact.
Bitcoin goes from cents to 60k dollar and somehow no one cares regulating it.
Maybe it has something to do with it being impossible to shut down.
As for regulation, they can only regulate the bridge between crypto and traditional finance. They cannot regulate something that is decentralized. The closest equivalent we have to crypto, is torrents, and they couldn't even regulate that. And that has no blockchain.

Apparently people have a hard time grasping that these technologies make regulations obsolete.
 
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