# This is a reason NOT to mine Chia...



## lexluthermiester (May 25, 2021)

Chia crypto mining will destroy your 500GB SSD in just 6 weeks
					

You can ruin a 512GB SSD in just 40 days when you're crypto mining Chia, so you might want to be careful mining this crypto.




					www.tweaktown.com
				




Yikes!


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## R-T-B (May 25, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Chia crypto mining will destroy your 500GB SSD in just 6 weeks
> 
> 
> You can ruin a 512GB SSD in just 40 days when you're crypto mining Chia, so you might want to be careful mining this crypto.
> ...


Yeah, I always thought HDDs would be better for this but aparently access times effect your earnings too.

Just seems messy and nonproductive all around.


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## MIRTAZAPINE (May 25, 2021)

Chia was initially marketed as the crypto where you can use your spare hdd space to make some money but the reality it turns out people just emptying shelves of bestbuy HDD and clearing all newegg/amazon stocks of them.  It also become an industrial size operation now. The Chia network space current at 10.44EIB have already surpassed backblaze servers in total storage use. It storing nothing but just "lottery ticket" numbers. It sadden me to see hdd being filled with literally meaningless coupons. This was promoted as a "green crypto" but looking at the hdd consumption and the burning up of ssds is anything but green. Add to it to plot faster aka mine faster you need a cpu with alot of threads and a high number of ram space to do it quickly.

People used ssd to mine Chia so they are able to mine faster at the expense of ssd life, it better to do it on old rust spinners despite that slower mining speed at least you don't burn up precious ssd writes.  Anyway the pandora box for Chia is open now, the HDD hoard and SSD hoard is well underway now. Currently most Chia miners are buying are nvme ssd for their speed but I am afraid its a matter of time before sata based ssd would be affected too.




R-T-B said:


> Yeah, I always thought HDDs would be better for this but aparently access times effect your earnings too.
> 
> Just seems messy and nonproductive all around.



Yeah I agree but many people used as SSD in hope of faster profit to catch up with the growing network. It take about 1Tib to write one plot of Chia the size of 101Gib.  Judging by the Chia network size now of 10.44Eib, that means at the worse case 104Eib of SSD writes are used. Damn that is tons of ssd burned up.

Edit : You can plot 4 to 5 times more with SSD with a HDD.


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## R-T-B (May 25, 2021)

Greed distorting a utopian vision is all too familiar in crypto land, I'm afraid.


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## Ferrum Master (May 25, 2021)

I think of it otherwise... ie what kind of trash we are fed to actually... QLC+, smaller tech nodes etc etc... it just milking and making more profit not making better products, the stupid burst speed that does nothing in real life... like netburst style for more MHz, popcorn useless ones.

NAND ain't that durable... it's been proven during time, especially in mobile phone tech...  for example anyone using torrent on their phones is a plain stupid idiot, you don't even need Chia to kill a NAND, well it takes usually 6 months to exhaust overprovisioning area and overprovisioning areas ain't that big there. I see dead memory IC's each day... with all data permanently lost.

Basically the TWB numbers are a thing you should be aware off and they tend to drop. I look at them really skeptically for newer IC's. Manufacturers clearly say, more bits in the stack, the less endurance it will have. They are kinda racing towards the wrong end instead of reliability they go for profit and appeal.

I imagine flooding the gray market with those dead drives with overwritten SMART to fool the client. Manufacture date would be fresh...


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## lexluthermiester (May 25, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Just seems messy and nonproductive all around.


I'd have to agree. Just a senseless waste...


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## R-T-B (May 25, 2021)

Ferrum Master said:


> I think of it otherwise... ie what kind of trash we are fed to actually... QLC+, smaller tech nodes etc etc... it just milking and making more profit not making better products, the stupid burst speed that does nothing in real life... like netburst style for more MHz, popcorn useless ones.
> 
> NAND ain't that durable... it's been proven during time, especially in mobile phone tech...  for example anyone using torrent on their phones is a plain stupid idiot, you don't even need Chia to kill a NAND, well it takes usually 6 months to exhaust overprovisioning area and overprovisioning areas ain't that big there. I see dead memory IC's each day... with all data permanently lost.
> 
> ...


The only real longevity advance that was made recently was 3d stacking.  Beyond that, it's been a downhill roll, yeah...

Used to be I'd only buy mlc drives.  Been forced to tlc now unfortunately...


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## lexluthermiester (May 25, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Beyond that, it's been a downhill roll, yeah...


Anything beyond TLC is utter garbage.


R-T-B said:


> Used to be I'd only buy mlc drives. Been forced to tlc now unfortunately...


You can still get MLC, but it comes at a price premium.


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## R-T-B (May 25, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> You can still get MLC, but it comes at a price premium.


Any pcie4 ones?  That's what's getting me.


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## lexluthermiester (May 25, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Any pcie4 ones?  That's what's getting me.


Haven't looked. Maybe? I was talking SATA above... I would rather have durability than speed all day, any day...


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## Ferrum Master (May 25, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Any pcie4 ones?  That's what's getting me.



You need that pcie4 ? I would take older 970Pro not the renamed evo drive that calls himself 980Pro. MZ-V7P1T0BW (1,024 GB) 5 Years or 1,200 TBW vs MZ-V8P1T0BW (1TB) 5 Years or 600 TBW...

As for my main drive I am happy that I didn't cheap out on my Optane drive, especially looking now at GPU prices, it looks peanuts. My mere 5.11 PB write limit... and it is plain stupid fast no matter how full.

Shame the tech ain't developing much further. I am considering even picking up Intel Optane 905P 380G SSD M.2 NVME 22110, while it is still obtainable.


