I'm going to turn my miners off for the next few hours. That should drop the difficulty increase to 2.5-3% at the most! 

You can setup your miners pointing to Mining Rig Rentals with their proxy. When your miners are rented, well, they're rented and you're getting paid by the renter.
When your miners are not being rented, you set the proxy to automatically switch over to Kano.is or some other pool of your choosing. That way you can get a little of both.

However if your rigs are rented and pointed somewhere else, you are losing out on any blocks the pool finds during that rental time. [Unless you are mining on a PPLNS payment pool, the you will / may get some of your hash paid out.]
Hope that makes sense.

Looking like around +7.8% now with a little less than 4 hours to go, according to BitcoinWisdom.
I'm certainly glad to see it come down from the +mid-teens increase it showed after the last adjustment. Of course it could move either way in the next few hours.

We'll know for sure in a few hours.

You need to understand the benefits on mining on a smaller pool versus mining on a mega-pool like ant or f2

It's sort of like being a medium fish in a small pond versus being a very tiny fish in a huge pond.

On a smaller pool, the pool will find less blocks than a mega-pool. But instead of splitting the pool block reward with 700+ people, like on Kano, on ant you will have to split that reward with - I don't know 100,000 or more people.

I'm just pulling number out of thin air here, but if your hash rate earns you $1.00 per block on Kano, that same hash rate might only earn you $0.10 on antpoo. So even with more blocks found, you are still earning much less. And the important part: Tx FEE'S...

You MUST take into consideration that ant does not share the transaction fees with the miners. They keep them for themselves. Sometimes these fees are an extra full Bitcoin or more that is supposed to be shared among the miners. On Kano's pool you get those extra transaction fees on ant you get nothing. (Also the fees to mine on ant are more when all is said a done.)

Okay, that's the last time I'm explaining this for at least another 6 months. LOL  
Mine on!!

block

This should be in the Alt-Coin threads. This section is Bitcoin only.

 I just took a look at Bitcoin Wisdom to see what may be in store for us.

Currently looks like a (+8.64%) jump in about 5.8 hours or about 39 blocks. Of course that may change either way before then, but we're getting close.

I'm just thankful it's not showing a 12-15% diff increase.

Good lucks boys and girls and hold on tight!
Mine on!!          

EDIT: It's showing an average of right at 1 block per 9 minutes. 


Bitcoin Difficulty: 392,963,262,344
Estimated Next Difficulty: 426,926,642,622 (+8.64%) 
Adjust time: After 39 Blocks, About 5.8 hours 
Hashrate(?): 3,090,761,642 GH/s
Block Generation Time(?):
1 block: 9.0 minutes

3 blocks: 26.9 minutes

6 blocks: 53.9 minutes

Thanks ya'll for the suggestions. Good, valid points. I've decided to give it a few days to think on it before making any moves.
If I do get an Avalon, I "think" I would rather spend the extra dollars on the 741 than the 721 just for the little bit of extra hash.
Good points, one and all.
Unless BM makes a price drop, I don't see myself getting any more miners from them.

I'm getting ready to leave the house for a while, so will get back to the thread later.
Just wanted to acknowledge the latest posts!
Thanks! 

I can't tell you about the difficulty settings as I have tried to change mine and have never gotten them set satisfactorily. So I just put them back at the minimum. Whatever vardif Slush talks about, I don't see it working or at least I'm not doing something right and there is almost no real information to make good judgement implementations - at least that's my take.

As for reducing bandwidth for multiple miners, you may want to look into a proxy. I know Kano has one available for his pool and I would guess that Slush probably has one too. But I don't know how to implement it and really have no need as I'm only running 7 miners.
But I think a proxy is what you should look into.
Let us know what you find out. It could benefit others, myself included.

Good luck!

Just did a run through of placing an order for the 741 and controller but did not pull the trigger.

For a single 741 and controller, the total cost would be $1,007.50. That includes $129.50 in shipping fees by FedEx. (Not sure if they would surprise me after the fact with any additional fees to the US.)

Product   Total
AvalonMiner 741 × 1   $818.00
AvalonMiner Controller × 1   $60.00
Subtotal:   $878.00
Shipping:   $129.50 via FedEx
Payment Method:   Manual Payment
Total:   $1,007.50

Only payment method according to "Jon" is BTC and wire transfer. After looking at it like that, I'm having second thoughts. I'll sleep on it and see if that number looks any more palatable tomorrow.

Don't have enough coins in the wallet right now anyway and I doubt my small credit union is up to speed on international wire transfers. So next week may be a better decision making time after the next difficulty jump kicks in. It's looking like a 9%+ increase at the moment with about 1 3/4 days remaining.

We shall see what happens.

I would still be grateful for anymore answers /opinions to my assorted questions.
Thanks folks.

Best wishes and MINE ON!

Yes sir. I'm aware that is a big no-no. I'm running dual power supplies (two PSU's per miner) on five of my total of seven miners. Running four S9's 24/7 and running three S7's when the temp is cold enough and I run those instead of running the gas (central heat) furnace in my house.

