Temporary shutdown

Chia Farming & Harvesting
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Short term. I have shut down my farm partially.

I have 250TB on one system and 50TB on another. Energy usage is around 600-700W for both. Earning consistently around 3.0XCH via pooling per month at current rates.

However, 0.7KW/hr = 16.8kWh/day or 504 kWh/month
I pay £0.30/kWh now which means I spend £151.20 on electricity discounting standing charges to earn 3.0XCH worth $107.

So I have turned the bigger farm off, no intention of erasing the plots yet, I am maintaining the smaller farm’s node to keep my blockchain sync’d.

If the current doldrums are temporary then I might restart farming. Or if I get solar and have suplus (which is unlikely as I plan a battery system and electric car which will absorb any surplus).

However, medium term having all this equipment sitting around doing nothing rather than repurpose to maybe Storj or maybe sell it on, seems like the wrong move.

The current situation is a real test of resolve. I could sell it all and buy XCH but that was never the plan, it wasn’t speculation it was to create something.

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Perhaps you can connect the disks to your daily computer? I did that, I just farm when I’m working.

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Hello DJ.

I am no longer a farmer or regular poster and this re-post of my response in another thread is technically spam but I hope it helps you and others make your decisions.

"I got involved with crypto in an effort to support the growth of wealth creation and an alternate economy that was NOT based under Federal Reserve and governmental control.

I got into Chia, in particular, because it offered a more environmentally friendly crypto and because my gut told me (incorrectly) that Bram, as a creator of bit torrent networks, shared my anti-centralization beliefs.

The day that Chia Inc. became a partner with the World Bank I voiced my concerns here and got out soon after. I wont be a troll and continue on here ranting that everybody else should think like me so I stopped posting.

The recent UST/LUNA disaster should provide further warning to all crypto users. This was a simple attack that sold a few billion USD of UST/LUNA at a well timed moment. The attacker spent considerable cash doing this. They also shorted mass UST/LUNA and then made a huge profit. Simple scam, straight out of the movies.

All coins are susceptible to this simple attack. The stock market is a Casino and crypto is now just another table in the house.

I bought gold and silver before the pandemic. I wish I had bought more at those wonderful prices when the CAD was relatively strong. Although the prices are not as low now, I think this may be the last good opportunity to buy precious metals at a reasonable price.

Stick with Canadian and US .999 or better 1oz coins and/or grams or 50gm sheets. These are always tradable at market value and by sticking to the smaller coins and grams you avoid fake bullion and it is easier to sell or trade when the time comes.

I am not ranting on Chia. I have said and will say again that Chia’s involvement with The World Bank was a very good thing for Chia’s long term prosperity and survival. If you still feel the need to play in crypto then Chia is probably one of the better bets.

For me, there are better and easier ways to make money then dabbling in crypto, worrying about what my effort is really supporting, and having the constant concern that whatever crypto coin I have may be worth zero tomorrow.

Precious metals do not give me ulcers. Real productive work and activity doesn’t hurt me either. :sunglasses:

Be well!

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To the original poster, do what you think is right and fits within your plan. Everyone has their plan for one reason or another with different levels of risk and many other factors. Like electricity costs. I can run my 600+TB farm profitably down to about $28 per coin. But even below that I will still farm because current profitability is not my goal. But that’s me.

As for @Aspy68:

This is just untrue. Saying this is just like saying every stock in the stock market is vulnerable to attacks like this. Yes, anyone with a lot of money can manipulate a stock or crypto. But the failure of UST/LUNA is not an example of what can happen to any crypto. That was “supposedly” a stable coin but had a faulty system to stabilize the coin. Chia and most other coins are not structured like stable coins and cannot be looked at in the same way … at all. That would be like comparing the US Dollar to a credit card. You can use them similarly but their structure is nothing alike.

Either can be a casino if it is treated that way. Just buying a stock or coin “hoping” it will move in your favor is gambling. But doing research on either a stock or coin and investing in the prospects of the project/company is not gambling. It’s business. 90% of people in crypto are gamblers for sure. But some of us have truly done our research and believe this is the place to be in another 4 or so years. Heck, I could be wrong. But it isn’t a gamble.

I do think crypto is entering a phase of reckoning. The fad of it all is going to shake out a lot of crap. But that is entirely the reason why I am in Chia. I still believe that they are bringing a solid solution to the real functionality of a crypto coin and blockchain. Sustainably. And the World Bank program is an example of that, not a sign of something wrong.

But, you have made your decision. I respect that. I believe the reason you are still around here is because you are still questioning if you made the right decision. Currently, I’m sure the price of XCH makes you feel like you did. I don’t think the pain in that area is over, unfortunately. But I think it is temporary. For my sake, I’m looking forward to the day you check in here and the the price and conversations make your stomach hurt. Missed opportunities and such. But maybe you just stopped farming. Maybe you still have XCH in the bank. If so, smart move.

Good luck to you in your ventures.

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Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Interesting read.

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I have taken a temporary shift down from 300TB and 700 watts to 50TB and 80W.

I have XCH - I have never sold any. I have a fair bit of Flax but I doubt it will ever be worth much.

I have no intention in the medium term of erasing my plots etc.

I am not trying to put a downer on Chia. It’s a really good crypto with potential, just trying to reduce my costs in the short term.