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## R-T-B (May 25, 2021)

Ferrum Master said:


> You need that pcie4 ?


I don't NEED any of it but if I was to upgrade, it'd be nice, yeah.  It'd also use less lanes than my current RAID card for same performance in burst speed, so...

I mean I don't even know why I'm asking really.  I have to have OPAL encryption for my document handling at work, so that makes my options extremely limited.  /sighs.


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## phill (May 25, 2021)

I don't understand the coin but I have read they are meant to be releasing out very high TBW but I still don't really get it, the point of it at all....  I'm not sure why you'd want to run it...  But its very frustrating considering I was toying with a server drive upgrade and then this happened lol  

Ah well


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## Mescalamba (May 25, 2021)

You need to use server class which can survive stuff like 2-3 full HDD rewrites per day. And those are a bit expensive. Also good deal more reliable and sorta faster than regular ones.

Chia is interesting concept, but my HDDs are just too precious to me.


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## Sandbo (May 28, 2021)

Mescalamba said:


> You need to use server class which can survive stuff like 2-3 full HDD rewrites per day. And those are a bit expensive. Also good deal more reliable and sorta faster than regular ones.
> 
> Chia is interesting concept, but my HDDs are just too precious to me.


You can also go with used enterprise SSDs, in particular Intel DC S3700 is a great choice. An array of that costing maybe $400 US will support a farm as large as 2 PB.

If these old drives are nowhere to find (might be all grabbed), new enterprise drives like "Samsung PM983 NF1" aren't crazily expensive:


			https://www.samsung.com/us/labs/pdfs/collateral/Samsung-PM983-NF1-Product-Brief-final.pdf
		


Though, probably lots of people won't be doing research and just keep buying consumer ones (not even buying those 1TB 1.8 PBW ones, but the 0.6 PBW Samsung junk) as they are cheaper short term.


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## lexluthermiester (May 28, 2021)

Sandbo said:


> You can also go with used enterprise SSDs, in particular Intel DC S3700 is a great choice. An array of that costing maybe $400 US will support a farm as large as 2 PB.


That would be a senseless waste of money...


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## silentbogo (May 28, 2021)

You, guys, forgot one important thing: there is a big difference between plotting and farming.
Plotting is what kills your SSD, and plotting isn't as "lightweight" and "green" of a task as developers lead us to believe, but it only needs to be done once for each of your plots. Rich people use dedicated Xeon Platinum or Threadripper machines with tons of RAM for plotting, in addition to large arrays of NVME SSDs, though it's also possible to plot on HDD itself(only a loo-o-o--o-o-t slower).
Farming, on the other hand, only needs a whatever 4T CPU with lots of HDD storage, and consumes significantly less power (even HDDs are only spinning while you have a block to check against your plots, but 99% of the time remain dormant).
So, if someone decides to get into Chia thing, all he or she needs to do is open their eyes, turn on their brain(or at least a tiny portion of it), and RTFM. You can even guesstimate your TBW based on how much you want to plot, and figure out approximately when you'll need to get a spare drive. Plus, most high-tier SSDs can outlast their rated TBW by a large margin (SLC/2LC, or even enterprise TLC).

Just to put it in perspective, I'll use some numbers from my last experiment. At most I can generate around 2 plots simultaneously on a 1TB drive. I've only done sequential plotting due to space constraints, but if I can do ~2-3 plots per day sequentially, let's just assume that you can do 6 plots (~0.6TB) by doing a pair of plots at a time. So, if you have a 1TB TLC drive - you'll be able to exceed rated TBW in approximately 2.5-3 years (which is incidentally a most common warranty for low-to-mid-range TLC). For QLC it's theoretically the same if not more, since your write speeds are gonna fall so low, that you won't be able to generate more than 1/2 plot per day (which in terms of writes is even less than its rated DWPD). On a HDD it's even slower.
People have been actively plotting chia only in the past few months, so if someone's SSD died within this short of a timeframe(even QLC) - that's 99% manufacturer's fault and maybe 1% user fault due to some ridiculous operating conditions.

There are also some articles that use random garbage off reddit as a source of information, like quoting 1.5-2TBW per plot, which is f#$%ing ridiculous.
I've generated over 40 plots on my SSD, and here's what my S.M.A.R.T. looks like:



This drive is more than 1.5y.o., and it's also my primary storage, and it suffered through a few dozen of agonizing 150+GB rsyncs from one of my work servers (lots of small- and medium-sized files) and gathered most of its TBWs thanks to bloated modern games, yet for some reason I don't see an extra 80TBW on top of what I had before, if that sensational number was actually true. Realistically your TBW per plot is the same or a little higher than the size of temporary files for each plot (e.g. 250-300GB). This means that my 40 plots have accumulated no more than 12TBW, and not that scary 70-80TBW according to reddit numbers (or whatever source those stupid idiots from tech news sites are quoting).


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## Hardcore Games (May 28, 2021)

I use a Samsung 980 PRO 2TB for my windows volume and it is among the fastest boot times out there.


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## R0H1T (May 29, 2021)

Sandbo said:


> You can also go with used enterprise SSDs, in particular Intel DC S3700 is a great choice. An array of that costing maybe $400 US will support a farm as large as 2 PB.


Or get this 

*Sabrent's Plotripper Chia Plotting SSD Will Outlive Many Of Us*


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## Sandbo (May 29, 2021)

R0H1T said:


> Or get this
> 
> *Sabrent's Plotripper Chia Plotting SSD Will Outlive Many Of Us*
> 
> View attachment 202069


I was expecting something like this will be available, I hope it isn't too expensive lol



lexluthermiester said:


> That would be a senseless waste of money...


