Of course Bitmain will sell directly to you... just go to their website.  You will not, however, be able to pay in Pounds Sterling, or dollars, or anything but BTC if you buy direct.  The folks on eBay are charging you a premium for the ability to pay in cash and to purchase a single unit, rather than the MOQ of 2 by Bitmain.

EVGA G2 1300W PSU.  8 PCI-e connectors and plenty of power to drive 2 of them overclocked, or 3 running stock speeds.

Lol... I have an SP10... I'm quite acquainted with loud

Yeah you're right.  I saw six cables and didn't notice that two of them are doubles.  So 8 total.  Even so you're stretching the capacity of the psu running 2 s3s on it.  I'd go with the 1300, which also has the same cabling.

Nice catch and thanks for pointing it out!

EDIT: I just picked one up.  Thanks for the link to Amazon phillma1957!  $188.99 - $35 rebate for a total of $153.99, free 2-day shipping with Prime membership.  Heck of a deal

It's only got 6 PCI-e, so you couldn't over clock the two anyway.  Should work fine for 1 overclocked and 1 stock.

While I suppose it could, I wouldn't use it.  It's got 2 12V rails and only has 2 PCI-e connectors, so no chance of over clocking your S3.

You get fees if you decide to charge fees.  Running your own node is pretty easy - there are a number of threads right here in this forum that explain how to get it up and running:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=18313.0 - the official p2pool thread.  Start here.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=62842.0 - setting up and running merged mining (it's old, but full of valuable info)
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=651819.0 - great guide and pretty much 2 clicks and done installation

Also, there are a ton of people here that run nodes.  Windpath has a fantastic front end and is my go-to pool when I'm not running my own node (i.e. I'm traveling and take my MBP with me).  Norgan has a nice front end as well, but he's in Australia and Singapore, so not really for me.  There's also Blisterpool by HunterBunter.  And I can't forget NastyPool by OgNasty.  Mdude77 runs a node on the west coast of the US.  I forget who runs it (forgive me), but it's called galactica geek galaxy.  Oh... and raskul has the Central Cavern running in the EU (Amsterdam).

Feel free to post your questions about the running of a node in the official thread - you're likely to get more traction/attention there.

You are definitely not running your own node - you're paying somebody else 2% to run it for you.  Anyway, just go to that website, and look for your miner's address.  You'll see how much your expected payout is, along with your hash rate.  Those are all the stats you'll see.  If you want more, I suggest running your own node, or finding another node that will offer you more details.

2 blocks in 38 minutes... nice.  If only my miners hadn't decided to take a vacation from share finding... lol.

Are you running your own p2pool node?  If yes, and you're using the default front end, just go to http://your.node.ip.address:9332/static

That will show you your stats.

I think the argument goes like this:

1) Buy BTC for $$
2) Purchase miner with BTC
OR
2) Hold BTC you just bought

When you purchase the miner, you are hoping that it will return more than the BTC it cost to purchase it, otherwise you would have better been served by just buying and holding.  Regardless of what the price of BTC does, if your miner does not make back the BTC it cost you to purchase it (plus any other additional costs like electricity, power supplies and cooling) then you've lost on your gamble.

One thing you do get by purchasing a miner with your BTC is the ability to then later sell that same miner, whereas if you just bought and held BTC, you've got exactly what you started with.

Hey... I'm getting internal server error when I go to your donate page.

1) No - see the post directly above yours.  The S3 is currently a better deal than the S2
2) Bitmain gives them to you when you order from them.  Or, if somebody has coupons in their account, they can send to your account.  Most people expect to be paid for the coupons.
3) BTC only
4) Yes

Interesting... virtually everyone who owns one has seen and reported at least a 10% loss.  There's been plenty of discussion on this - kano has been working to release a stable version of cgminer for the S2 that plays nicely with p2pool... Bitmain has been sent a ton of data and has replied that they indeed intend to support p2pool and have their core devs working on it.

Anyway, stick around.  At first the variance is hard to accept, especially if you're coming from "the pool that shall not be named," but in the long run, I think you'll like it here.

One more thing - if you're running Antminer S2, you're losing about 10-15% of your hashing on p2pool.  It's a known issue, and hopefully one that will be corrected (either by Bitmain directly, by one of the cgminer developers, or the p2pool developer).

That payout value will continue to rise until 8640 shares have been put on the share chain since you started on the pool.  From there it will remain pretty much normalized at that level.  Remember, too, that this is a PPLNS system.  You could shut down your miners now and still get paid (assuming you still have valid shares on the chain when the next block is found).

Finally, p2pool will be considerably more variant than where you were mining.  There will be times when no blocks are found for a few days, but then 4 will be found in a day.  For a great comparison of payouts of p2pool vs BTCGuild vs Eligius, check out this thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=416933.0

First... OUCH, that's a hefty electric bill.
Second, do you know what your expected payout was exactly at the time the block was found?  As others have stated, your expected payout is based completely upon how many shares you currently have in the share chain.  It is very possible that you found fewer than expected shares prior to the block being found, then found more than expected shares since.  With only a total of 24 hours of mining on p2pool, you're not at your full potential yet.  The share chain takes into account the previous 8640 shares (about 3 days) when making payouts.

As windpath noted, and I can confirm, the expected payouts are pretty much spot on compared to actuals when the block is found.

If you like your Corsair and want to stick with the brand, the RM1000 and the AX1500i, AX1200i all satisfy your requirements.

Not sure exactly what you're looking for here, but since I run everything on a Mac (Late 2013 15" rMBP with OSX Mavericks), I can tell you some of the things that I've found to work:

• Bitcoin-QT.  The full node software runs just find on OSX
• P2Pool.  You can run your own p2pool node
• Asteroid.  A mac-specific GUI mining software.
• MacMiner.  Another mac-specific GUI mining software
• bfgminer and cgminer.  Both compile and run fine on OSX
• cudaminer and ccminer.  More mining software targeted towards the nVidia cards
• Many alternative coin wallets.  I won't list them all, but examples are LTC, DVC, IXC, DOGE, NMC

A great resource is nwoolls.  He has done a ton of work getting software/hardware running with the Mac.  He's got a great blog and has contributed to multiple projects (bfgminer primarily).

Hope this is helpful.

Raffle for a pair of S3s?  Sign me up please

10 minutes or so after I sent mine I saw that it was confirmed on their end.