It seems like Adata’s decided to lace up its boots, put on its cowboy hat, and ride the bullish Chia Coin market until it finally stops bucking. The company published a press release today extolling the virtues of its latest high-capacity SSDs and memory products in a bid to convince miners to choose its products over the competition.
Adata said in the release that its XPG SX8200 Pro Gen3 x4, SX8100 Gen3 x4, and GAMMIX S50 Lite Gen4 x4 SSDs as well as its DDR4-3200 and XPG GAMMIX D45 3600 32GB modules “have been tested for Chia mining by ADATA engineers on the latest Intel Z590 and AMD X570 platforms to guarantee seamless performance.”
We reported yesterday that Adata’s SSD and DRAM orders increased 500% month-over-month in April due to the Chia boom because the cryptocurrency, which has been pitched as a more environmentally friendly alternative to Bitcoin, prizes storage and memory performance over sheer computational power.
“While the sudden increase in SSD demand is quite unexpected,” Adata president Shalley Chen said, “we are not at all surprised that Chia miners are turning to our high-capacity storage products for their unique needs. At ADATA, we have always been focused on developing and offering high-quality, high-performance, and high-capacity devices to meet the needs of discerning users, whether they be PC enthusiasts, gamers, creators, or crypto miners.”
With the rise of Chia, PC builders have to worry about sourcing yet another part because of cryptocurrency. At this point, we’ll be lucky if mining doesn’t make its way to headsets, keyboards, and mice.
Phison said earlier this week that SSD prices would rise because the cryptocurrency’s boom has coincided with supply issues. We’ve known Chia’s likely to have an outsized influence on the storage market for weeks, especially since farming can quickly wear out some drives.
Until the price of Chia falls, however, that’s unlikely to dissuade miners. CoinGecko said the cryptocurrency’s value had risen nearly 50% over the last week, and it doesn’t show any signs of dropping soon. It makes sense for miners to buy as many drives as possible to maximize their potential profits in the short term.