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I have been using a r9 290.It's around 3 years old.How long will it last?It's not overclocked or watercooled.I've been using it for  gaming mainly.I started mining recently.The maximum temperature it rises to is 94 degrees.

My 7990 has lasted four years. I do not overclock them.

I have mined using a number of low-mid range 7000 series cards since 2012, and not one of them has failed, to this day. (They had about 6 months off around 2014-2015, where I disassembled my rig and put everything back in the original packaging.) I did mess with clock settings, but never used BIOS mods (I'm actually not aware of any popular ones that were available back then) or changed voltage settings.

Nobody can tell you exactly how long your specific card will last, as all chips are different. However, there are things you can do to extend its expected life span.

Keep the core temps down. I assume you meant 94 degrees in Celsius, and that is far too hot, especially for extended periods of time. (It's important to remember that most cards were not meant to be pegged 24/7.) If you're using a case, put it on its side and remove the side panel for better ventilation (take appropriate precautions for curious pets or other possible problems). Try to keep it below 70C, although that might not be realistic for a card that powerful without removing it from the case and adding some fans.

If you haven't dusted out your computer for a long time, I'd recommend that you do that as well. It can help with airflow and relieve some stress from your fans.

1070 are still rocking about 1year and 3 months;)

Good to know because I also own a 1070, worry about duration of usage. BTW, do you overclock your 1070? And how about the average temperature?

keep them cool (low 70s or under i keep mine in the mid 60s)  undervolt them. make sure they are on a GOOD psu (for the better voltage regulation). dont run fans over 80-85% it doesnt cool any better and will just kill the bearings faster, especially cheap sleeve bearings. but buy cards with ball bearing fans as they just last and last.

no reason why you can get years out of them. my HD6870 and two HD5830s went a few years 24/7 during btc/ltc mining days. they still work.

my original mining card, a HD4850 single slot blower fan, the fan did die on it after about a year at 90+% fan speed. stuck an after market cooler on it and put it in a gaming rig i gave to a friend. worked for a couple more years gaming till he built a newer game machine.

oldest currently mining card is a sapphire 390 nitro, two years old i think. still running fine.

back in my folding@home days I had two GTX8800 gpus go for a couple years 24/7. they are still working last time i fired them up about 6 months ago.

probably the best investment you can make for gpu longevity (aside from some good fans blowing at the rig) is using a high quality psu. it will provide your cards with clean power. junk psus put trash on the lines that will slowly degrade the gpus, as well as the rest of the system. cant hurt use a good surge suppressor or do as i have done, install a whole house surge suppressor.

Well, it depends. If you keep your gpu in low temps, it can last 10 years. consumer CPU's used to have a MTBF (mean time before failure) of 5 years, but Intel no longer specifies the MTBF of their CPU's, from what I hear.

If you clean your gpus regularly and use it on a well air-conditioned (non-humid) environment i think they can last long. I have used RX series gpus for months and they were pretty good until I sold them all :)

That's a lot. I am trying to keep mine gpu around 70-75 degrees

I run at those temperatures when the fan speed is about 40-50%.

94 is too much it wont last for long set the cooler to max 100% arround 70-75 max 80 would be normal!

Use watercooling if you want to go long with your GPUs :)

It's a bigger initial investment, but it pays in the long-term and the maintenance is less of a hassle than with aircooling imho!

My GTX 1060-s one 3GB and one 6GB, both Palit StormX are running and mining 24/7 since beginning of January, their temp is down to 66 degree celsius with fans at 75%.

My GTX 1050 ti is running since early April running and mining 24/7

Both are heavily overclocked, core clock +250 and memory clock +950. Mining Zcash very happy with them but I don't know how long they will last. Should be about 2 years I believe as minimum since I am keeping their temperature below 70 degree celsius.

I am with the majority here in that if you treat them right they should last for a very long time. By keeping temperatures in check 70C or under is a good target along with using a good quality PSU as others have mentioned. Cheap PSUs can really shorten the lifespan as the power output can really be all over the place. Check http://www.jonnyguru.com/ for more information on this.

Keeping dust and dirt buildup to a minimum is important to not only to help keep things cool, but to prolong the life of your fans as well as help protect against humidity. Dust and dirt will attract and retain moisture along with the corrosive effects they can have on your GPUs over time. Going with this, is to keep them in an environment that will not be super humid. You do get a benefit here in with the heat the cards put out, a lot of them in a shed or garage can keep the surrounding air a good 10-20 degrees warmer than outside, and since warm air hold more moisture than cooler air, you can often keep humidity in check somewhat. The danger is if the power goes out for any length of time.

Ideally the best environment for your GPUs would be indoors in an air conditioned setting, but this is not always possible, especially for larger deployments. But even here, if you can keep humidity down, and address the other issues above, you can be successful. I have many GPUs going on their second year in a garage that is exposed to not only the heat of the summer but also the cold of the winter.