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What hardware are you running, 700 watts seems rather excessive, last time I checked mine it was 225w for server and 19 drives, of which 221TiB was plots. Currently expanding that to about 280 TiB with 21 drives in total, and I expect power to be about 240w

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I am running two netapp DS4243 disk shelves and a Dell R320 server.
I did not buy 18 TB new drives instead I acquired multiple 4-12TB ex data centre drives.
So I saved money going in, but am spending more on power now.

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Here 22 hdd about 265tb and a consumption of 200W monitor off

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~0.67 watts/tb for farm less monitor. Pretty even split 14tb/18tb with a couple 12tb, 16tb in the mix.

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Let say that it will dip below $28, and your electricity expense will be $100 per month, where XCH earned will be just $50 per month. Why would you keep your farm up, instead of just buying XCH for that $100 (the cost of electricity if farm is running) - basically doubling your XCH per month?

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This is a real bad Watt per TB ratio of over 2 W/TB…
I’ve about 0,8 W/TB also with a single DS4243 and a Supermicro Server (Xeon E3-1285L v4).

How many Power Supplies are you using per DD4243?
My DS4243 and Server is running with only a single power supply to maximize the efficiency.

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Drive Wattage depends mostly on the spindle power draw (in active state, as the step motor draws nothing (no R/W activity), and control board draws rather constant power), and there is not that much variation between say 8 TB and 18 TB drives, as far as power draw.

So, saying that a setup draws 0.8 W/TB really doesn’t tell much. That implies that for 20 TB drives it would be 16 W per drive, where the drive just draws roughly 8W (so supporting overhead is huge). On the other hand, for 8 TB drives that would be just 6.4 W (per drive), what would be a super efficient farm.

I guess, for an efficient farm, the power draw per drive (3.5") should be around 10 W / drive or less. That is assuming that 1W goes for SATA or USB part (e.g., HBA controller, or USB enclosure), and around 1 W for the CPU (e.g., RPi harvester draws 10 W, and can support around 20 drives). Some NUCs that use mobile CPUs also draw around 10-20 W, and can easily handle 20+ drives. I really don’t know what the power consumption per drive of something like DS4243 is.

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There is scope to turn off one processor on the R320, remove some power supplies. Might work on the netapp DS, but on the dell servers one is a hot spare and only pulls 10W in standby if it is the spare. So running on one PSU saves 10W but no more.

Looking into with a friend, who is a serious hard drive expert, if we can spin drives down and still manage to pass the filter. Could save more power.

I accept I could be on a lower power consumption regime with 18TB USB drives and a desktop computer but part of this for me was to learn about servers and get experience with rack mount, so some of my costs I am considering education fees.

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That server takes E5-2400 line of CPUs. It has E5-2418L (4 phys cores / 8 logical) that has TDP 50 W, or E5-2418L (6 phys) that also draws 50 W. I switched to such low power Xeon in my enclosure, and power draw for the harvester dropped down to 10 W for a similar XEON. Although, mine has just 2 phys cores (equivalent to i3 CPU from 2012 or so). You can buy such CPU on eBay for around $10 (or less).

That’s the bummer. You cannot do it. The drive needs to be in ACTIVE state. Newer drives have one extra power state where the spindle is in ACTIVE state, but the controller board drops to power saving mode (saving maybe 1W per drive or so), and it takes no time to switch to fully ACTIVE. So, it is really that ~8 W per SATA and 9-11 per SAS drive (3.5").

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I have drives ranging from 6TB to 18TB, I’m just retiring 2 x 6TB and an 8 TB, that will still leave me with another 8TB, 2 x 10TB, 12TB, and some 14s,16s and 3 x 18TB.

I’d like to get to all 16 and18, but I’ll only buy at the right price, average price paid per TB is just under £14.

As an added bonus I have solar, so when the sun actually shines I have free electric.

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This could (should) be the recommended ultimate Chia setup! “Green energy for green crypto - Chia!” What a marketing campaign Chia, Inc. could do! Kudos Ronski!

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Then, if enough solar is available, GPU mining is also as green as chia farming. So, no more advantage to Chia. :wink:

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It’s gonna take a lot of solar to ‘fix’ Bitcoin’s energy use compared to Chia, like 500 times more >

  • Storage devices are power efficient compared to GPUs, CPUs, and ASIC for mining other cryptocurrencies and consume a fraction of the energy, with Chia today consuming 500 times less electricity than Bitcoin at a higher node count and decentralization.

Mining vs. Farming, the Data Behind Being Green.

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One RTX 3060 TI draws around 150 W, and generates somewhere between $1-2. That is roughly an equivalent of about 150-200 TB worth of chia farm. Using your usage (0.67 W/TB) and 200 TB farm gives around 130 W, so not that far away from GPU mining. OTOH, using that JBOD example mentioned above ($0.8 / TB) brings that farm basically to a wash with that GPU.

Bear in mind that the article you quoted is from Oct 2021, where XCH price was somewhere around $150 or so. Unfortunately, XCH tumbled much harder than ETH or BTC, bringing it closer to a wash.

Although, the main difference (for me) is that with ETH/BTC farming, all whales are mining with $0.1 per kW or less plus using ASICs that are much more energy efficient than GPUs, and it is rather hard to beat for an average GPU miner. Where in Chia case, if the price will go further down, smaller farms may be more energy efficient than those whales, especially if there is even a small solar backup behind that (as there are no ASICs to farm chia). Although, this brings a question who really brings the value to bitcoin, farmers like you or I, or rather whales, and we peons are just collecting crumbs.