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I am trying calculate how much roughly would one need capital in order to gain living out of mining. In case you would have to estimate, what is the life span of GPU, when used in mining? A GPU would be replaced because it's broken, sold or just replaced with more efficient one.

Tigel

Basing your calculations off of guesses from people in this forum is going to make your final calculation absurdly inaccurate.

Having said that,
I have 7000 series cards (3x 7850s, a 7770, and a 7790) that I purchased between mid 2012 and Spring 2013 (for the 7790) that are still running today. These cards were kept at core temps below 75C. Higher end cards, especially those with single-fan coolers, may have a hard time maintaining temperatures that low.

PSU quality is also a big factor. If the cards aren't supplied clean power, you would expect the lifespan to be lower.


(Most of this is conjecture based on a small convenience sample, but convenience samples are most of what you're going to get here.)

Mining is constant load on GPU. I think at right temperature and voltage GPU will work long time

Aorus 1080ti extreme has 4 year warranty. So I'd say it will last at least 4,5  years :D

With proper care the card should last long enough for you to not want to use them for mining any more. Maybe only few faulty fans.
Proper care in my mind means:
- keeping the temp in check with moderate overclocking and undervolting
- keeping the cards in dry place and relatively cool place
- cleaning the dust from the fans every few months

+ if you like DIY, you could change fans from small high-speed to bigger low-speed and save original fans for selling cards 'like-new'

also you need to check the conections between gpu and psu and motherboard in order to see if all is OK or there is something wrong

That guarantee is based on casual use, not running 24 hour forever. Some manufacturers have added clauses to their warranty to exclude GPUs used for mining.

Constant load is not bad for hardware at proper settings. For example any server hardware works 24/7 for years. Just regular maintenance

And how will they tell if the GPU was used for mining? Those clauses are mostly to scare off noobs, they don't actually work.

As for the lifespan of GPUs - for the most part it doesn't really matter cause if you're doing it right, you are going to be switching to new generation cards every ~2 years at most (unless you've got super cheap electricity and lots of it). The vast majority of brands offer 3 year warranties, so you'll be selling your used cards while they're still under warranty.

Only for certain things though. I doubt that Cryptocurrencies mining is under the warranty.

buy from evga.com

3 year warranty  just don't beat on the cards  set the tdp to 70%

you will get 3 to 4 years a card.


a nice simple card does well at 70% to 75% tdp

https://www.evga.com/products/product.aspx?pn=08G-P4-5170-KR

How can a company tell if the card was used for mining? Unless you openly admitted to them that is what you used it for is there a way to actually tell it was used for mining and not some serious high-end gaming. I am sure if needed someone could come up with a likely story for running a card a lot during the day.  Would think it would be easier for the company to just replace the card than fight the issue.

you are not banned from folding which is high use

https://foldingforum.org/


so don't feel guilty about mining  at reasonable tdp for a nvidia card.

if you set it to 105% tdp  you are morally wrong

if you set it to 70%-80% tdp  you are morally not wrong.

To give an example with cars

my kia forte can do 120 miles an hour on a straight downhill road.

If I go to the one spot near my town where I can do this and do this over and over and over again
I am an ass  and should not get warranty service.

   If I cruise on the New Jersey Parkway  at 80 mph.
  I should not feel guilty about warranty service even though I broke the speed limit in the state of NJ as that technically voids warranties.  Since the warranty mentions operation of the car within legal limits and the speed limit in NJ is 65  in fact I voided warranty.  Stupid rule  since in Montana speed limit is more the 85 on many roads.
So 81 in NJ = void
but 84 in Montana = okay

or mining = void
but folding = okay

So I mine under 80%  mostly at 70-75%  with nvidia and don't worry about a thing.

It depends on the brand and architechture of the gpu you are using in mining but mostly when mining the temp of the gpu will go 70c and up. And I think it takes 1 year of lifespan of that gpu. Also it depends on the area the place should have cooling system that maintains the temp of the gpu's on a stable temp. 70-80c and running a months is good than running it 70c below. So I estimate it takes a year when those gpu's meet it's life span in mining.

