many thanks for the input, what you have is what I was expecting,



 but ^this^ is what I got, I was so mad at first, but in retrospect, it was a blessing in disguise, cuz 3 of these babies 'been running at 1090 MHz steady for, I dunno, 8 months now? in my main use pc. (the fourth one I ran in an open air rig, and pushed it up to 1200, which was too far, cuz now it gives me problems even at the 'factory overclocked' settings, that card is now stable at 850. if I ever sell (preferably trade for nvidia to continue work on projects like coinlab), that card would be the one I keep, cuz even at 850, it's still a gaming monster.

after doing some "ruler-on-the-screen" measurements, it appears that MrTeal's pixel counting skills are impeccable. Meaning "standard" sized cpu coolers (and water-blocks for that matter) *should* work... (depending on how they might interfere with surrounding components, nearly any common cpu heatsink should cover all the chips.)


the thing I worry about is the mounting procedure, I'd like to use something better than a bunch of elastic bands to fix the heatsink to the board  

I'm curious about the retention bracket design, as the image provided for the copper/heatpipe design has 4 screwholes, but the pcb appears to have only 2... and even more troubling, those 2 holes look to be directly beneath the heatsink base plate. it's difficult for me to imagine how they plan to mount the heatsink to this thing.

Does anyone have confirmed dimensions of the base of the aluminum heatsink?

I am hoping that I might be able to use my old Thermaltake "Big Typhoon" to replace that aluminum one, but the base is only approx. 50X50mm :sadface:

 The copper one looks like it means business and I don't imagine needing to replace that beast 

I would like to start a thread where we could share information about the upcoming ASIC revolution, without the name-calling and bickering.

I am simply looking for honest questions, and honest *and unbiased* answers. (or honest, calculated projections or predictions, since concrete answers to many of the most pertinent questions are simply not possible at this time)

I'd like to stick to strictly technical questions about ASIC technology. Please direct questions such as "when will it ship?" or whatever to the hardware speculation board.


ideally each question would bring differing opinion and spark even more questions,
For example:

What is the optimal chip placement for the BFL 'little singles'? -  - If you could choose any 4 out of the 8 spots, which would you select and why?


*my guess for optimal performance would be the 4 closest to the center, but I think you could dissipate heat more easily if you placed chips on the 4 corner positions*

if you put 4 small individual copper heatsinks instead of one big one, this would allow direct contact using thermal paste instead of thermal pads in order to deal with the problem of uneven chip height. -- further, you could have a heatpipe for each of the 4 that would connect to a fan-blown radiator similar to the design for the 'single' .. there might even be enough space to mount 4 little waterblocks?!

------------------------------

And, in the spirit of a balanced discussion, also a question about the competition: how difficult would it be for Avalon to switch their current design to a flip-chip? apparently BFL did that whole process in a matter of months... though I would imagine you'd need to re-design the boards I guess?...

Any questions, answers, debate, or other productive observations or suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

-----edit 2013.02.09 -- link "4 out of the 8 spots" now links directly to full-size image, not the forum post -- link to 'single' removed/redundant

I don't really understand this pool, but I like the asteroid/robot picture on the front page

I'm guessing it gives cpu miners at least a chance of getting some bitcoins, which is rather charitable.. and I'm sure that a cpu miner receiving a half-coin would feel the same as a mediocre miner like me actually solving a block!

I like small pools, I'll give it a try. Hopefully lady luck is on our side this weekend!

*edit* I now have a team! Feel free to join "The Smokin' Hashers" at http://shmadz.triplemining.com 

^THIS^ is an awesome idea! let people do some of their own calculations/estimations on their daily costs. maybe make it a new blog post, so as not to clutter up the excellent one already made.

I envision multiple price points but stick with a static hashrate, it could even be $/day/GH/s though I imagine $/day/66GH/s would make more sense to everyone, since 66 seems to be the consensus entry point.

and please, PLEASE, PLEASE! (with a cherry on top! i.e. a 1 btc tip from me ) include $0.00/day

agreed on the 58xx. What do you guys feel a 7970 or 4 might fetch 2 or 3 months down the road? It's a pretty kick-ass gaming card, 3gb ram does wonders in some games.


btw, the ones I have specifically are the black-edition XFX cards (reference cooler, not the DD, which I was choked about when they arrived, but after actually using them, the reference design is extremely efficient at expelling heat out of the case, PLUS, they gulp air from the end of the card, so they cool quite well even though I've got them stacked up, quite impressed with those cards)

Just as a point of reference for those who have encountered payment 'anomalies' I too have been overpaid, and then consequently underpaid the following week to match up with the expected total.

This happened for about 4 consecutive weeks, up, down, up, down, but now seems to be fixed (for me at least)

(*note, I do have a .01 btc discrepancy for the week 13-01-20, it remains to be seen if this is a rounding "error" or if I will receive an extra "bitpenny" on the coming payment monday*)


all in all, compared with the behavior of *some* other companies in this new bitcoin arena, CoinLab has been responsive and helpful to all my requests and has won my fleeting trust - and with the extremely low rejects, impeccable uptime, and reasonable rates, I choose to stay with coinlab... for now...


