Try to get it working at default gpu clock and voltage before tinkering with those.

Thats not the conf file, but now Im unsure if you actually need a bitcoind.conf or not.
Are you running the daemon (bitcoind) or the GUI client?

If you use the client you have to edit your bitcoin.conf file, uncomment the user and password and set server=1 (which I think is the same as starting the daemon with  -daemon parameter)

edit: brainfart.

Need to see bitcoind.conf and make sure its running

Why would you need waterblocks if you submerge everything in oil? I think the previous poster was talking about cooling the oil with a heatexchanger to a pond .

600MH? Thats weird. Its too much a single card and not enough for two.
And you shouldnt have to use crossfire

I dont think it will have much of an effect. No one sees bitcoin as an alternative to euro's at this point and if the euro zone does implode, it likely means a lot less people with money to spend on risky stuff like bitcoins.

This is a brilliant idea. But it needs some finetuning
2  thoughts:
- you really should include some Casacius physical bitcoins too! They look so much sexier than an USB drive.
- its not good for anyone to have to depend on your honesty in not having a backup of the wallet files. What you should do, is set it up in such a way that new wallet is created upon first run, and then make it easy for the user to import the coins from the wallet you send or claim them online. Or something along the lines. Any solution that guarantees that at least after using the app, no one else will be able to run off with the coins.

Post your bitcoin.conf and guiminer settings.

Unless you seal the box hermetically, you have to pump the oil, because you have to filter it.  And even if you seal it, you still want movement in the oil to help dissipate the heat.

There have been plenty of experiments with mineral oil, and the consensus is that its doesnt cool better than air (let alone water), it just has the advantage of being completely silent and perhaps looking cool.

As for price, if you can achieve sufficient density and scale it may not be that bad. Mineral oil isnt that expensive in volume, most of the other parts you need like pumps, filters, radiators can be used from a car wreck or something.  GPU waterblocks and other watercooling components arent cheap either.

For a single rig, an oil bath is probably not worth it, but if you have a small farm that you can space efficiently submerge, it might actually be doable. Have a look here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U5zoIEjo1Zk

Not fun for maintenance though.

You should look for bad sector count or relocated sector count (post the numbers) or anything else thats not green or good. Dont worry about N/A it means not applicable, iow, your drive doesnt support that particular parameter

Just to make sure the conspiracy theorists run out of ideas.. assuming they have several units, will they let you choose a unit at random?

Per dollar, hmm  you should get ~twice the transistor density, so for a given size you would get twice the performance, but thats ignoring the exponential higher fixed costs for these new process nodes. Just compare wafer prices at 65nm with 40/45nm at TSMC. Good luck getting 2x better performance per $!.

Per watt, 2x from just a shrink is more than just optimistic. In reality its always a lot less, and its not likely anything like moving to s-asic (particularly with little to no IO and RAM):


Sorry, an extra process shrink just isnt going to make up for that.

I wouldnt know how, but I would love to see the results if someone could.


Well, lets look at the numbers we have. Right now the best FGPA board seems to be the Ztek board, right? It achieves 22 MH/W and when applying the largest volume discount for 100+ boards, 0.6 MH/$. Its based on an FGPA built on leading edge 45 process.

Lets look at BFL's numbers; 53 MH/W and 1.5 MH/$. I suspect its not even built on a leading edge process, but even if it is, thats almost 2.5x better power efficiency and 3x better cost efficiency.

A process shrink will rarely give you 50% on both metrics (I think we can agree the FPGA is by far the largest cost). So I just dont see how a 28nm FPGA could possibly close the gap with BFLs product, let alone a future s-asic built on a smaller node.

You're welcome. Im quite familiar with the flaw in your logic because I apply it every day by keeping my mining rigs running when it costs me more than buying BTCs from an exchange . At least I dont kid myself  by thinking its smart .

Sigh.. dude, we know you dont believe it. Please spare us your tiresome, repetitive, content-less "cheer-leading" and use your time more productive by looking up some recipes.



I have a strong hunch you may need it.

ew, lots of misunderstandings there.
Lets start with the most important one, the bad sectors. This is usually bad news. Bad sectors do not disappear, but they do get remapped to spare sectors automatically by the drive itself at the moment you try to write to them. Thats most likely what happened when you "nuked" the drive, all it does is write random data to each and every sector, which triggers the drive's controller to remap the known bad sectors to spare ones.

Check your drive health. In ubuntu, launch "disk utility", select your drive, and check out the "smart status". I got a strong suspicion its dying and the cause of your trouble to begin with.

Also make a copy of you wallet.dat thats not stored on your harddrive, but some external media (good idea to encrypt the file too).

Thats highly unlikely. Altera's documentation for Hardcopy suggests powersavings, die space (cost) savings and speed increases that are (very) far beyond a die shrink.  My guess is BFL's product isnt even on a leading edge process, but something cheaper like 90nm. An FPGA just cant be competitive with a s-asic.

Not had your coffee yet?
You are paying $800 for 200BTC instead of $500. That you can sell the card is irrelevant. You can obviously sell it if you are not mining too. And if you dont have one, you are forgetting the purchase price. So this is closer to reality:

200BTC * $2.50 (market price) = $500 for 200BTC
200BTC * $4.00 (mined price) = $800 in electricity +$1000 in hardware - $500 sale of used hardware a year later = $1300 for 200BTC

You know, Ill sell you BTCs at half that cost!

Its the other way around. If you take hardware depreciation in to account its even worse. If you mine at a loss because of electricity costs alone, it means you are buying bitcoins above market rate, you are just paying the utility company instead of the exchange. Why would you do that when you can buy them at market rate?

Put them in the freezer for a few hours (in a sealed bag). They will come right off.