Is the cooling kit necessary?
100%, yes. If you want something similar but without watercooling, pick up an S3 or S5.
Great work on the guide! I gave up on the gibberish instructions with the kit. I am noticing a massive amount of "discarded" shares...
Is this normal?
Discards are entirely normal and shouldn't really be displayed at all as they're meaningless in regards to mining performance. Think of it as someone counting how many times you close your front door on the way to work, in a work performance report.
Alright, great. Anything on overclocking yet? I did see a field for that but have no idea what voltage to select. Also, where' s the SSH?
Also, any guides about the S5?
I don't typically include overclocking as it varies unit to unit, voids your warranty and for 95% of users isn't applicable. I haven't seen much OCing data for the C1 but to be honest I don't expect there to be a huge amount of headroom. Hardware wise its not dissimilar to S3s which max out at 480-510, and we're already at 505x2.