(* I also fully expect coinlab to honour their commitment to pay me at least $2.5 per GH/s per day once I decide to redeem my loyalty points. They have been totally professional in past dealings with me, and have given me no reason to doubt, yet *)

I received full payout, on tuesday, I'm guessing because monday was a holliday? (in the US)

Just to play "devil's advocate" -- let's just imagine a world wherein a group of hackers (let's just call them anonymous) were to launch a DDOS on a number of larger pools (and also smaller ones, doing as much damage as they can) AT THE SAME TIME that some "anonymous" individual or group of individuals begins to mine with ASIC's 'en masse'

let's also assume that they were to do this as close as possible to the next difficulty change... how long could they keep this up? how long before the difficulty would react? how much profit potential would such a scenario present?

**edit** sorry, forgot to answer the question "How do you DOS the network using ASICS?" :: answer, you don't. you DoS the system using conventional means. The ASIC's would be used solely for mining the most coins possible during the disruption. (*I don't believe anyone interested in profiting would attempt a 51% attack btw*)

cool to see the implementation of the leaderboard.

would be nice to see some explanation of the "earners" and "rate leaders" tho...

I am assuming that the rate leaders are based on pure hashing rates, and the earners are those which are currently redeeming their loyalty points for higher earnings, but I hate to "assume" anything when it comes to bitcoin.

some clarification (or even an announcement) of the new website layout would be appreciated

Pulling up this post from the first page as it was the gem of the thread for me, (specifically, it was the bolded part that caught my attention)

While I agree (kind of) with Bitcopia's view, I would add to that bolded statement as follows: "All previous fiat currencies eventually and inevitably return to their intrinsic value, zero."

The reason I add the previous modifier to his statement is that while most people consider fiat to be tied to government - because all previous fiat moneys have been government backed - it should be noted that a fiat money system need not be backed by government, but that a fiat money backed by a global population (i.e. Bitcoin) would be just as legitimate. (very easily argued to be more legitimate)

Add in the fact that Bitcoin (so far) can not be inflated beyond the built-in inflation designed into the system, and you can see that Bitcoin (or something much like it) has the potential to be vastly superior to the current basket of fiat moneys that are flooding the globe. (In most cases, perhaps all, it is the runaway inflation that ultimately kills such government backed fiat currencies throughout recorded history)

(* NOTE: I'm not sure that the declining rate of inflation is the best way to do a fiat money system. It has many benefits, such as promoting adoption, but has some harsh drawbacks as well... A system which tied inflation to population might be preferable, but I do not see an easy (or fair) way to boot-strap that kind of monetary system. *)

In conclusion, I consider bitcoin to be a fiat money system, backed by the fact that it is easily transferable across great distances, possibly infinitely fungible, and, (as yet) impossible to counterfeit. And yet I do not see the price rising above $31 in 2013. I have the feeling that the collapse of the current system may take longer than most of us would like.

Thank you Coinlab for your efforts at clarifying this confusing time.

One more annoying question: Is there a deadline to using up my loyalty points? will they simply expire at some date if I haven't used them all yet?

-----------------
aside

This is kinda exciting/fun trying to figure out if I should wait until asics start up and drive the difficulty through the roof, or should I use up my points asap to get more bitcoins per dollar (if you were to speculate that the price of bitcoin is going up)

personally, I think the price will continue to slowly trend upwards with some rapid rises followed by corrections, perhaps $15 by summer 2013? maybe $20 by next winter?? right now I'm working under the assumption that unless the price were to hit triple digits in the near future, I will be better off waiting for the impending difficulty surge and cashing in my loyalty points at that time.

ditto, stat chart shows several hours at 0 and my share total for the week is about 10% below expected.

funny thing is, I'm pretty sure that my miners were connected and working just fine. (It gets very cold and very quiet very quickly when they stop

this actually turned into a quite interesting thread.

one thing I have not seen (I may have missed it) is any mention of - or mechanism to explain - the effects of the block reward halving.

does this mean that the impending drop in new supply will have no effect? or can we begin to discuss what this change might do to all these charts in the long term?

once again, very interesting read, thanks to all participants.

*sorry, no pics for you 

https://www.havelockinvestments.com/

since you asked  

Disclaimer:  I neither promote nor have any reason to think these guys are not legit. I have no affiliation with, and no bitcoins (or other out-dated currencies of any kind) invested with these guys.

anyone who's actually interested in thorium energy, check out gordon mcdowell on youtube - http://www.youtube.com/user/gordonmcdowell  

he is doing a great job of documenting various speakers/experts on the subject.

my personal favorite one to start with is

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4

2 hours long, and it's a couple years old, but it does cover most of the basics.

enjoy

Ahh, thank you finway, that looks like a much better chart!

... and sorry everyone else 

totally gonna check this out, just today I got all excited seeing 6.70 on my mtgox app, only to check virtex site when I got home to see I would only be able to get 6.35 ..

(*edit*) - ok tried it out, very nice, much better than what I was using before, widget works well, price graph works well, but "External Orderbook and Graphs" does not work for me on Samsung Galaxy S2-X (that's the Telus version, has slightly different hardware from what I hear) --------- can't even see the virtex orderbook, let alone anything "external"

am I doing it wrong?

disclaimer - I'm always hesitant to start a new thread, but I can't seem to search this forum efficiently, so if this is common knowledge then sorry or whatever.

on http://bitcoincharts.com/ right now, the hashrate distribution is showing "unknown" as now having greater than 50% of the total hashrate.

I have never before seen any one group reach 50+ percent, and although I don't understand how to execute a double-spend attack, I have heard that it requires controlling more than 50 percent of the network hashrate.

what does "unknown" mean? I understand that it's unlikely that all of that "unknown" is a single entity, but it is not impossible.

anyone want to clear all this up and allow me to sleep soundly? or should I just sell all my bitcoins right now?