AlexChess wrote: ↑Sun Feb 28, 2021 1:31 pmBut also the system until now has been on day and night to play my Arena engine tournament...
Good consumer SSDs with 500 GB allow about 300 TBW (terabyte written). If you have used up 14% of that, that's 42 TB. With 90 days of usage, that's more than 400 GB written per day, which is huge. There's no way that this could be due to Arena. The general opinion on the issue seems to point to the OS itself wildly swapping RAM to disk, which would hit particularly the M1 models with only 8 GB RAM.
Most browsers also generate many GBs of data writes per day if you leave them running idle. At least in Firefox you can control this somewhat (in Chrome you cannot).
Arena and chess engines indeed shouldn't generate many data writes.
Finally back, my skilled chess friend @acepoint
Have you verified your internal MBP M1 SSD status with: brew install smartmontools && sudo smartctl --all /dev/disk0 ?
Since 2 days, I'm using an external SSD for the whole reinstalled system, but now I have one more doubt:
banksiaGUI running native M1 engines @4CPU reaches 83+° Celsius (more than CineBench!) ...luckily under Arena Chess Windows 10 ARM64, emulated under Parallels Desktop, it runs <=75° Celsius . Are safe temperatures for a 24H tournament?
Normally Mac mini M1 chipset runs @43° Celsius according to TG Pro 2.55
The questions are also for all the hardware experts here
AlexChess wrote: ↑Thu Mar 04, 2021 9:50 am
Update about Apple M1 breaking internal soldered SSDs.:
I have stopped my engines tournaments to verify if the cause could be:
1) Arena Chess running H24 on Windows 10 ARM64 on Parallels Desktop 16.3 M1.
2) A second tournament between native M1 engines on BanksiaGui Mac.
Luckily the remaining percentage is still 84% after a week, but obviously Big Sur has continued to write a lot of data. However it could not be directly related to hash tables or 6-Man Sygyzy tablebases (both installed on an external SSD, but the virtual machine swap file is on the internal SSD) . I have read that it could be only a bug on the 3th part algorithm misuring SSD usage, because also Mac mini M1 total time ON isn't accurate.
Are other people experiencing this worrying issue on Mac M1 playing chess engines tests?
PS: If it will not fixed soon by Apple, I hope to solve it buying an external Thunderbolt 3 M2 512 GB SSD, so I'll not risk to compromise my Mac mini M1, substituting SSD when broken.
I currently sold most of my Apple stuff apart from an old iPad, mainly because I don't like how Apple restricts the use of the hw and their overall un-openness and security by obscurity proposition. This said my friend has a 16GB Macbook air and we concluded that the best way is probably to use it fully as intended and perhaps even stress the SSD more so at least the device failure is likely to happen within warranty, and not outside the 3 years.. It is usually a pain with service when devices start getting older, especially with Apple's current stance of messing as much as possible with 3rd party service and repairs.
Maybe you are using it for lots of other stuff than chess? If only for chess I would probably just sell it on eBay and use the SSD-saving to buy a spanking new slim Ryzen based gaming laptop for a similar price. Better more compatible and less Apple-tax in general. But that's me. I am pretty tired of paying hard-earned money to be a beta-tester for Apple
I have solved my issue installing Big Sur on an external Samsung T5 USB 3.1 512gb SSD. As you suggest, I'll use it until it will be broken and then I'll buy a new one (it doesn't have S.M.A.R.T, so I cannot even know its status ) With the last update, Apple changed a little the procedure to access recovery and is more simple to install macOS externally and access it. A lot of old posts was saying that USB wasn't bootable, while the expensive Thunderbolt 3 was the only solution. Not true (anymore) ...also USB 3.1 works perfectly now and it is always fast.
BUT I agree with you. Apple policy to sold vital components is unfair and I hope users will start a class action also for the SSDgate!
I have asked them to recall all M1 defective computers on Apple Support Forum and on Twitter. I like macOS but NOT Apple, I'm looking for next open hardware ARM computers to install Linux and upgradable storage and memory https://www.pine64.org/pinebook-pro/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_o ... g_hardware.
Anyway great to hear you have a good working workaround
I have also just bought from Amazon 2 USB-C to USB-A high speed adapters 2 have 2 more USB 3.0 ports (another stupid policy by Apple
I have burned an iMac 2013 for using a powered Chinese HUB 3.0
Could someone skilled with a Mac compile GPL 3.0 Stockfish FF 2.0 also for mac? (OK for Intel x64, but preferably for M1)
I'd like to add it to my banksiaGui tournament on Mac, now that I have solved my internal SSD issue.
Using Windows 10 ARM 64 Fat Fritz 2.0 is only 10th, not 1st as stated by Chessbase:
Other users here with Mac mini M1, MacBook Air M1 or Macbook Pro M1?
Which GUI are you using?
-BanksiaGui isn't bad (if you completely reconfigure the graphic) but I don't find an option to add new engines / update them in tournaments without restarting all the games already played, as I always do with the hyper-bugged Arena Chess 3.5.1 on Windows 10.
-Cutechess is doing strage tournaments playing all games together, I'm missing something and so I'll try also ChessX.
Internal SSD and CPU temperature issues?
-Solved eccessive stressing reinstalling Big Sur on external Samsung T5 512 SSD and buying 2 Thunderbolt 3 to USB 3.0 A adapters.
-I cannot change the fan speed @1700 RPM due to T2 chip controller also using TG Pro 3.2.2, so I fear to burn it with tests (83+ Celsius after 15 minutes)
=== START OF SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
SMART/Health Information (NVMe Log 0x02)
Critical Warning: 0x00
Temperature: 29 Celsius
Available Spare: 100%
Available Spare Threshold: 99%
Percentage Used: 2%
Data Units Read: 161,460,398 [82,6 TB]
Data Units Written: 154,723,173 [79,2 TB]
Host Read Commands: 510,094,143
Host Write Commands: 372,974,190
Controller Busy Time: 0
Power Cycles: 103
Power On Hours: 213
Unsafe Shutdowns: 7
Media and Data Integrity Errors: 0
Error Information Log Entries: 0
Also your internal SSD has been written a lot... 79 TB! But used percentage isn't bad as mine using Parallels Desktop for Windows 10 ARM64 (and my Mac mini M1 has been ON 24H for 4 times more than your)
Apple has weird stuff going on. No USB-A ports. Good luck plugging a Razer DeathAdder in their laptops.
Oh you need a docking station. Good luck carrying that heavy bastard around.
I spent time looking for a new phone. And I just can't understand this wireless charging that's in every Apple phone.
You still need a wire for that charging station. I'm not gonna carry around some useless coils in my phone that are just for the specsheet.
.
Mac mini M1 8GB-256GB, Windows 11 & Ubuntu ARM64.
But used percentage isn't bad as mine using Parallels Desktop for Windows 10 ARM64 (and my Mac mini M1 has been ON 24H for 4 times more than your)