Re: ASICMiner Block Erupter General Question

Quote from: mobile on September 14, 2013, 02:43:19 PM

Well the reason for the conversion to these "ASIC's" is because their Hashing power versus Power consumption is far more efficient then a GPU. Lets not forget their $ per Mh/s is far cheaper then a GPU as well. Its an Arms Race so it doesn't necessarily mean that you will see your ROI quickly. Mining is fun, so Im not discouraging you to invest and learn something new!

As far as the technical details involved with getting your 12 USB array up and hashing. If you google search and/or search the forum you will find a plethora of viable information. I happen to be on BTCguilds website so here is a quick link to their guide. https://www.btcguild.com//index.php?page=support§ion=blockerupter

Is it Plug & Play, well the answer is Yes & No Cheesy

It really depends on your technical foundation and what you consider to be a hurdle &/or what operating system you run. Relatively speaking they are fairly plug and play in Windows. You create an account at a Mining pool, download your mining software. https://github.com/luke-jr/bfgminer or https://github.com/ckolivas/cgminer works well. Install the drivers.http://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pages/USBtoUARTBridgeVCPDrivers.aspx Run the miner. Copy & paste your commands & tweak.

Utilizing the Raspberry Pi's in an option and you see guys using these because they have alot less power consumption opposed to running a desktop PC all day. I personally do not have a Raspberry Pi but from what I read, it seems simple but there a few more steps to get one setup both on the software side (ie:flashing firmware, connectivity etc ) and on the hardware side of things (ie: are you buying a pre-build Raspberry Pi or are you building one) comparing to straight up Windows PC. Cheers I hope that helps!
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=255582.0

Thanks, that helps a lot. I'm currently running a custom designed windows 7 professional laptop with NVIDIA graphics, 32gb of ram and a 64-bit system. What I was primarily looking to know was if I needed a driver or not :p However the additional information is appreciated. I do have another question if you have the time, I'm currently using the Slush pool because I'm just hashing at 10.7 Mh/s using my devices listed in the GUIMiner list, but if I'm running 12 330 Mh/s ASIC's (which I've been told clock in at actually around 336), then using 330 (the average of the advertised amount and the reported amount) * 12 I project to be hashing at 3996 Mh/s (3.996 GH/s). Based on that, in your opinion, would it be more profitable to stick with the Slush pool or switch over to another pool? Are there pools which are constructed based on speed of users, or am I just as well to stick with the Slush pool?
Thanks