At what point is Solo Mining good? How much Ghash do you need?

[Lethos]

Try it out, try solo mining for a month. See how much you end up with.
Next month do it with your favourite pool.

Let your own experience choose for you.

Sometimes the ease of a pool that can directly convert your bitcoins & namecoins for you direct to payment via paypal is something that appeals to some. Eclipse is one of those pools and has no mandatory fees, just donations. Their is of course other pools out there.

[mdude77]

My common comment on the subject ...
The highest variance I've seen so far was a deepbit block of 825%
(there may have been worse, but that's the highest I've seen)
So, although it could get worse, it's not very likely to be much worse than about ~8 times.

Someone with a stats major can work out the probability of an 8 times variance if they like

Anyway, what that means of course is that if you are solo mining at a rate with an average expectation of a block every week, it's not improbable for you to get no blocks for 8 weeks ...

Whatever your average expected block time is, imagine if you could deal with it being 8x that to find a block ...
If 8x is OK , then yep solo mining is for you.
If 8x makes you want to cringe and pull your hair out, then solo mining is not for you.

And that of course begs the question...

How much would you make on a free, or even a 5% PPS pool, in the time waiting for that 8x?

M

[Aseras]

Solo mining is like buying a lottery ticket. You might win a lot fast and then see nothing. Get regular wins or have a ridiculous loosing streak. The higher the difficulty the more likely you are wasting your time/money.

PPS is a sure thing. You get paid no matter what. It's a steady trickle.

If you are into gambling and like the "rush" of hitting a block go for it. If you actually want to rely on bitcoin as income Use PPS unless you have the equivalent hash power of a pool or close to it. Or setup your own pool.

[kano]

OK to correct any misunderstandings that anyone 'might' have ...

Over a long period of time solo mining, you will get close to the expected number of blocks.
... and by a long period of time, I of course mean mining something like many 100's of blocks
(again anyone with some university level stats feel free to chime in with the actual correct numbers)

Over the short term, you could get way less or way more - but you CANNOT know in advance which will happen.

I've pool mined for about 10.5 months and found a few more than expected on my measly small mining setup
- but no actual gain from finding extra blocks of course since I pool mine

Last month I mined 3 blocks for Ozcoin with 1.93 to 2.29 GH/s
(I removed one mining card recently)

But since my current 1.93GH/s currently has an average expected block time of
2^32*1591074.9618473/1.93x10^9 seconds = 3540733 seconds = ~41days

then using my 800% figure it's not that unrealistic to think that I may not find another one for over 10.5 months ...

[Tittiez]

then using my 800% figure it's not that unrealistic to think that I may not find another one for over 10.5 months ...

Or in 5 years, or tomorrow.

[kano]

then using my 800% figure it's not that unrealistic to think that I may not find another one for over 10.5 months ...

Or in 5 years, or tomorrow.

Tomorrow - yes, 5 years - EXTREMELY UNLIKELY
(two of my blocks found in May were 4.5 days apart ... I was rather stoked about one of them coz I saw it happen )

[martychubbs]

A1's first block went over 825%?  hehe