We have to start with a warning: we do not recommend that you do the Chia mines or any other cryptocurrency with the PC. It is a process that subjects hardware components to maximum stress, dramatically reducing their durability and useful life, and also consumes large amounts of energy. We repeat that, from HardZone, we do not recommend doing because some manufacturers also void the warranty of their products if they have been damaged due to mining.
However, if you do decide to do this (which is your responsibility), we will tell you what would be the most optimal material to get the best possible return.
The locals during the extraction of Chia
As we anticipated in the introduction, the particularity of Chia is that instead of using the raw power of the GPU, the capacity and speed of the storage units are used for mining, which is why it is says that in Instead of mining, Chia cryptocurrency is cultivated. This drastically reduces the power consumption and heat generated by the equipment, but even so there have been cases of SSDs reaching the end of their useful life after just 40 days of mining, so you have to do very careful with the material you choose.
Unlike mining Ethereum and other cryptos, growing Chia takes a long time. How long? Tentatively, around 6-7 hours is the typical time it takes to get a standard block (which they call a plot) k = 32 (twice as long as k = 33), and that’s with a fast SSD . Obviously, it is possible to cultivate several plots at once with the right equipment, but the required capacity is skyrocketing.
Each trace (this is what the mining process is called) of 101.4 GB officially requires up to 350 GB of temporary storageAlthough this does not mean that you cannot “mine” Chia with a 256 GB SSD. The average write speed during each trace varies, and although sometimes reaches 100MB / s, it can sometimes drop almost to zero. When it drops, it usually means more compute and memory work is being used, which is why a minimum of 4 GB of RAM is also required.
What type of storage hardware is most recommended?
The best solution to exploit Chia is to have a High capacity and very fast SSDAlthough, as we already explained in the previous section, you don’t need it to be PCIe 4.0 at full speed because it won’t enjoy that performance unless it has a huge capacity. to be able to execute several traces simultaneously. For this reason, the most recommended is to use an SSD in enterprise grade U.2 format and high strength.
You have to keep in mind that using a mainstream 512GB SSD (the best currently in capacity / performance / price) for Chia mining is a bad idea, not only because it will degrade quickly. but also because with this one capacity you will be able to do, in the best case, two plots at the same time.
For this reason, a large capacity SSD is typically used to make the plots, followed by a large mechanical hard drive to transfer the finished plots. Chia’s mining app will let you do this almost automatically, but it can be a tricky process because if something goes wrong (like running over temporary storage space) the plot will be blocked and you will lose everything. the work you have done.
Ultimately, for fast SSDs, the limiting factor will likely be storage capacity; If we use the official 350GB temporary space, it means that a 2TB (1863GB) SSD can handle a maximum of five plots simultaneously. You could make six or even seven, but you might run out of storage space and lose everything, so it’s not recommended at all.
Recommended material to undermine Chia
At this point, let’s say you want to build a PC to run (or mine) Chia, which hardware would be most recommended? You shouldn’t think that because Chia computing happens in storage, you don’t need a decent processor, because there is a part of computing CPU and memory, so that’s something which should not be overlooked. The only thing that really doesn’t matter is, in reality, the graphics card because unlike other crypto mining, here it is absolutely useless.
Having said that, as a processor, we would choose a Intel Core i5-11400 because we consider that with its 6 cores and 12 threads but being a fairly affordable processor, we will have more than enough for what we need. Also, it is perfect for us with the included cooling solution because the CPU will not be intensive and it will not be too hot. The counterpart if you want to set up a system AMD would be a Ryzen 5 5600X.
We can not neglect the motherboard either, because in addition to being compatible with the chosen processor, it will be necessary to ensure that it integrates a good controller for the storage. For this reason, we have opted for a plate ASUS Prime Z490-P.
We have already said that we could be satisfied with the heatsink which comes standard in the processor (if we want to put a third, even better) so we go to RAM. In this case the minimum is 4 GB, but it is better to have 16 GB for more space and we select the always reliable ones. Corsair Vengeance LPX at 3200 MHz, in two modules of 8 GB each.
Now comes the most important part, storage. We choose an SSD Sabrent Rocket 4 Over 4 TB, a high performance SSD (7,100 MB / s read and 6,600 MB / s write) with great durability, with up to 2,800 TBW. Obviously, you can choose lower capacity models to make it cheaper, but keep in mind the limitations we explained at the beginning regarding the capacity. By the way, there are SSDs that advertise up to 12,000 TBW, but they are not on the market yet.
As secondary storage, we need a reliable and large capacity hard drive, and we have opted for a 10 TB Seagate Exos X10, a professional-grade hard drive with high reliability as well as excellent performance with a transfer rate of up to 249MB / s. You have the option, in case you haven’t noticed, to use external USB hard drives for this purpose, but be careful because its reliability depending on an external connector is not desirable to undermine Chia.
The rest of the components are a little “to the taste of the consumer”, since the box and the power supply should be chosen. In this regard, we recommend a well refrigerated box and a power supply from a renowned brand of at least 450 watts, not to be scarce, and an efficiency certification 80 Plus Gold at the very least.
As you can see, starting Chia mining with a PC is not cheap, and if mining Ethereum or other cryptos requires a large initial investment in GPUs, mining Chia requires it in too. storage devices, at least if you want to have a good mining. performance and that the device does not die after a few months of use.