I guess I cannot attest to how long they will ultimately work out there but so far there have been no problems. I also have some GPUs that lived their first couple of years inside, and some of those are now among the garage dwellers, so they have a good 3-4 years on them and still going strong. Some of the earliest cards like the 7950's and 7970's needed to have some fans swapped out here and there, but an extra $8 in parts every now and then I view just as preventative maintenance more that I would as a card failure.

What's your average temperature? 94C is way too high, especially if they are running with that temperature most of the time. Try to keep yours under 80C at least, at 70's or under that it would be ideal, but it's not always possible.

Also, make sure your tower's case filters are clean and the case isn't full of dust. I would recommend to have your fans at 100%, it will wear them out quicker but it will keep the temperature down, even on 100%, the fans will last from 2-3 years, you might not even be using these cards anymore and even if you do, the fans are pretty cheap part to replace.

I have my 2x R7 260x's overclocked using MSI Afterburner, without altering the voltage, fans on 100%. Depending on the room temperature, I'm usually getting 78C~ on the one GPU and 75C~ on the other one. The highest I've seen was 84C, mostly during midday, when it's hotter.

My HD 7950 is running since Octuber 2011, still working.

Most of my 7950 cards have worked since late 2012.
Fans started to break down or make more noise.
My 7990 from 2012 is still running like a champ.
All cards have been overclocked.
OTOH my 7870 from 2013 died.  You can also buy replacement fans on ebay too.  Be prepared to break your screw drivers as some of the screws are cemented in.

I would say expect 3-10 years out of your video cards.

Not to mention you can scoop up cards with a water-block preinstalled for less than ones with fans. If your like me and have to spread them out in your house because of power limitations, then having them quiet is definitely a plus.

I put a box fan on my rigs and always keep my temps in the 55-65 degree region. A cool GPU is a happy GPU. My cards last me for years. I'll run them cooler over max performance because going through warranty is always a pain in the butt and time consuming.

3 years?

I have a few HD 7990. They are already 4 years old. I do not stress them.

 R9 290 thermal limits at 94, on the reference-board design.
 NOT a good idea to let them get that hot though, they're a lot happier for the long term if you can keep them down to around 80.

 290 is still a good ETH mining card, though I'm not sure that's the BEST option.

As has been said many times already, a properly cared for GPU can have a indefinite life-span with usually the part becoming obsolete before failing. This can easily mean 5+ years of operation.

Most GPUs that have some defect from manufacturing or installation damage will usually fail within the first month or so of continuous operation, which since is within the warranty period usually pose no problem other than the inconvenience of doing the RMA.

Other factors that can lead to failure have been mentioned already in the thread, but normally boils down to the care one takes to maximizing their longevity. Electrical problems (surges, brownouts, static discharge, loose connections, bad or unstable PSU) are probably near the top of the lists, along with excessive heat (higher than 80° C operating temperature), dust, dirt, humidity, and of course physical damage.

By being proactive and trying to minimize any of the above factors will lead to a long lifespan. I have many mining GPUs that have 4+ years on them and are still hashing away, and I have several non-mining GPUs that are 6+ years old that still work but are otherwise obsolete.

I think the majority of my GPUs will be replaced not because of failure, but because newer models are always becoming more efficient and a point in time arrives where the mining efficiency is no longer worth the operating costs. This is probably somewhere around the 4 to 5 year mark as some of my oldest cards while still viable for algorithms such as Equihash are really starting to fall behind newer cards, especially those such as the Nvidia 10xx series

Keep your cards FAN not to run more than 70% , and you will have them for like 5 years.
Main factor is to keep your fan because that mostly goes to die, not gpu or their memory.
Also it is much important to clean dust from them like once per month or something that like that.

While this is true and a good idea, myself I do not consider a fan failure an actual failure of the card unless it got to the point you didn't catch it and it overheated causing damage.

I have had fans fail, especially those old 3 fan 7970's, and you can buy replacements for under $10 and easily fix them yourself, prolonging the lifespan of your graphics card. If it is under warranty you can send them in too, but $10 is usually less than the RMA shipping and it is simple enough to do it yourself.

I have a pair of GTX650 bought in 2012 still running BOINC at 100% 24/7. Air cooled, fans on Auto, no OC with an open case. Had various other GTX running for 5 years plus no problems all on Boinc or Folding@home.

Only added Team Red to the farm since starting Alt Coin mining in last year so not sure on those, but Team Green can certainly do 5 years no problems at all.

Haha, I agreed... I don't think I will still using my gpu for mining after 5 years, it is old and bad hashrate at that time. But of course don't die in a few months...

Thank you very much for sharing your experience with us. Amazing tips.

I have some R9 290. But I only run them at 900mV or lower. The temperature is below 70 degree C. They are long lasting.

 Long term, FAN DEATH is the leading cause of card failure for cards that make it out of infant mortality.

