Solo Mining on an S3 with 51.1 Difficulty - here we go! UPDATE: Block Found!!

[hodedowe]

And it's proof positive that CK pays too. His pool is a standup operation as far as I'm concerned.

Thanks. Considering the solo pool has handed out ~2075 BTC to date, it would be hard to get away with that much without complaint from the community

Sorry, ck! I didn't mean anything by it, just adding to the customer experience for new users, amigo!

Here's the story for anyone interested...Ok, I got two PMs for it so we'll pretend that's alot.  




I went outside to sit with my 2 year old while she played in the sandbox. She busied herself moving sand around and playing with the trucks (pink trucks, of course). Then a couple of the neighborhood kids came over to help her build pits and castles. Our sandbox is huge. It's kinda like this, but built out of 12 ft boards.









So as they were playing I walked over and restarted the old S3. It had been "stuck" at 7m "Best Hash" for a while and when that happens I get grumpy with it. "How can 7m be your best hash", I say, "You're a freaking S3! Act like it!" Then I shut him down, counted to 20 seconds, and rebooted him. In a minute he was of and running again. ZOOOOMMMM went his fans....



I wandered back to see tha the kids had caught a toad (not a golliwog, a real toad lol) and were building a pit to put him in as a "house".
When they're babies like this they don't jump very fast is why the little kids could catch him.














We spent the rest of the afternoon getting sandy feet and eating fried chicken (oh mama!) then I sent the other kids home. I scooped up my little kiddo and took her in for a bath. After peeling her out of sandy, wet clothes and scrubbing her down we spent another 20 minutes playing the "Where's the baby" and other silly towel games. (Throw the towel, dry my hair goofy, etc) .














Finally we settled down for dinner. Her with carrots and turkey and me with a big fat turkey leg and a hard cider. Nom nom nom.













After laying her down for a well earned snooze after a good, laid back day with her Daddy I went to check on my experiment......and spit Pepsi all over my lap. "WOOHOO! It happened!!!!" I blurted, then slapped a hand over my mouth. Uhh.....


I just stared at it for 5 minutes, then I went crazy looking for confirmation. I wasn't able to figure out CK's site so I went to my wallet and poked around in there for a pending transaction. It wasn't showing up. I then found where CK said it arrived after 100 confirmations so I held my breath a bit and waited. As soon as I saw CK mention my wallet address I was uncontainable. I hopped on here and broke the news that solo mining IS profitable, it DOES happen, and in my opinion everyone and their mother should have an S3 sitting under their flower garden  





And the rest is history. I sold all 10 BTC I needed to sell inside of a few hours, mostly for Paypal. Here's looking forward to the next one, never give up hope guys!

[VirosaGITS]

Haha nice story. I bet you got some grey hair while waiting for confirmation.

Sadly you winning the lottery doesn't mean solo mining is profitable per se. xD

Still enjoy your win and maybe i'll put a sidehack's stick on it solo ck's and we'll see what happen (or not happen xD)

[Amph]

!!!!!BOOM BABY!!!!


Guess what boys? Not even a month into it and the old S3 CRUSHED IT!!!!

Best share: 61,391,307,854

Blocks found: 1

if you were to mine that same block in solo not in a pool, you would not be able to catch it, finding a block in solo is different than finding  a block in a pool, it was explained already i need to find the post

btw DrG explained it

This was solo, my friend. CK's pool is a solo pool. You don't find a block, you don't get paid. I still mine solo on my own node 99.99% of the time, but with a power loss my bitcoin-core database had to be reindexed (dumbest program ever) so for around two days I was on CK's solo pool. Now I have 25 BTC in my pocket.

I'm selling off about 10 BTC to pay off some debt, pay taxes (biggest hit, Thanks Obama!), and pay God 10%, then the rest is going in the rathole until I need it. I'll consider it a retirement account 

oh i didn't know that there was a solo pool, he must have a big hash to run in solo, but still if you're able to join the pool, this isn't solo anymore, and like i said if you were to running your own client and try solo, you will not be abele to find a block in the same way, and so easily

[mallard]

Going to solo CPU mine on my old Pentium 4.
See you in a million years!

[wlefever]

Okay, I decided to throw my 2 S3+'s at solo.ckpool now for a few months, and posting here for good luck! 

Congrats on the block find! 25BTC

[nonbody]

congrats on your win, i wonder if my 5ghs interrupters could do the same

[GriffinHeart]

I found an old 333 mh/s USB eruptor, I'll try this... yolo. See you in 1.2 million  years.

[jonnybravo0311]

Congrats on hitting that block over on ck.'s pool!  I still hold out hope that my little U2s will hit for me some day, but I know statistically I've got very little chance of it happening.  I was part of a group that pooled our resources and threw some pretty decent hash at the solo pool for a while and we hit two blocks.  Was fun, but certainly not as nice as seeing 25BTC appear in my wallet for hitting it on my own

[IanFoxley]

Just read your post!