I would think more of 1.5 to 2 years?

GPU 7 series were produced by the old technology. They not only consume much energy but at the same time strongly heated. The performance of the GPU depends on the heating temperature of the chips. The life of the new GPU much higher because my towers are not heated above 60 degrees when the outside temperature is +34. They work mode with up to 45-50 degrees. I once a year change the thermal paste and blown radiators. In this mode, they can work until the complexity of the production allows you to use them.

If you run a GPU until it dies you can get 3-5 years out of it easily with proper care; keeping it cool (<70C), keeping it dry (not in a humid environment), keeping it relatively clean(dust and dirt free), and obviously free of any physical damage.

The second part of your question is a bit harder to answer and depends on which point of a cards life cycle you purchase it at. If you buy new cards at the beginning of their life cycle you can expect to get 2 years out of them before newer cards will outperform them in terms of mining efficiency. If you buy them towards the end of their cycle or once a newer card has been release, you might only get a year of efficient operation out of them. Of course that also depends on the mining environment at the time you choose to replace them, as right now mining is still fairly profitable so running older cards is still profitable. But you can also get good resale because of this fact too, so it might still be a good idea to sell off your old cards and purchase newer more efficient ones to keep your mining as energy efficent as possible.

I`m keeping my 1080 ti`s to 60°C, tdp 60-70% and fans at 60-80%. Guess this will keep them running for a long time.

yep   look at my numbers  all waterblock hybrids


https://i.imgur.com/DpUdGTA.png

It depends on the card itself. The GPU, VRMs & cooling are all important factors when it comes to lifespan.
There isn't a definitive answer to this. There are cards that fail within a couple of years of gaming (recent ones as well) and there are HD 7970s that are still mining 24/7 from 2012.

Make sure it's a good card by looking at reviews. Powercolor and Aorus RX 500 cards are worse than stock, for example.
If it's a good card, with proper cooling (airflow) and a quality power supply, it will last you to the point of obsolence.

That's true, some manufacturers prohibit any mining activities in their warranty terms. It might be a way to discourage people from mining and getting free replacement cards though, you can't be exactly sure on whether or not it can be enforced.

GPUs lifespan depends mostly on the temperature. If you manage to keep your temperatures below 60C-70C  they will be rocking for more than 4 years, your fans may wear out though.

2 years are minimum in my observation. But after that they can run with more care and high temp compare to first 2 years...!!!

To those who think resellers and the GPU company would know if you use it or not for mining, you are misinformed about the idea.

Mining load on a GPU is similar to using it for gaming - sometimes even more, as gamers overclock their cards to the fullest but don’t usually undervolt them. This results to a constant high temperature of the card. in mining, if you undervolt cards properly, they would run cool and this prevents the fans from spinning fast which stresses them.

Also, GPUs don’t have moving parts except the fans so they don’t “wear and tear” like other pc parts.

Typical GPUs have a 3 to 4 years of life, sometimes less but most of the time more.

There are different things that come to bear on it. There are coins and pieces of software that are not as hard on a card as others. You can also run the system like a server and set it up and then SSH into the system for control, and not have a video output, meaning less work for the card. Heat, the CPU itself, the general environment all have parts they play in the life of the GPU.

That's nothing — compared to a typical mining load, a video output doesn't add any significant "wear" on the card at all.

The main killers for graphics cards are swings in voltage/temperature (mining on, then mining off, then back on etc — when the elements on the card and the gpu itself are heated up to 70-100 degrees, and then rapidly cooled down to 30-35 and vice versa — the more cycles like this happen, the more likely card to fail) and abnormally high temperatures in general — which usually happens with the parts of the card that aren't being monitored: among all those people that run their "gpus" at 70-80 degrees (= actual gpu temp), some not so well designed cards might have their vrms at 100+ degrees, and while it's ok temps for vrm's themselves (they're usually good up to something like 150 degrees), the elements around vrm might not like that heat and it'll shorten their lifespan).

It depends on the way you use it. Five to 6 years is expected from almost every GPU.