Another product is becoming scarce and expensive
Graphics cards from Nvidia or AMD, popular consoles such as the PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X are still not normally available despite a long wait. The crypto boom but also the generally high demand in the current situation mean that we can no longer just buy things that we want to buy. The next scarce resource is already being announced.
Chia: Hard drives and SSDs are becoming scarce and expensive
The Chia boom means that prices for hard drives and SSDs have skyrocketed. While a month ago you paid well under 20 euros per terabyte for normal hard drive storage, the prices are now utopian and you can no longer buy some models. One has so far for an external 8 TB hard drive paid around 130 euros, it is now 165 euros if you still get one. Amazon even imports some from England to meet demand. 8 TB is not even optimal for Chia. We recommend more than 12 TB and most of them are sold out or have become unaffordable. With luck, you can get one for 379 euros on Amazon. It is only 4 TB more, but you pay 163 euros more. For the price, you would have gotten significantly more storage space until recently. An internal 12 TB hard drive now costs over 500 euros. The delivery time is at least one month.
In the case of SSDs, the price has also risen massively. With Chia the “lots” have to be plotted. Most users use NVMe SSDs for this to work quickly. While one so far a 2 TB SSD for around 250 to 300 euros fast SSDs with a high TBW (Total Bytes Written) have risen massively in price. Now you have to pay over 400 euros and sometimes a long wait. My Corsair Force Series MP600 with 2 TB, which I ordered some time ago for 300 euros, just wasn’t delivered and kept being postponed. In the meantime I have canceled. Large SSDs are so popular because you can then create multiple plots at the same time. I have summarized how it all works in this Chia article.
The hype about Chia is currently ensuring that you large hard drives and fast SSDs are very difficult to get and then have to pay significantly more. The plotting in the pool has been postponed so that the trend should continue until the end of May. What comes after that will have to be seen.
The first insiders are switching to SAS server hard drives for plotting
If you quickly create a lot of plots with a normal consumer SSD, you destroy the memory in a very short time. That’s why I’m currently seeing a change to used SAS server hard drives. Smaller models are bought used on eBay and several plots are created in parallel on each disk with less memory. All you have to do is get a SAS to SATA adapter and connect the hard drives to your normal PC. Takes longer with up to 12 hours per plot, but you don’t break anything. Certainly the more sensible solution in the long run.
I will continue to accompany the chia topic and am currently participating with the resources that are available to me. Investing money, except for the SSD, which I wanted to buy anyway, I won’t.
