Last month HEXUS reported upon the emergence of Chia as a pioneer of the 'proof of space and time' cryptocurrency model. Miners of Chia are encouraged to create systems with many terabytes of storage and reports from mid-April suggest that this concept was already wreaking havoc with high-capacity HDD and SSD pricing in Hong Kong. Chia pitches itself as a greener crypto, which users can farm "without single-use hardware or a big electricity bill."
Chia started trading on Monday, and the XCH coin is expected to gain widespread exchange listings plus adoption by financial, corporate, commercial, and governmental bodies. It listed at a valuation of US$1,600, and surged up to $1,811, but has since dived to $635. However, the chart currently looks quite flat, so perhaps it is nearing a stable base value of US$600 or so.
TeamGroup has written to HEXUS about its "most powerful tool for the new crypto craze," the T-Create Expert PCIe SSDs. It doesn't look too much like an opportunist marketeer's cash grab as these are much more durable SSDs than any we have seen from TeamGroup previously, as you will read below.
Key specifications of the TeamGroup T-Create Expert PCIe SSDs:
- Interface: PCIe Gen3x4 with NVMe 1.3
- Capacity: 1TB / 2TB
- Voltage: DC +3.3V
- Operation Temperature: 0˚C ~ 70˚C
- Storage Temperature: -40˚C ~ 85˚C
- Terabyte Written: 1TB:6000TB / 2TB:12000TB
- Performance: ATTO / Crystal Disk Mark: 1TB/2TB Read: 3400MB/s ; Write: 3000MB/s
IOPS: 1TB/2TB Random Read/Write 180K/140K IOPS Max - Weight: 11g
- Dimensions: 80.0(L) x 22.0(W) x 3.7(H) mm
- Humidity: RH 90% under 40°C (operational)
- Vibration: 80Hz~2,000Hz/20G
- Shock: 1500G/0.5ms
- MTBF: 3,000,000 hours
TeamGroup says that the T-Create Expert PCIe SSDs' TBW values make them "the perfect tool for supporting the intense write-cycle algorithms required for the mining process". Moreover, they are specced for 3 to 10 times higher endurance than its own MP33 PCIe SSD or QX SSDs, for example. It is good to see Team Group backup its products with a 12-year limited warranty, when I have seen news of SSD manufacturers changing warranties to add Chia clauses.
TeamGroup says you can pre-order / reserve its T-Create Expert PCIe SSDs now, but I couldn't find the pricing listed on the site. I'm surprised at relatively low capacities on offer, based upon what I have read about Chia.
On a related note, having a quick look at Amazon UK storage prices today the Chia craze doesn’t look like it has had much of an impact on large storage device prices, either SSD or HDD.