Not a waste comparing to killing off multiple of consumer SSDs which likely would have plotted less; it's 21 PBW vs ~3-5 PBW of consumer SSDs of similar volume, at a similar price.
But then yeah you may have to think twice before investing into Chia at its current state.



silentbogo said:


> You, guys, forgot one important thing: there is a big difference between plotting and farming.
> Plotting is what kills your SSD, and plotting isn't as "lightweight" and "green" of a task as developers lead us to believe, but it only needs to be done once for each of your plots. Rich people use dedicated Xeon Platinum or Threadripper machines with tons of RAM for plotting, in addition to large arrays of NVME SSDs, though it's also possible to plot on HDD itself(only a loo-o-o--o-o-t slower).
> Farming, on the other hand, only needs a whatever 4T CPU with lots of HDD storage, and consumes significantly less power (even HDDs are only spinning while you have a block to check against your plots, but 99% of the time remain dormant).
> So, if someone decides to get into Chia thing, all he or she needs to do is open their eyes, turn on their brain(or at least a tiny portion of it), and RTFM. You can even guesstimate your TBW based on how much you want to plot, and figure out approximately when you'll need to get a spare drive. Plus, most high-tier SSDs can outlast their rated TBW by a large margin (SLC/2LC, or even enterprise TLC).
> ...





> At most I can generate around 2 plots simultaneously on a 1TB drive


Quite certain you can do 3, it takes at most 260 GB (239 GiB) for one plot.


> Realistically your TBW per plot is the same or a little higher than the size of temporary files for each plot (e.g. 250-300GB).


I believe this isn't true, generating a plot it needs to do 1.7 TB write if memory serves.
PS: unless this has changed, otherwise
One k32 writes 1.8TiB in non-bitfield mode and 1.6 TiB with bitfield enabled. 








						Chia Plotting Basics - Chia Network
					

Introduction First it is important to know that there are two very different parts of being a Chia farmer. There is creating the plots or plotting and then there is farming the plots. In this post we are going to focus on the process of creating your plots. The types of machines and storage...




					www.chia.net


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## lexluthermiester (May 29, 2021)

Sandbo said:


> Not a waste comparing to killing off multiple of consumer SSDs which likely would have plotted less; it's 21 PBW vs ~3-5 PBW of consumer SSDs of similar volume, at a similar price.
> But then yeah you may have to think twice before investing into Chia at its current state.


No, it's still a waste...


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## Sandbo (May 29, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> No, it's still a waste...


That's up to you to call it, I was only making the comparison as it didn't look obvious to you.


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## silentbogo (May 29, 2021)

Sandbo said:


> Quite certain you can do 3, it takes at most 260 GB (239 GiB) for one plot.


I think on several of my attempts to do 2-3 plots simultaneously I ran out of space. Maybe I misconfigured my delays and completed plots weren't clearing up fast enough for new ones to start.



Sandbo said:


> One k32 writes 1.8TiB in non-bitfield mode and 1.6 TiB with bitfield enabled.


There's conflicting info, cause in one of their other articles they've mentioned something along the lines of 360GB per plot, while in the beginning of this article they start with 1.3TBW per plot etc. etc. etc. 
Otherwise math doesn't add up: 40 plots x 1.8TBW = 72TBW, which is approximately the same as my grand-total TBW, including 1.5 years of excessively-active usage. Pretty sure I had at least 40-50TB clocked even before CHIA. If I manage to get another HDD, I'll do some tests just to be sure.


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## Sandbo (May 29, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> I think on several of my attempts to do 2-3 plots simultaneously I ran out of space. Maybe I misconfigured my delays and completed plots weren't clearing up fast enough for new ones to start.
> 
> 
> There's conflicting info, cause in one of their other articles they've mentioned something along the lines of 360GB per plot, while in the beginning of this article they start with 1.3TBW per plot etc. etc. etc.
> Otherwise math doesn't add up: 40 plots x 1.8TBW = 72TBW, which is approximately the same as my grand-total TBW, including 1.5 years of excessively-active usage. Pretty sure I had at least 40-50TB clocked even before CHIA. If I manage to get another HDD, I'll do some tests just to be sure.


It will be interesting to actually test, so far all my calculations are based on the 1.7 TB per plot assumption; I will take it as a worst-case scenario for now.


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## Devon68 (May 29, 2021)

I generally hate crypto but chia is another level of stupidity. You make plots and hope that one day you will get chosen and paid. That's like digging all around the earth in plots hoping to find a plot with hidden gold. Plus the fact that is destroys hard drives at record pace thus creating a lot of e waste.


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## Aquinus (May 29, 2021)

Devon68 said:


> I generally hate crypto but chia is another level of stupidity. You make plots and hope that one day you will get chosen and paid. That's like digging all around the earth in plots hoping to find a plot with hidden gold. Plus the fact that is destroys hard drives at record pace thus creating a lot of e waste.


I swear, some of the "developers" who make these things must have no professional experience or schooling beyond a 8 week bootcamp.
lOoK aT mE, i CaN mAkE a CrYpTo.


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## Caring1 (May 30, 2021)

Hard Drive manufacturers > "How can we make sheeple buy more product, more often?"


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## Sandbo (May 30, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> I swear, some of the "developers" who make these things must have no professional experience or schooling beyond a 8 week bootcamp.
> lOoK aT mE, i CaN mAkE a CrYpTo.


Pretty sure some are junky developers, but just wanted to add that Chia was developed by Bram Cohen.


