PNY Reduces SSD Lifespan by 80% Due To Chia Miners

PNY has officially announced an intentional reduction in the lifespan of its XLR8 CS3030 Series SSDs. For some models, the working potential is reduced by 80%.

The line of devices includes models with 200 and 500 GB, 1, 2 and 4 TB. The new batch will go on sale with TBW already cut.

Thus, for the 250 GB model, the guaranteed capacity of recorded information is reduced by 55% (from 380 to 170 TB). For 500 GB - by 79% (from 800 to 170 TB). Devices with a capacity of 1 TB and 2 TB will also be significantly affected - up to -78% for the 1 TB model (from 1665 TB to 360 TB) and up to -79% for the 2 TB model (from 3115 TB to 660 TB).

Obviously, such measures were caused by increased demand for SSDs due to the mining of the Chia cryptocurrency (XCH). The need to constantly perform write-delete cycles wears out the drives in a few weeks, so it was decided to reduce the equipment warranty period. For those who use hard drives for their intended purpose, it will expire before users notice any problems with them. So far, it is still 5 years.

Moreover, since May 17, the company is experiencing a shortage of electronic components for their drives. In particular, PNY no longer specifies the type of NAND memory used. They may have switched from 3D TLC chips (three bits of information per cell) to four-bit QLC solutions.

Unfortunately, manufacturers are increasingly forced to resort to such measures - from the release of specialized products for mining, to deliberately decreasing the performance of their devices (as Nvidia did for its video cards). Most likely, they would not mind increasing overall production, but they are highly dependent on manufacturers of chips and other components. And those, in turn, are simply not ready to produce products in the required quantity, as required by the miners.