In 2024, mining cryptocurrency is becoming more and more accessible, thanks to the rise of HDD mining. Unlike the power-hungry ASIC miners that need immense electrical capacity, HDD mining offers a quieter, more efficient way to mine crypto — right from your spare bedroom!
My Journey with Chia & Evergreen Miners
If you haven’t done so already, I encourage you to go and watch our full HDD mining tutorial, where we turn a spare PC into a Chia mining farm! This tutorial is what got me started with my Chia mining journey, and when coupled with my love of technology, I knew that I had to expand my mini farm!
That’s where the VoskCoin x EVG Tails Edition miners came in — by grabbing a starter kit (specifically the 100TBe kit), I could easily deploy essentially 10x the capacity right next to my Chia mining PC! The appeal was almost entirely from a hobbyist perspective, knowing well that the Evergreen Miners are not necessarily going to break even for a long time. At the current price of about $1,300, the kit is set to take over 2 years to finally break even, should the price of Chia not appreciate. Naturally, my hope is for the coin to rise in price, but if it doesn’t, I haven’t gotten into this mining position as a “for-profit” venture — which significantly increases the amount of fun I can have mining!
Tech Deep Dive: Understanding HDD Mining
Mining cryptocurrency with hard drives is done by providing “plots” on hard drives and then farming those plots via an internet connection. With Evergreen Miners, you connect the HDD enclosures to the custom-built hub and set up the miner through their mobile app.
These HDD mining rigs mine the Chia $XCH coin, the namesake of which aims to create a decentralised storage network. Chia is currently a top 200 cryptocurrency, with a massive 30 Exbibytes (EiB) of decentralised storage running, which is over 34,000,000 Terabytes!
First Impressions: Unboxing the VoskCoin Tails Edition EVG Miners
Visual Appeal:
★★★★★ 5/5
This might be a little biased, but I love the Tails Edition orange enclosures! Maybe it’s because I was honoured to be able to assist in the design process, but the app theme, NFT, and enclosures are all incredibly unique. The form factor of the HDDs is also great, allowing you to easily and securely stack them on top of one another.
Initial Setup:
★★★☆☆ 3/5
My first Evergreen kit was a breeze to set up — unfortunately, this kit was not the same. Out of the box, there seemed to be no problem, however, it was upon setting them up in the app that a situation emerged. My drives weren’t able to connect to the hub! After messaging one of the Evergreen team members as well as a VoskCoin team member, they helped me remove the faulty chip and all I had to do was flash a micro-SD card with Evergreen’s software — quick and easy! We have also been informed that it was a faulty batch and that the issue has been resolved in all kits released thereafter.
Performance Check: Evaluating the EVG Miners in Action!
What’s most interesting about mining with HDDs is that there is not a traditional “efficiency” standard as you may see with Bitcoin or Kaspa mining. The measure for HDD mining (Chia in particular) is in your plots’ compression level. A higher compression level will mean more space can be “crammed” into your physical capacity — basically, it means you get more space per HDD, and thus more rewards!
This is important because when buying an EVG set, you get C5 compression, which means almost 25% extra rewards per hard drive!
Overall performance:
★★★★★ 5/5
With 100% uptime, basically no heat or noise, and consistent rewards, the Tails Edition EVG miners’ performance is rock solid. The app is intuitive and easy to navigate, and the stats available for your kit help you to effectively troubleshoot should anything go wrong. My only gripe with the mobile app is the lack of transaction history — I can’t see where I’ve sent coins to, which makes it a hassle to transfer every time I want to send coins to cold storage. Other than that, it’s customisable with the Tails Edition theme, and tracks everything you’ll need!
The Financial Side: Investing in Hard Drives
As mentioned previously — if you’re looking for a profitable mining venture, then you may want to look somewhere else (for now!) Unfortunately, mining Chia is not very lucrative due to a few factors:
- HDD prices
- Coin price
- Rewards emission
Currently, the price of the Chia $XCH coin is not very high (when compared to previous highs). Couple this with the fact that on average, only about $300,000 is emitted per day in new coins across the entire blockchain. With over 30 EiB in storage committed to mining, rewards for a few TBs will thus be far lower than the actual cost of the HDD itself. This means your rewards for 100TBe at C5 compression averages around $0.50 per day. At the price point of $1,300, it’s easy to see why this is not a very appealing mining endeavour, other than if you’re bullish on the future of Chia.
I think that what Chia is doing is exciting and has incredible potential for mainstream adoption (if executed correctly). The total netspace has seen a slight decline in trajectory over the past months, which indicates a slightly bearish sentiment toward adding new space to the blockchain (ie. people are less bullish on buying and plotting HDDs).
Final Verdict: Are the EVG Miners Worth It?
So why am I doing all of this despite it clearly not being a financially sound idea? It’s because I absolutely love the tech! Building a mini mining farm right from the comfort of my own home, knowing that these digital employees make me money even while I sleep is a fascinating idea — despite the current profitability. Ultimately, the verdict on whether the Evergreen Miner kits are worth it is entirely dependent on your perspective of the Chia project and the HDD mining landscape in general.
Stay Tuned: The Evolving Journey
As my mini mining farm continues to evolve, make sure you’re following to get all the recent news and updates! The next potential update has to do with Dogecoin and Litecoin mining — so stay tuned!
Thanks so much for reading and following — if you enjoyed this article and gained something from it, don’t forget to leave some claps (you can clap up to 50 times!) Don’t forget to subscribe to the VoskCoin YouTube channel, the leading cryptocurrency mining channel, if you’re interested in seeing HDD mining on a whole different scale!
Thank you to Evergreen and VoskCoin for sending this Starter Kit to review! This article may contain affiliate links that will help the channel. Your support is greatly appreciated!