 I've got several HD 7750 and a 7870 that date back to LITECOIN GPU mining days - they've been in pretty close to continuous usage that whole time (4 years now almost), doing mining or Distributed.Net work (which offers a VERY similar load to most cryptocoin mining algos as it IS crypto work as well).
 Had to replace the fans on all the HIS 7750 cards (junk sleeve bearing fans) in less than a year, the Sapphire HD7750 JUST had it's (ball bearing) fan die last month, and the HIS blower-type card is still going strong on the original fan (ball bearing LOW loaded big-bloody-blower, it's the IceQ model).

Everything I had before that point was either ancient pre-Stream pre-CUDA, or AMD APUs.

I have my R9 380 models for 2 years mining ...
but yeah it is big revolution from 380 to now models...

And that's the only reason why I would never buy a card from a miner generally because of miners like you, who treat their cards like a piece of crap,
100% fans with way hotter temps than ok for 24/7 workload.

Basically, when I see listed 2nd hand cards I wanna buy that have been used for mining (in description) I assume the worst, shit treatments from guys like you.

Who knows how much did you shorter card's/fan's lifespan with these settings.

I make sure my cards never go above 63-64°C core and VRM always below 80°C(at least for hawaii/fiji chips, older cards like 5970 were much more resilient because of bigger fabrication process -therefore VRM could go as far as 105°C for VRM, ~70°C core)
and my fans are always below 70%

And when I sell I don't even want to list them as cards used for mining because I really do take care of them, but still, it drives my price down no matter what because of guys like you!

Don't take this personally totko, this is not aimed at you but everyone who mines like this.

I randomly took your comment as a raged upon victim.

Keep your cards safe and healthy, take care of them, and they will take care of your earnings for a long time.

Cheers!

VRAM temperature is also important, and most of the time in my experience, its about 15-20 c higher than core temperature.

VRM - Voltage Regulator Module, to put it simply the 1st place where electricity passes before it reaches gpu core and other modules on the card, obviously it takes more heat than core since it's job is to give as much power as gpu core asks, as you said 10-20°C warmer than core.

VRAM is video ram, usually gddr5(x) or new the hbm(2) on fiji/vega gpus, they don't generate that much heat to be of a concern

If the VRAM temperature is 90-100 degree, it is still within the operating range.

 Those date back to the days when cards had fan curves from the manufacturer designed to keep the cards COOL, instead of the current insanity of putting "quiet" as FAR MORE IMPORTANT than "cool".

 EVGA in particular had major issues with it's early 1070 models because the FAN CURVE WAS SET WAY TOO LOW (despite them pointing at "didn't have thermal pads on the VRM models", the cards last just FINE and stay plenty cool enough if you turn the fans up past the factory-default UNDER 40% AT 80C insanity - the actual final FIX out of EVGA was a BIOS change that turned the fan curve up to more like 50% at 70C).


 Factory default fan curves on ANY recent card are set crazy-low, and ignore the possibility of the card being used in a "compute" capability (the manufacturer wants you to pay the crazy-expensive price for their "professional" or "workstation" cards instead even though they tend to use the SAME GPU and the SAME ram and have an INFERIOR cooling solution so they have to clock them a TON lower to keep cool).

I always use MSI afterburner to set the fan curve. And I only use 70% of the rated maximum power.

Personally, I'm nervous when I see temperatures above 60°C. I like to push my cards in terms of overclocking, but I don't like to have big temperatures on them. I don't have so many cooling problems because I don't have a farm, so my fans are above 70% maybe just in the summertime.
Under 65°C is ok, between 65°C - 75°C tolerable, but above 75°C try to do something.

I have 18 sapphire r9 390 nitro working for a year. I had problems just with one card but during July when the temperature outside was 40 degrees Celsius and the card had around 80 degrees. Others are fine. Now the temperature is low and they are just fine with 80% fan.

The R9 390 is very good if you do not stress them too much.

Exactly. Since it is colder outside they are working perfect at 55-60 degrees with 70% fan.

Always maintain it in low temperature it will increase its life span.

My 6 270X last my 4 years， still mining zec now :P

age of vga cards depends on alot of things. First, do you overclocked it. Second, how hot it is. If your cards run in 94 dC, and you even used it for 3 years, in my oppinion, not live more than 1 year. but we also can't say nothing, if you are lucky, the cards will live longer

Fans failing is not really an issue, since you can always slap even stronger ones to the cooling block. But actual memory chips or gpu failing is. Keep the temps not over 60°C if possible, no voltage ripples (hence good psu) and they will last at least 5 years.

My HD 7950's are running since 2014. 24/7 most of the time.
In the beginning a few months to hot (then above 90c, now round 75c) but they are still running.

So, to recapitulate, the most important things are the temperature that should be around 70°C, and then the quality of the PSU ? I'm not mining actually but I'm looking forward to it.

That is right. You need good quality power supply.

And what power supply do you recommend?

Approximately gpu was last for one year, then manufacturer releases new one, how apple realeses new iphone.
Igf you have high end class videocard he can run games for 3 years. What with mining i dont know, i am not to long in this game

I bought my 7970 in early 2013. They are still mining the ZEC happily.