Congrats!

Cheers

Ian

[hodedowe]

Haha nice story. I bet you got some grey hair while waiting for confirmation.

Sadly you winning the lottery doesn't mean solo mining is profitable per se. xD

Still enjoy your win and maybe i'll put a sidehack's stick on it solo ck's and we'll see what happen (or not happen xD)

I sure did. It was an exciting 5 minutes    I'm of the mind that solo mining is getting a bad rap because of all the naysayers. "It's too hard" - they say. If Socrates had said that we wouldn't have society as we know it. How many of those naysayers have tried it recently?

oh i didn't know that there was a solo pool, he must have a big hash to run in solo, but still if you're able to join the pool, this isn't solo anymore, and like i said if you were to running your own client and try solo, you will not be abele to find a block in the same way, and so easily

Hash size doesn't matter in a SOLO pool. It's just like mining on your own client, only you don't have to store the entire blockchain locally. Again, I normally run my own client but due to a power outage my client had to be reindexed. The block was found when my miner rolled to my failover (secondary pool) which was CK's, to make sure they were still SOLO mining and the experiment continued uninterrupted.

Going to solo CPU mine on my old Pentium 4.
See you in a million years!

Okay, I decided to throw my 2 S3+'s at solo.ckpool now for a few months, and posting here for good luck!  

Congrats on the block find! 25BTC

I found an old 333 mh/s USB eruptor, I'll try this... yolo. See you in 1.2 million  years.

All it takes is one ticket, my friends! Good luck! Please do post your results, including best hash since restart, anything interesting, pics of your babies in their setup, etc!

Congrats on hitting that block over on ck.'s pool!  I still hold out hope that my little U2s will hit for me some day, but I know statistically I've got very little chance of it happening.  I was part of a group that pooled our resources and threw some pretty decent hash at the solo pool for a while and we hit two blocks.  Was fun, but certainly not as nice as seeing 25BTC appear in my wallet for hitting it on my own

U2's have hit blocks before. One problem I think is that people get impatient and unplug after a week thinking Ugh. I'll never win. If I had given up after a week I would have never got that block. My S3 only kicks out 390-402 GHS but he picked a winner!

Just read your post!

Congrats!

Cheers

Ian

Thanks for the support Ian! You guys here are half the reason I kept going on this project. And now for a little update....Best hash since restart is only 82,418,370. Walkin' the dog, walkin' the dog!

[hodedowe]

you can solo mine with s1, s2, s3 but you have a stratum server 
http://www.btcmining247.com/pool-home/ is a new bitcoin mining pool. we mine 24 hours 7 days week a so come on miners mine with us

This isn't true anymore. You can edit the cgminer configuration file to add your btc address manually or do what I did and just download Kano's updated software (doesn't show diff anymore though), and just add your btc address in the provided field.

[vapourminer]

I found an old 333 mh/s USB eruptor, I'll try this... yolo. See you in 1.2 million  years.

I ran my block erupter 333 mh/s miner for a few months at cks pool on my HTPC.. hey its on 24/7 anyway right?

its more like see you at the heat death of the universe.

well another reason was to setup and test .bats and .conf setting and make sure the latest cgminer works.. and I miss that dos box in my taskbar

my two sidehack compacs will mine there for literally years.. years at 12 gh/s must be close the same as 400 gh/s for months right?

[hodedowe]

Ol' Sparky is going down today so I can update his heatsink with arctic silver paste. He deserves it


To do this you have to turn off your miner and unplug all his plugs. Then grab your trusty Arctic Silver tube. I chose this because it's friggin huge and has enough to do all the chips plus several cpus.















Grab your trusty bitcoin mining bad boy and set him on a smooth, flat surface.















Flip your little buddy over on his side and remove the five screws on one side, then the five screws on the other.















Then just pull off his back. He won't mind, it doesn't hurt. Kinda like getting a haircut 
















This is what it looks like under there. Scaaarryyy! Don't touch the sides, BRRRRRPPPP!!!!


















If you flip him back on his side and tickle his belly you'll see this huge aluminum heat sink. That's coming off.

[hodedowe]

Now take out the four screws holding it on. There are springs under each screw so take them out slowly or they might just SPROING! across the room  
















With the screws out it's just held on with the crappy thermal paste that was put on it in hit or miss fashion from the factory. Pull downward (toward your miner's case bottom) to break it loose without hurting the chips underneath. Then push it over to one side and lift it out at an angle.













Now flip that heatsink over. It has little spots of goo on it. Wipe all of those off with a paper towel. If you want to get crazy with it you can use alcohol (not beer) on the towel to really get it clean.
















Now look at the board the heatsink was on. See all those little chips? Some of them have thermal paste on them too. They're ALL supposed to have paste, but hey, it was a rush job I guess! Clean it off too.

If you use ALCOHOL on them please wait till they dry before continuing on.
