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## silentbogo (May 30, 2021)

Aquinus said:


> I swear, some of the "developers" who make these things must have no professional experience or schooling beyond a 8 week bootcamp.


A bit harsh. The backing principle is always the same - solving hashes, so depending on the approach there's always going to be some sort of tradeoff.
Maybe it's not the most accurate comparison, but that's the first thing that popped into my brain and it's the most intuitive: think of it as cracking password hashes. PoW in Ether and Bitcoin is an equivalent of bruteforce attack(needs lots of compute and takes a long time), while Chia is an equivalent of using a collision attack. Basically those exobytes of storage are used for one big-ass distributed rainbow table, which makes solving a lot faster but as you've probably noticed - requires a shitton of space. All the plotting that people do is essentially generating tables for partial hashes. Nothing new, nothing stupid, just the way things are until someone comes up with a better or hybrid solution.
BTW, even though Cohen is famous for BitTorrent , his other works extend beyond "8-week bootcamp". Just his approach to p2p brought a good kick and gave tons of inspiration to early digital content delivery and streaming services. Heck, he even worked at Valve at one point, developing content delivery system for Steam. Early Skype implementations were also heavily inspired by his work (back in a day it was 100% p2p network with trackers, peer exchange and all other traits of torrent net, just using fancier names).


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## ExcuseMeWtf (May 30, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Chia crypto mining will destroy your 500GB SSD in just 6 weeks
> 
> 
> You can ruin a 512GB SSD in just 40 days when you're crypto mining Chia, so you might want to be careful mining this crypto.
> ...


I hope that means SSD availability problem will be self-limiting. Surely with such short lifespan ROI is gonna be questionable...


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## fma67 (May 30, 2021)

I think is a "baloon" hand in hand with HDD manufacturers that are having huge stocks f HDD components. Related to SSD prices, in a while they will be in the situation to recycle them. Otherwise is a killing storage activity (affecting storage much more than GPU mining afect GPUs)


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## Sandbo (May 30, 2021)

ExcuseMeWtf said:


> I hope that means SSD availability problem will be self-limiting. Surely with such short lifespan ROI is gonna be questionable...


In fact if you have followed the Chia development, it has already become unrealistic for home users to join the farming, i.e. ROI is in the realm of years for a new build for farming Chia. 
On the other hand, pretty sure huge farms will not be using consumer drives as they can simply invest on enterprise SSDs which is more cost-effective long-term. I don't believe the SSD price can be affected, and I don't actually see a big shortage of it as of now.

Though, harddisks may become harder to buy, but I guess it will be limited to the larger drive with 12 TB or above for long term. 
While everything >8TB is gone now, it will become limiting in terms of space and energy consumption if lots of small drives are used, the consumer market will hopefully recover pretty soon for 8-10 TB drives.


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## lexluthermiester (May 30, 2021)

ExcuseMeWtf said:


> I hope that means SSD availability problem will be self-limiting. Surely with such short lifespan ROI is gonna be questionable...


One would hope, right?


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## mclaren85 (May 30, 2021)

Sometimes I wonder if this crypto shits are developed by the manufacturers itself.

And I do hope ethereum will decrease the lifespan of gpu as well.


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## silentbogo (May 30, 2021)

mclaren85 said:


> And I do hope ethereum will decrease the lifespan of gpu as well.


Just like with everything else - it depends on the owner. Some dipshit playing fortnite and eating cheetos in a dirty dusty room that smells like farts, mold and damp socks is more likely to kill a GPU than a miner with proper setup, settings, power, and maintenance. My current setup has 5x 10-series cards, all of which have gone through a lot over the past 4+ years. All of them are still 100% OK, and some do even better than new after ultrasonic cleaning, repasting and new thermal pads. Even EVGA 1070 SC is still fine and haven't suffered an evil faith of burned PCB on vRAM VRM (common issue due to bad layout and design).
The only exception is the biggest, the loudest and by far the shittiest out of them all - ASUS GTX1070Ti Cerberus. It's a triple-slot monstrosity that weighs less than my old ITX variant of 1060, has no VRAM cooling at all, can't even keep a GPU under 65C with 60% PL, and barely squeezes out 25MH/s ('cause you can't overclock VRAM that lacks even ambient cooling). Fans are even louder than my 1U Supermicro with 10y.o. stock turbine. I have a feeling that ASUS had a "bring your kid to work" day, when they designed this card: lots of size, lots of sharp edges, lots of RGB, very little engineering.


mclaren85 said:


> Sometimes I wonder if this crypto shits are developed by the manufacturers itself.


Definitely not, but they sure love to jump on the bandwagon, all while playing both sides.


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## Aquinus (May 30, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Basically those exobytes of storage are used for one big-ass distributed rainbow table


This is why I don't think it's harsh. Honestly, this is an absolutely terrible solution to the problem. It's just another "make the room warm," solution to processing transactions, now with gratuitous amounts of I/O! It just does it in a far worse way than a lot of other options.


silentbogo said:


> BTW, even though Cohen is famous for BitTorrent , his other works extend beyond "8-week bootcamp".


Chunking up data to support concurrent downloads is not a bad idea, but that doesn't mean the same solution will work well for crypto. Honestly, the major issue with crypto is that most depend on an arbitrarily complex task. I do not think that this is the right solution. From a performance and power standpoint, most cryptos are absolutely terrible when compared to other financial transaction systems. Distributed systems for this kind of thing makes sense, but the amount of distribution is a little insane. I think that most cryptos went full retard with their implementations and it has resulted in very expensive transaction systems.

My point though is that a lot of developers are not engineers with little consideration about the consequences of having expensive processes for things that happen very often.