So the S7's right now are only running for about 8-12 hours per day on cold days. The S7's are only making about ~$1.50 per day profit, but at least I'm not running the furnace for half the day. So I come out ahead by a few dollars.

The other PSU's I have on hand that are in use are an EVGA 1600 G2 Gold and a single APW3-12-1600.

Eight miners, of whatever current, newest hardware, is about all my little house can handle. 

Okay great. It's good to see what different power inputs produce!

Okay. Yes, I follow you.
As I'm trying to say, I'm not planning on trying to power the 741 with a single PSU. I will use two PSU's. A 1200w and a 750w.

My intent was to power "half" of the 741 with the DPS-1200 and the other "half" of the 741 with the DPS-750.

I'm sorry if I've not been clear.  

Thank you.

I guess I need to do some more reading/studying up on the power requirements.

I don't know what the off sets mean.
Thanks!

EDIT: Never mind. I DO understand what you are saying about the off sets.
My bad.

I don't have any more 240v available. Only 110/120v outlets and the mentioned PSU's. I have three "sets" of them.
Are these unable to be powered by the PSU's I mentioned?

I was going to use two power supplies to power a single 741.
Power three PCIe plugs with one 1200w and the other three plugs with the 750w. So two PSU's per 741.

Am I missing some point or something else here?

Thank you.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you mean.

Well yes, I have the pair of PSU's that are powering a single S9. A 1200w and a 750w make the pair.
So if the 741 uses 6 PCIe's, I could run three pcie plugs from each of the PSU's powering three plugs on each side with it's own PSU.
I pretty much assumed I shouldn't power the miner with just the 1200w single PSU.
Sorry if I wasn't clearer in my original post.

Thanks!

I know this is probably a "variable" answer question, lol, but since I have never owned any Avalon products.... Please bare with me.

I am considering a 741 or more in the future. I have only had BM products so far with S7's and S9's. The hash rate of the BM products are pretty nice but all of the hardware issues and price are a BIG turn-off and make me hesitant to spend so much on something I feel skeptical about.

General questions in no particular order:

Compared to the S7's/S9's, what are the cooling needs of the Avalon's? Do they usually require external fans blowing on them, a very cool ambient temps, or do they handle their default hash rate pretty well with about the same (or less) cooling needs than the BM products?

From what I have gathered on the threads, the sound is a little less than the S9's. (No bigge, just curious) Is that a mostly correct idea? What about heat output? About the same or less than BM products?

I know the power consumption and needs of the Avalon's are less than BM products. I'm running most of my miners with 110v PSu's and have three of these PSU's available for any future miners. http://www.centrix-intl.com/details.asp?productid=13388

S9PSUKIT   110v/120V 80+ Gold Power Supply For Bitmain Antminer S9 Bitcoin Miner. Include (2) Original HP 1200W & 750W 80+ Gold, (2) X-Adapter REV 4, (10)Pair 14

Are there any issues using these PSU's? From the pictures and specs it appears the 741 only uses 6 pci connectors. If correct, will that HP 1200W handle the load or is that cutting it too closely for power draw since the 741 uses ~1150w? I'm guessing it would probably be best to still use both PSU's to power the miners.

I have no experience using Rasp Pi's or anything like that (but I am tech-savvy) . From what I understand from the 741 web page, I can run two (or more) 741's from a single controller. How easily can, say, just two 741's be setup without an increased jumble of wires/cables, etc. Pretty simple?
Other than for setup, I'm assuming that no PC/laptop needs to be connected and they are basically stand-alone except for the controller. Is that correct?

I guess the last question off the top of my head is, other than buying the miner and the controller, what other equipment/supplies are needed to run the miner? Or more specifically, two 741's? I'm not talking about power or Ethernet cables. Got plenty of all that.

Thanks for listening. Any and all comments / suggestions for an Avalon newbie are very welcome. I'm just dying for more hash but don't want to spring for another BM product.

Sorry about the long rambling post. I'm just pulling questions off the top of my head.
Thanks all!!  

PS: How are they for slight over-clocking? Do they handle it well and stay stable? What is the "stable" over-clock hash rate? Thanks!!

PPS: Any coupons available out there? 

Thank you for the good wishes.

Well, the new job would allow me to add at least 2 more modern miners to my four S9's and three S7's (that I run when it's cold enough so I don't turn the heat in the house on.) I feel I would have a bigger impact on Kano pool with that. But I understand that's faulty logic and what hash I have now would be a help there regardless. (Don't really know why I was thinking that way to begin with.)  

The second part, yes, I moved to Slush for less variance because I cash out at the end of each month to help with the power bill and other bills.
I've been an IT guy for 20+ years and I'm currently under-employed and under-paid working for a non-profit. So the new job would give me the freedom of not having to worry about the bills or how many coins I can earn each month. I'm waiting on an answer from one job interview and have another interview next week.

I will "probably" stick here a little longer - new job or not - but I do want to go back to Kano in the near future. I'm not a SegWit fan myself.  

Best wishes and happy mining!

And just how well do you speak Chinese?