Chia Observations

Psittac · May 31, 2021

It's not worth investing in new hardware at all, a couple weeks ago it was at an exobite or two, now it's like 14, all calculations are based off having a farm fully equipped and doesn't consider the large amount of time to develop those farms.

If you have hardware sitting around that's fine, but it is entirely based off the speed and size of your temporary drive. CPU and RAM are only taxed on occassion when compared to drive speed and size.

The blockchain program is rather buggy and easy to crash/glitch. If for any reason you close the chia program or restart your computer every plot you were building is lost (from my limited experience)

The queue plot function can only wait a predetermined amount of time to start, so unless you are fully aware of your systems capabilities and time limits you can easily find yourself with down time or end up with overextended resources which may cause a crash.

If your system crashes or is shut down before a plot/s are/is done your temp drive is still full of the temporary files.

If anyone knows how to recover partial plots please let me know.

Conclusion: With an exponentially growing network and a buggy system it is very difficult to know how to optimize result's even if you already have the hardware.

Psittac · June 3, 2021

FFS: I swear that I can waste at least half a day if not an entire day of plotting on my main machine because the queue system is broken. I've had so many instances of my temp drive filling and cancelling EVERY plot under way that I'm pretty fed up. That or my machine just crashes. I doubt I'll ever get the money back from buying the gen 4 pcie nvme drive before it's toast but hopefully the introduction of pools will help. The difficulty is going up exponentially and my rate is far behind the curve to keep up. AND, even people with massive builds are being let down in spades.

jwwagner25 · June 4, 2021

it took me until my HDD's were basically full to find the optimal times for offsetting plots, the best I ever got was a three day span where I was able to fill the rest of a 14TB (there was about 4TB free) without needing any intervention. It was something like 5 separate k-33 plots running simultaneously, each with a queue of 6 and delayed start of 1020 minutes. The average completion time for me, whether using sata ssd or nvme (gen3) is 9 hours for a k32 plot. (18 hours for K33)

Sadly you kinda wasted money getting gen4 drive, the plotting process is very disorganized and it doesn't utilize those speeds whatsoever. Again, there is basically no difference in using sata3 ssd vs. gen3 nvme. Anyway, I feel your pain. I started about 4 weeks ago and only have 4 XCH. the more I read, the less appealing it all looks. There is something like 75-90% of all XCH that is reserved for the creators, people are saying that if/when it ever gets and IPO the price will plummet. It's too complicated for me to understand. Anyway I am rambling now. Take care

Psittac · June 7, 2021

On 6/4/2021 at 5:32 AM, jwwagner25 said:

it took me until my HDD's were basically full to find the optimal times for offsetting plots, the best I ever got was a three day span where I was able to fill the rest of a 14TB (there was about 4TB free) without needing any intervention. It was something like 5 separate k-33 plots running simultaneously, each with a queue of 6 and delayed start of 1020 minutes. The average completion time for me, whether using sata ssd or nvme (gen3) is 9 hours for a k32 plot. (18 hours for K33)

Sadly you kinda wasted money getting gen4 drive, the plotting process is very disorganized and it doesn't utilize those speeds whatsoever. Again, there is basically no difference in using sata3 ssd vs. gen3 nvme. Anyway, I feel your pain. I started about 4 weeks ago and only have 4 XCH. the more I read, the less appealing it all looks. There is something like 75-90% of all XCH that is reserved for the creators, people are saying that if/when it ever gets and IPO the price will plummet. It's too complicated for me to understand. Anyway I am rambling now. Take care

Yeah that all makes sense. This reminds me of my life a little less than two decades ago when I was in tune with my system and could push the clocks because I knew my system that well. These day's I don't want to put that much effort into it and even if I did, from the sound of it, you spent all of your "resources" getting that method down so what was the gain in learning that system? What is most disheartening to me is that I will have to replot everything once pools come out. I came into the game far to late and put to little on the table to gain any coins. I'm not TOO bent out of shape with the gen4 purchase because I knew it was just a speculative purchase and if worse comes to worse I stop using my laptop and regain my main desktop for daily use without the need to use my hdd's for scarcely used games.

I wouldn't worry to much about the coins left to developers. From what I understand it's basically like an IPO where investors get a stake in the currency for their investment. This makes perfect sense to me. The problem is that it requires faith in the creator to limit sell off. Son of a tech did an EXCELLENT interview with the creator of chia where he covered the potential crashes of the coin from your very concerns. There is set amount of coins that can't be touched within certain parameters and there is a waiting period and a "master key" that can call those coins back. Basically where faith in an unregulated currency and system is backed up by technology.

Yeah when I opened the video it reminded me that your concerns are called "pre farm". The video is a good watch but remember that son of a tech is very neutral as far as safety in any aspect is concerned. He typically just represents thing's as they are commonly seen. (new unofficial chia pool video is what makes me concerned)

https://youtu.be/eW1G0Sli2gY