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## lexluthermiester (May 30, 2021)

mclaren85 said:


> And I do hope ethereum will decrease the lifespan of gpu as well.


Why would you hope for that? Seems bitter and spiteful...


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## Vayra86 (May 30, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Greed distorting a utopian vision is all too familiar in crypto land, I'm afraid.



Its what it all floats on. Hey, we're all going to make money staking in transactions soon! Hey, the value of money has gone down by X% and a few whales define the value anyway, shit we're back at square one.

History repeats.


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## mclaren85 (May 30, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Why would you hope for that? Seems bitter and spiteful...


Dude we can't find a gpu while you have more than 10. That's not fair isn't it?


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## lexluthermiester (May 30, 2021)

mclaren85 said:


> Dude we can't find a gpu while you have more than 10. That's not fair isn't it?


What the bloody blazes are you talking about? I'm not a miner. Try paying attention before spouting about...


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## silentbogo (May 30, 2021)

mclaren85 said:


> Dude we can't find a gpu while you have more than 10. That's not fair isn't it?


I ride the bus to my office every day, while the dude in my apt. building has a Challenger, a Model S and a TT Quattro. That's not fair either, yet I don't yell "get a flat tire, you rich mothaf$%ka!!!" off my balcony.
People would probably think I'm a communist or something....


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## Aquinus (May 30, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> a Challenger, a Model S and a TT Quattro.


That's a nice lineup. The Challenger was probably the cheapest but has the most power. 

Seriously though, life isn't fair. It's up to you to do something about that.


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## lexluthermiester (May 30, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> I ride the bus to my office every day, while the dude in my apt. building has a Challenger, a Model S and a TT Quattro. That's not fair either, yet I don't yell "get a flat tire, you rich mothaf$%ka!!!" off my balcony.
> People would probably think I'm a communist or something....


Excellent point!


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## masterdeejay (Jun 1, 2021)

I think almost none of the farmers don't understand what is green farming.

Not green:
buying ssd and killing it with plotting - that is waste
buying all the big hdd to farm - that is not good for the hdd prices - look at the video card prices now! i dont want that with the hdd prices
buying new rig - why do we need a new ryzen on i7 for plotting if we can use older hardware cheaper (haswell xeon for the win)

Green:
solar or other green power source
used or trash parts
cheapest as possible

So i started farming chia that i think green!
Electricity is from industrial solar power.
Most ot the rig parts is from trash, or used.
First complete Rig:
Chinese x99 matx (85 usd aliexpress)
2x32gb ecc reg ddr4  (110 usd local seller)
Xeon 4655v3 (60 usd aliexpress)
cheap new cooler modded to the socket (8 usd)
Dell H310 raid card modded to IT/HBA mode and hacked queue depth fw (35 USD) 6+8 ports but i use all usb ports to racked hdd-s
Mixed 2,5"-3,5" sizes 500gb-1tb-1,5tb-2tb-3tb-4tb HDD-s (over 14Tb to farm, few tb to plot, cost was ~150 usd, few have bad sectors but works fine)
Thermaltake 450w (10 usd)
no video card, because i use RDP only
Case is chieftek old but heavy from trash (i have 3 of these cases)
With the 500gb-s hdd in raid0 makes 6-8 plot per day, that is not much i know. I still have ~4tb space to plot

Second is not ready yet
Chinese x99 ATX (125 usd)
Xeon 2643v3 (110 usd)
4x8gb ecc REG (105 usd)
Akasa A20 (trash, repaired)
10x500gb Toshiba used hdd-s (10 pcs was 75 usd)
A lot of other hdds, mixed 320-500gb size
3ware raid and dell h310 modded raid cards (8+8+8 ports) (30 and 35 usd)
Cooler master case and 500w cooler master power supply from trash (repaired capacitor)
Another noname case near the main case for the other hdd-s that not fit in the main case. (i have long 8087-4 sata cables, and custom power cables)

I made custom sata cables from not working psu-s.
For plotting i use the 320-500 raid0 arrays, that makes 1 plot/12-16 hours per array

i have started working solo, but i got nothing so i joined a pool (chia-core.com) yesterday. I got 0.008 XCH in the first day.





Yes it is need more work than putting new hardware in the rig but is is much more fun to build.
So there is a reason to not mine chia?
Greedy people makes this coin bad, not the coin itself


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## las (Jun 1, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Anything beyond TLC is utter garbage.
> 
> You can still get MLC, but it comes at a price premium.



Regular consumers don't need MLC, why do you think they are pushing TLC for consumers, and still offer 5-10 years warrenty, QLC is the new TLC

I still have TLC drives from 2010-2012 running 24/7 with a few read/writes now and then. Zero smart issues and same performance numbers.

You only need MLC if you write tons of data every day, all day - OR MINE CHIA, hahah


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## JinuIslife8 (Jun 1, 2021)

I truly thought nobody would really make a mining technique that requires super-fast reliable SSD and what do you know it happened. also you thought SSD would last years with hardcore gaming but nobody said how long it would take for CHIA mining though. Even though very few hundreds/thousands are actually using this mining it is also dangerous to a lot of people if some miners managed to hack into someone else's PC they can just download the CHIA program secretly letting it run secretly until a month or two later the whole system storages dies out YIKES. This is both a danger to people and storages.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 1, 2021)

las said:


> Regular consumers don't need MLC


That is your opinion. It is not supported by real world practical usage.


las said:


> why do you think they are pushing TLC for consumers, and still offer 5-10 years *warranty*


Oh I don't know... For perhaps profit? Yeah let's go with that. 


las said:


> You only need MLC if you write tons of data every day, all day


Again, your opinion.


