Topic: Should I mine at a pool with high hashrate or low hashrate? (Monero) (Read 636 times)

Unless the pool gives some extra reward for finding blocks or something like that the only difference is going to be how they payout and the fees involved.  You want to have a pool that has at least enough hash rate to regularly get some blocks.  So going with a tiny pool likely isn't going to be a very good option.  Fees I would look to try and keep around 2% maximum since that is where the big pools are sitting.

Pools that payout with exchanged coins can have a lot of unknown hidden fees due to you not being able to control when the coins get exchanged and the transfer of the coins to and from exchanges can have fees associated with it as well.  These type of fees rarely are explained or shown to you.  The coins are eventually going to have to go to an exchange to be sold out anyways so the transfer fees are likely unavoidable.  You may or may not want to control or hold the coins until the price goes up or deal with having your own exchange accounts.

Generally speaking you'd like to find a pool that pays via PPLNS (Pay per last N shares).  This as opposed to a straight PPS (Pay per share) pool since the PPLNS will give you slightly more over time by paying out a little "luck" extra, but may give you higher variance in each individual payout.  Overall though being a small fish in a huge pond or a small fish in a small pond won't make a huge difference provided the pool is legit and not manipulating your returns.  Safest bet is to go with something big like Suprnova since the chances they will run off with your earnings are pretty small and the payouts are very regular.

I'm trying to mine Monero with a not particularly powerful GPU on a laptop(around 120 H/s) and I was wondering:
What would get me the most profit: mining at a popular pool with a high hashrate therefore getting a lot of blocks however very low reward
Or: mining at a unpopular pool with a low hashrate therefore getting a lot less blocks however I would get a higher reward per block found
I'm not too interested in gaining hundreds of XMR, but I was just wondering if anyone could help me with this before I waste lots of time trying out different pools etc.