THE CHIA FARM

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Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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Thats probably not good for chia farming as drive size is too small;) I made an offer at 10k to see if seller has a limit, looks like he doesn't :0
 
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Rand__

Well-Known Member
Mar 6, 2014
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wait is this still alive? anyone able to make something?
I am still getting coins regularly (still solo farming @ 300TB), current prices are still in the earning zone even with my old inefficient 6T drives, but HODLing anyway, at least until i got a nice bunch of coins.
O/c no telling whats the bottom of this, so a risky game, but that was expected from the start:)
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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Currently Jan 1 2022, my farm capacity is 750TB , 60% solo plots , 40% pool plots.
I did not want to erase solo plots. When I add new drives, I'll use pool plots.

Last year 2021, start farming Chia around May 14.
I gutted few backup servers to housing Chia plots. Don' want to buy new drives for the Chia farm.
I farm and sold Chia, when Chia price dropped below $300, I stop selling and started holding XCH.

With the Chia earning. it paid for all the old drives that I already owned and money to buy new drives.

I waited and not buying new drives until Black Friday 2021.

Between Oct to Dec 2021. I spent $3,400
Purchased a used NAS system, U-NAS 801a with SM systemboard, included 4 x 10TB WD drives.
Purchased new 11 x 14TB WD drives
Purchased used 12 x 6 TB SAS drives @ $8 per TB

I farm for hard drives :)
 
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Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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I am at 284TB as I significantly expanded my farm with 12 14tb from BB. I think I will be losing money if we count the depreciation of the hardware but it is tax deductible. I am really hoping these hard drives will last longer than 3 years.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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I am really hoping these hard drives will last longer than 3 years
I believed the WD drives will last longer than 3 years.
Also I am still using lots of Seagate 4TB drives dated 2015.

I have about 16 x WD 8TB drives from BB that I brought during 2017 holiday.
I am using the WD 8TB now to farm Chia.
 
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gb00s

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Jul 25, 2018
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Poland
What about buying Chia just now with a limited price risk of 75 US$ and no further costs like hardware and electricity? ;) :rolleyes: Or just let id die? There's been no progress in the project for months. Chia needs super high unaffordable cloud storage prices ... Got some SM 836 cases and 10TB drives are cheap 'like before' Chia. Maybe time to return to the project.
 

Marsh

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May 12, 2013
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Past 30 days, I picked up 55 x 6 TB SAS drives between $48-$50 each shipped.
It is not 10TB drive but only $8 per TB.

Few years back, I purchased 3 x SM 836 chassis ( $100 each ) from a local STH member.
Also found a 2u SM chassis for $25 locally.
Past week , brought 2 x SM 2u chassis with SAS3 backplane ( see great deal section )
Found 2 x SM x9SCM systemboard for $20 each. SM systemboard is expensive today.
I plan to use ivy bridge era mothboard, do not want to tie up X10 and X11 SM boards for Chia farming.


I am busy plotting now.
I just want to mine some Chia to offset the cost of hobby.
 

RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
864
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Singapore
Current experience
  • Started around May 21 and got nothing (0 --> 500 plots - 0 Chia)
  • Joined a pool in July 21 and made crumbs (smaller crumbs every day), won and got .25 (around 500 plots - 0.7 Chia total)
  • Left pool to go solo in Aug 21 (500 --> 2,000 plots - 6.7 Chia)
  • Chia became corrupted on my full node and put me out for 2+ weeks (detecting the issue, various fixes, resync the chain, resync the wallet).
Win estimations I have been give by Chia software
Around 1000 plots estimated a win every 2 months.
Around 2000 plots currently estimating a win every month.

Learnings
Backup the wallet and blockchain sqlite files at least monthly. 1+ week to resync from nothing is no joke.

Hardware
  • Full Node - Intel Nuc (i7, 64GB Ram, SSD) - Doubles as home NAS with QNap DAS attached (movies & TV shows etc)
  • Farmers - SM 2U Twin (upgradable to quad). Each node = 2x E5-2690, 128GB Ram, 1x NVME - 1 plot / 30 min / node.
  • Harvester - HP ML350 G7 - 6x3.5" + 8x 2.5" drives, 2x E5-2640v2 (awaiting build)
  • Harvester - SM 2U - 8 Drives, E3-1240L v3 (775 plots)
  • Harvester - SM 3U Harvester - 16 Drives, E3-1231 v3 (1253 plots)

Drives
Size in TBDrive CountWasted space when full of plots
4235GB
63100GB
8227GB
101160GB
12593GB
14221GB

Total wasted space in my setup = 1.59TB = 14 plots worth.

Future plans

Considering whether to add another 50 or 100G. I have the space for new drives but not sure it is worth the purchase.

@gb00s makes a fair point regarding whether it would be better buying vs farming.

If 3,000 plots gave me a 2 week estimated win (just guessing here, is there a chart somewhere ?).

Looking at my case...
100G of drives = $1k = around 13 bought plots ($75 / plot conservative price) = 7 wins = 3.5 months farming

Sure there are also power costs etc but this quick and dirty comparison indicates to me that buying the drives would probably be a better option in my case.

I am also considering converting the two SM Harvesters to DAS units and connecting them to the HP Server to try and reduce electricity costs. This would require expanders and jbod boards though which would be around $200 --> $300 per unit.

Once all my drive bays are full I will probably stop purchasing and concentrate on just maintaining.

Hope this helps someone.
 
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RimBlock

Active Member
Sep 18, 2011
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Thanks, very helpful.

Now if we could only put drive prices in and compare drive sizes against each other it would take it from helpful to awesome :).
 

Bert

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Mar 31, 2018
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Are you guys selling or keeping your XCH? I stopped selling since price went below $100. Although I have no reason to believe price will jump, I just want to take my chance.

I stopped buying any hardware since my purchase of 15 14TB drives from BestBuy, actually I have some 30-40TB is empty standing but I don't want to spend time to start a 3rd enclosure as I have been lazy and UPS is limiting factor.

Tax season is coming, reporting the income for XCH will be very complicated.
 

Bert

Well-Known Member
Mar 31, 2018
950
476
63
45
Past 30 days, I picked up 55 x 6 TB SAS drives between $48-$50 each shipped.
It is not 10TB drive but only $8 per TB.

Few years back, I purchased 3 x SM 836 chassis ( $100 each ) from a local STH member.
Also found a 2u SM chassis for $25 locally.
Past week , brought 2 x SM 2u chassis with SAS3 backplane ( see great deal section )
Found 2 x SM x9SCM systemboard for $20 each. SM systemboard is expensive today.
I plan to use ivy bridge era mothboard, do not want to tie up X10 and X11 SM boards for Chia farming.


I am busy plotting now.
I just want to mine some Chia to offset the cost of hobby.
Are you running harvester on each of these enclosure or do they work as sas expanders?
 

Marsh

Moderator
May 12, 2013
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Typical harvester has 12 internal drives, 32 drives in External DAS chassis.

CPU is typical low end Celeron type, 4 or 8 GB ram.

I found it hard to troubleshoot problem when there is too many drives.