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## las (Jun 1, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That is your opinion. It is not supported by real world practical usage.
> 
> Oh I don't know... For perhaps profit? Yeah let's go with that.
> 
> Again, your opinion.



My opinion, which all the top consumer SSD manufacturers share  if they were unsure TLC would last, they would not give the warrenty they do. Warrenty = new drive if broken, meaning they will LOOSE money pretty much... so Profit, nah

You pretty much only need MLC for heavy write operations, and top TLC today beats MLC drives from years ago on longevity anyway - feel free to compare TBW - which is the reason they are now using QLC in cheaper drives and TLC has become standard, again, for consumers

Who cares if your SSD lasts 15 or 30 years, it's going to be pretty much useless in 5-10 (too small and/or slow)

No gaming rig needs a MLC drive, unless you install and uninstall 50 huge games a week maybe, it's waste of money

I change my OS drive every 2-4 years; 60GB -> 128GB -> 256GB -> 500GB -> 1TB etc. No way I will buy MLC today. I replace too often, my TLC drives are at 100% health every time im done with them, and they sell just fine, or used in other rigs, ZERO issues with TLC drives and installed 100s over the years, especially Samsung 850/860 Evo line, not a single DOA or issue

The only SSD I have ever had dying on me was a Samsung 830, a MLC drive...

All the top selling and recommended SSDs today are all TLC. MLC pretty much left consumer market.


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## R-T-B (Jun 1, 2021)

masterdeejay said:


> Greedy people makes this coin bad, not the coin itself


Story of crypto since it's existence.


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## JinuIslife8 (Jun 1, 2021)

Here's a little joke
People these days: nobody will ever need super fast m.2 SSD and high amount of storages with the hard disk drive that can last at least 3-6 years
Chia: and I took that personally


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 1, 2021)

las said:


> My opinion, which all the top consumer SSD manufacturers share


That's because it's good for their profit margins. Learn to think critically instead of accepting what manufacturers tell you.


las said:


> top TLC today beats MLC drives from years ago on longevity anyway


Oh, I'll grant you that. However the advances made to TLC have also been made to MLC which leaps and bound ahead of what it was a few years ago.


las said:


> which is the reason they are now using QLC in cheaper drives


We are not going to discuss that hot garbage....

On that note we're getting off topic, let's rope it in..


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's because it's good for their profit margins. Learn to think critically instead of accepting what manufacturers tell you.
> 
> Oh, I'll grant you that. However the advances made to TLC have also been made to MLC which leaps and bound ahead of what it was a few years ago.
> 
> ...



There's no MLC consumer drives on the market with PCIe 4.0 and considered high-end. Which?

3-bit "MLC" SSDs is actually TLC.
Almost every SSD on the market uses 3D TLC. The 64-layer technology is mature and reliable.

TLC today is nothing like TLC back when Samsung 840 existed, which is why QLC is now a thing.

QLC today is probably on par if not better than TLC 5+ years ago. I'd not buy QLC myself but TLC I will happily buy, never had issues.

Top consumer SSDs are Samsung 980 Pro and WD SN850, both TLC. Top scores in every review. Which MLC SSD would you consider better than these two?


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> There's no MLC consumer drives on the market with PCIe 4.0 and considered high-end.
> 3-bit "MLC" is TLC.
> Almost every SSD on the market uses 3D TLC. The 64-layer technology is mature and reliable.


Let's review...


lexluthermiester said:


> On that note we're getting off topic, let's rope it in..


Yup...


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> Let's review...
> 
> Yup...



So you can't mention a MLC drive that outperforms those two, who is still cheap enough to be relevant for consumers, yeah lets end this because TLC have replaced MLC for good  

Samsung 970 Pro = 1TB, MLC / 1200 TBW and 5 years warrenty

Samsung 980 Pro = 2TB, 3-bit MLC aka TLC, yet same price as 970 Pro 1TB, still 1200 TBW and 5 years warrenty + much faster and full pcie 4.0 x16 compatiblity

Choice is easy, both 1.5 Million Hours Reliability


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## ExcuseMeWtf (Jun 2, 2021)

Glad I got some of the last available MLC drives last summer tbh. Now just praying those won't fail early. Year in, so far so good.

On topic, I wonder how fast would those QLC cheapos get murdered by Chia mining


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

ExcuseMeWtf said:


> Glad I got some of the last available MLC drives last summer tbh. Now just praying those won't fail early. Year in, so far so good.
> 
> On topic, I wonder how fast would those QLC cheapos get murdered by Chia mining



All SSDs will fail over time mining Chia, wear and tear is insane, pointless coin, already down 50% since mid may


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> All SSDs will fail over time mining Chia, wear and tear is insane, pointless coin, already down 50% since mid may


All SSDs fail, full stop. Chia simply kills them A LOT faster.


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## Vya Domus (Jun 2, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> Just like with everything else - it depends on the owner. Some dipshit playing fortnite and eating cheetos in a dirty dusty room that smells like farts, mold and damp socks is more likely to kill a GPU than a miner with proper setup, settings, power, and maintenance.


Doubt it, running a video card 24/7 will reduce it's lifespan quicker than intermittent gaming. It's not the GPU that dies, it's the VRM, caps, memory chips, etc and those are rated for a certain amount of hours.