Now grab your handy dandy Arctic Silver and squirt a dollop on the top of the chip. On computer processors you're only supposed to use a very small amount, scrap it off with a piece of rigid plastic, and then attach the heatsink to it. On these chips they're so wavy and the heatsinks are manufactured to such poor standards that you can leave a good amount on there to fill in the huge gaps. The heatsink will squish out what it doesn't need.
















Now call a friend over to hold a flashlight for you. You're about to need it. Ok, slip your heatsink back in but DONT LET IT TOUCH THE PASTE ON THE CHIPS YET. Remember you have to work it in the board area one side at a time.
















Remember the kid with a flashlight? While you hold that heatsink suspended in the air over the chips have the kid shine the light down the screw hole here so you can slowly lower it down on the chips reasonably precisely so as not to smear thermal paste from heck to breakfast. Align it with the screw holes as you go, obviously.















Now put one screw in gently, don't screw it all the way down because it'll move the heatsink around.












I like to put the next screw in on the opposite side to make sure everything is aligned. Now remember, these miners are pretty well designed but put together with crappy parts. These screws don't need to be super-torqued down. You will break them (good luck getting them back out if you do!) so just screw them back in barely snug.













Do the same with the other side.









Now slip the cover back on him. You're almost done!















And go around his sides putting his screws back in the case, remembering to tighten them only snugly. They don't need to be very tight or you'll break them as well. That's it! Tada! Go plug your new, harder working bad-boy back in and let him earn you 25 BTC!


Good luck everyone!

[valkir]

Lucky man! Im solo mining since a long time and still no block! 

Wondering, Im not a pro but I think you but a lot of artic silver on 1 chip. I dont think it make a problem but you could probably save some. 

[hodedowe]

Lucky man! Im solo mining since a long time and still no block!  

Wondering, Im not a pro but I think you but a lot of artic silver on 1 chip. I dont think it make a problem but you could probably save some.  

Hey Valkir! Well yes, there's a lot on each chip and I could probably have saved some but if you lay a straight-edge on the heatsinks and across the chips you'll see there is a huge amount of play in the distance between the chips and heatsink. Using a larger dollop (never do this with a computer cpu) you can use the squishy method and have it fill in the larger gaps along with the small ones without physically measuring each chip's gap. Yes, on some you get an overflow but it doesn't hurt the board. It might even transfer superficial heat from the board and solder points to the heatsink for dissipation. Less heat = longer lasting hashing!



Good luck with your miner! Are you using an ASIC too or usb/gpu/cpu mining?





Little update on my S3, Best hash since restart is a measly 5,536,611. I restarted 4 hours ago because I wanted to move him to a slightly cooler area.  

[valkir]

I have some S5 some S3 and a Avalon 4.1 

Trying some solo when I have some time to play with them!

[Mikestang]

Yes, on some you get an overflow but it doesn't hurt the board. It might even transfer superficial heat from the board and solder points to the heatsink for dissipation.

Most people that redo the thermal paste (make sure it's non-conductive!) do so specifically to remove the overflow.  Thermal paste is designed to fill microscopic gaps between a chip and heat sink, it's not meant to bridge large air gaps.  If your heat sink is that warped you should probably look to thermal pad (3M makes some nice ones) between the chip and heat sink - trying to use thermal paste like caulk is not effective or recommended.

Best hash since restart is a measly 5,536,611.   

10^6 to 10^7 are pretty normal shares to an S3, 10^8 happen frequently.  I've only seen a >10^9 share on mine twice.

[hodedowe]

I have some S5 some S3 and a Avalon 4.1  

Trying some solo when I have some time to play with them!

That's some serious hashing!





 I'm sure you'll hit if you keep at it. Best of luck!  

[hodedowe]

Most people that redo the thermal paste (make sure it's non-conductive!) do so specifically to remove the overflow.  Thermal paste is designed to fill microscopic gaps between a chip and heat sink, it's not meant to bridge large air gaps.  If your heat sink is that warped you should probably look to thermal pad (3M makes some nice ones) between the chip and heat sink - trying to use thermal paste like caulk is not effective or recommended.

Best hash since restart is a measly 5,536,611.  

10^6 to 10^7 are pretty normal shares to an S3, 10^8 happen frequently.  I've only seen a >10^9 share on mine twice.

Good point, Mikestang! Normally I would agree, but Arctic Silver Ceramique can bridge moderate gaps and due to it's aluminum and zinc oxide composition it provides better thermal conductivity between the chip and the sink than a thermal pad. I should have mentioned that you shouldn't bridge larger gaps with normal everyday paste. They claim 2 - 10c better cooling over metallic pads and pastes. I see 8c on CPU chips I build. I didn't measure the temps before/after with my little S3.


The only drawback is that it stays semisolid for the first 2 days or so until the formula settles into position. But some pastes and pads re-liquify with each cycle of the chip so it could be worse!