Quote from: DoomDumas on October 31, 2013, 07:19:08 AM

Quote from: Bogart on October 30, 2013, 07:18:17 PM

Quote from: rocks on October 30, 2013, 06:18:39 PM

the problem with this is you have no idea if it is due to bad luck or a setup issue.

This.

Unless you are confident in your software setup, and have monitoring in place to ensure that everything is working correctly, and that you will know if it's not, the risk of mining for days/weeks/longer on a broken or underperforming setup outweighs any disadvantages you may encounter mining on a pool.

Exactly why I prefer to mine on a pool rather than solo, since a while now. I'd found lots of block in the pool, that would have rewarded me much more if I had found them solo mining, BUT, in solo mining I dont have a way to know the rigs are hashing fine, on the pool, I see if there is problem, reboot machines, fix setup issue..

It's clear that I would have found half of those block if I were solo mining..

At current difficulty, and the rise comming, I would'nt feel comfortable to solo mine under 10 Th/s, even at that level of hashing power, I would still use a pool.

That's why my suggestion was the OP should at least expect a block every 6 months on average before trying this, and if it was me I'd prefer on the order of 1-2 months. This way if you go a period with no blocks you can understand that statictically odds are you have something wrong that needs to be fixed.

I also think you should only solo mine in a stable difficulty environment. Right now the full "bet payoff" for ASIC mining is over the next 3 months, just pool mine and get that value, then go for high variance if you want.