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## masterdeejay (Jun 2, 2021)

Why everybody talks about SSD-s and chia.
Yes it is faster but imho not worth it.
With an average sata ssd you get 6-8h plotting time.
A fast nvme get 4-6h.
But what price?
An average sata HDD 500gb get 16-20h plotting time, two of these 12-16h
Two Average enterprise sata hdd (like 250gb WD RE wd2502abys) 9-10h
So yes the ssd is 2x-8x faster but much more expensive and the life is limited.
In my country i can buy 8-15 usd 500gb hdd-s, that is very cheap compared to a new ssd in that size.


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

masterdeejay said:


> Why everybody talks about SSD-s and chia.
> Yes it is faster but imho not worth it.
> With an average sata ssd you get 6-8h plotting time.
> A fast nvme get 4-6h.
> ...


Because they are trying to score before the coin crashes and HDD is too slow

Coin already down by 50% in a few weeks and still dropping

It will never explode like other coins, pointless and waste of time


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## Outback Bronze (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> pointless and waste of time



That's what they all said about BTC when it first came out.

Look at Dogecoin, like wtf.

I wouldn't be writing it off just yet. Its only like what, less that 1 month old? These projects take time.

But yes, we will soon see if you are correct.


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

Outback Bronze said:


> That's what they all said about BTC when it first came out.
> 
> Look at Dogecoin, like wtf.
> 
> ...



This is not a regular coin, it's not like all coins explode, most die out, it needs exposure to blow up and chia is not popular at all


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## Aquinus (Jun 2, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> Story of crypto since it's existence.


This is my primary complaint with crypto as it stands right now. Decentralized transaction processing makes sense, decentralized issuing and destruction "notes"/currency does not. I see mining as a mechanism where early adopters can basically get to run off with money when they didn't really add any value in the first place. They made something worth nothing, marketed it, then ran off with what people were willing to pay for it. It practically starts as a ponzi scheme and ends as an unregulated market. It's a perfect mechanism to commit fraud.


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## Outback Bronze (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> exposure



Well from what I can see its getting pretty good exposure. Not many threads on TPU about any other coins. This last month all I've heard about is Chia (XCH) this n Chia that.

Hell even my mate is riding it atm waiting for pools.


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

Outback Bronze said:


> Well from what I can see its getting pretty good exposure. Not many threads on TPU about any other coins. This last month all I've heard about is Chia (XCH) this n Chia that.
> 
> Hell even my mate is riding it atm waiting for pools.



Only because people were afraid that chia would make ssd market hell like gpu market is now, but it's not happening and ssd is cheaper than ever

Exposure, from people, like elon musk, is what i meant - he can make any coin blow up just by writing the name on his twitter it seems


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## masterdeejay (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> Because they are trying to score before the coin crashes and HDD is too slow
> 
> Coin already down by 50% in a few weeks and still dropping
> 
> It will never explode like other coins, pointless and waste of time


How do you know that its not going to explode?
How many times said that bitcoin are going to die? I don't think anyone can forecast a coin life.
What if Musk mention chia on twitter?


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## las (Jun 2, 2021)

masterdeejay said:


> How do you know that its not going to explode?
> How many times said that bitcoin are going to die? I don't think anyone can forecast a coin life.
> What if Musk mention chia on twitter?


Then it might, lets see if he does

I don't see much future in this coin, I see alot of people destroying their SSDs and HHDs tho

Why would this coin explode when it's pretty much destroying SSDs in the process, atleast with GPU mining you don't destroy the GPU like that

And HDDs are not viable for chia, too slow


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## silentbogo (Jun 2, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That is your opinion. It is not supported by real world practical usage.


Real world practical usage? Srsly?
Even a power-user with higher than usual demands for data movement has to work really hard to exceed TLC's TBW within that "limited warranty". You've got to be either an obsessive pirate, or do some out of the ordinary stuff, like editing 4K raw footage for your pornhub youtube channel.
I don't think in my entire career I've seen a consumer SSD that died by exceeding it's TBW. It's usually mundane things like dead controller, or defective NAND that may crumble at any point of its lifetime.
Just this morning got another stupid 240GB Kingston which one of my less intelligent colleagues decided to use in an accounting server. Less than 1TBW and less than 2TBR, only 13k hours of service(~1.5years) and it's dead. 100+ bad sectors on one of the banks, already locked in read-only mode and barely breathing just to make a backup (which is still lucky, considering it's kingston we are talking about).
If anything, I've only seen one drive that exceeded its TBW, and it was not a typical SSD, but a mini-mag cartridge from RED camera which was used for a couple of years to shoot lots of shitty cookie-cutter CSI-style TV shows. And it's still an edge-case, enforced by the fact that it's only rated for 72TBW regardless of size or the fact that it's 2-bit MLC. And it still died from controller failure, not from NAND failure.



lexluthermiester said:


> Oh I don't know... For perhaps profit? Yeah let's go with that.


Again, counterarguing assumption with another assumption. Profit is just one little part of the equation, and it usually has the opposite effect. 
The biggest one is risk management. So, if a manufacturer has a new model of SSD, they have stats on average failure rates, and a ballpark numbers for balancing price and warranty length. E.g. just an example the same drive design may have a 0.5% failure rate at 3 years and 1% rate at 5 years. So, depending on the brand's public image and target audience, you can either sell it at lower cost w/ 3 year warranty, or balance-out an additional 0.5% by bumping its price and using a fancy box.

Nowadays, with Chia and everything, they might start enforcing a totally arbitrary metric as DWPD to "limit" their "limited warranty", but until that happens, I as a consumer shouldn't really care if I exceed TBW 1 year or 5 years down the road, if it does not violate their current conditions. If it's rated for 640TBW or 5 years - it should last 640TBW or 5 years.


Vya Domus said:


> Doubt it, running a video card 24/7 will reduce it's lifespan quicker than intermittent gaming. It's not the GPU that dies, it's the VRM, caps, memory chips, etc and those are rated for a certain amount of hours.


Components have varying lifespan depending on operating conditions. 
In a gaming rig you have things like:
1) Higher PL and consequently Vcore
2) Much higher operating temps during load, and usually lackluster cooling
3) Thermal stress, cause your GPU goes from off to full-on every single day
The only thing that mining may do, is abuse Vmem circuitry, and only if it's done like shit. That's a typical failure on EVGA 10-series cards, but it happens only slightly more often than in your typical "gaming" scenario. Another exception is a hot garbage "ASUS Cerberus", which has no VRAM cooling at all and will eventually die or start spewing artifacts regardless of where it's working and what it's doing. Other than that, all the scary stories you see and hear on the internetz, is idiots running ETH farms at or near 100% PL and max GPU/VRAM clocks regardless of consequences (and very questionable performance benefits).


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## Outback Bronze (Jun 2, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> In a gaming rig you have things like



Yeah I was under the impression that mining can actually be better for a card in various situations (-50%) like for instance solder joints on the PCB are better for constant running than being turned on (hot) then off (cold) all the time. This is why some people bake their card to reflow.

I don't have any proof of the matter its just an observation of mine.


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## Vya Domus (Jun 2, 2021)

I've started to get spammed on youtube out of nowhere with videos about how to optimize and mine chia. In other words this crap hit the mainstream, I think it's time to face reality and accept that chia mining is here to stay.



silentbogo said:


> Components have varying lifespan depending on operating conditions.
> In a gaming rig you have things like:
> 1) Higher PL and consequently Vcore
> 2) Much higher operating temps during load, and usually lackluster cooling
> ...



I've dabbled through some mining forums and reddits , most of these guys don't give two shits about any of that. They just put the damn things on 100% fan speed and forget about them till they start artifacting and crashing.


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## R-T-B (Jun 2, 2021)

las said:


> This is not a regular coin, it's not like all coins explode, most die out, it needs exposure to blow up and chia is not popular at all


The sad thing is for whatever reason, people are giving it said exposure.

Filecoin never got exposure like this.



Aquinus said:


> This is my primary complaint with crypto as it stands right now. Decentralized transaction processing makes sense, decentralized issuing and destruction "notes"/currency does not. I see mining as a mechanism where early adopters can basically get to run off with money when they didn't really add any value in the first place. They made something worth nothing, marketed it, then ran off with what people were willing to pay for it. It practically starts as a ponzi scheme and ends as an unregulated market. It's a perfect mechanism to commit fraud.


I agree with you but don't have any better ideas on how to tackle it.

I thought about making a coin long ago based around a "Proof Of Presence" model that was pretty reliable.  Basically it issued an evenly distributed set of coins to anyone with an IPv4 that requested it, on daily intervals.  You could not request more without another IPv4 to work with.  It was designed to act as a sort of universal income for a household that would be fairly distributed.

Thing is, I'm sure that would lead to people being people, buying cheap vms online, and hoarding IPv4 addresses, and wrecking large parts of the self hosted internet.  Basically, try as you may:  It never stops.  Bloody humans.

If I thought the above idea would've worked, I would have launched the coin alongside my own crypto mining article series.  But I don't have that feeling about it.  So it never got made.

Helium right now is the best thing I've seen in that vein of thought.  Which is why I threw some money at it this month.


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## Outback Bronze (Jun 2, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> I thought about making a coin



I think your very talented to even suggest that mate. Congrats.


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## Aquinus (Jun 2, 2021)

R-T-B said:


> The sad thing is for whatever reason, people are giving it said exposure.
> 
> Filecoin never got exposure like this.
> 
> ...


Well, one of the advantages of fiat currency (or disadvantage if you do it wrong,) is that the money supply is controlled by some authority and that authority has the ability to make gradual adjustments by destroying and issuing notes on a regular basis or instant adjustments by issuing long term notes that mature over time (bonds for example.) Ideally you don't want huge changes unless there is something that warrants it, but something has to make that call. A central authority is not what "people" want, however being too decentralized is a problem on the other end of the spectrum which is where we are at now. I think that there should be a trusted group that acts as an authority that coordinates (unanimously for,) the creation and destruction of currency in whatever form that takes, with a more wide network of peers to handle transactions that only requires one of the authority figures that can issue and destroy currency. A fee for each transaction would be the pool of currency that can be removed or added back into "circulation" at any given time. Since unanimous consent is hard and fees would be relatively small, the rate at which the currency can grow or shrink is limited, but still controllable to some degree.

That's my view anyways, so take it for what it's worth... which is probably nothing.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 2, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> I don't think in my entire career I've seen a consumer SSD that died by exceeding it's TBW.


That's you. I've seen many.


silentbogo said:


> Again, counterarguing assumption with another assumption.


If you say so. Some would accurately call promoting a product that is cheaper to make and sell at a high price a "business model".


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## silentbogo (Jun 3, 2021)

lexluthermiester said:


> That's you. I've seen many.


S.M.A.R.T. or never happened


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## las (Jun 3, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> S.M.A.R.T. or never happened



Yep, TLC has replaced MLC for consumers for a reason. The failure rate on TLC today, is lower than MLC, 5 years ago.

SLC + MLC = Enterprise
TLC + QLC = Consumer

There's no high-end PCIe 4.0 SSDs for consumers using MLC.


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## lexluthermiester (Jun 3, 2021)

silentbogo said:


> S.M.A.R.T. or never happened


What, you actually expect me to take screenshots for drives I don't possess anymore? Pound sand.


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