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Is it safe to let Poclbm run all day for weeks at the time?

 Is there a chance it might fuck up my graphics card (HD4850) if i let it run for too long?

Thanks your input!

The only thing you need to look out for is to make sure your case has proper ventilation. If your HD4850 is a reference card like mine (single-slot cooler, idles really fucking hot) then I recommend pointing a case fan at it.

But other than that, it's perfectly fine.

Chances are you will upgrade your card before it evens gets to the point where it would start to deteriorate. I've been running my 6870 overclocked since the day I got about a week after they released and I haven't had any issues. I just recently started mining about a week and a half ago and have had it running almost nonstop between that and gaming. These cards are built to be run and can handle it just fine, just be sure to keep the temperatures in check and try not to have too much variation of it (ie, idling then running 100% then idling etc etc).

I tried running two 6870s in Crossfire for a while. Any game that I throw at it runs just fine, although GTA IV does get the fans turning a bit. Running a gpu client on each card at the same time though, is extremely painful. The top card overheats and reaches temps of ~108C before it clocks itself down. The downclocking then decreases temperature, which lowers the fan speed from 100% to 67%, which increases the temperature, which increases the fan speed, which clocks the card down again. It's horrible and definitely not healthy for the card.

Ok, a bit of rant. Anyway, any single card should be stable. Be careful when you run more than one.

Looks like you have very bad ventilation in your PC case. Try removing the cover.

had same problem (have micro atx mobo and case). installed water cooling system - no problems so far )

In my experience, it's pretty difficult to fry a GPU.  They will throttle when they get too hot.  It's your power supply that you have to worry about, especially if you have a top-mounted one that draws all of the hot internal case air through itself.

It very well could be slots too close problem, can't get enough airflow to the top card. It's what it sounds like.

One of my cases (Antec P180) has decent ventilation, but my fan installation and speed choices were designed when I ran a dual 8800GTS G92 system on water. And that system has a 6950 1GB on air - thing is, the 1GB card has a crap heatpipe cooler that barely copes (the 2GB model has a way better reference cooler). With the case side off, it'll bluescreen after 3-4 days of hashing...thinking it eventually gets over the heatpipe's ability to remove heat; I am assuming it's thermal runaway. Solution was to order an Accelero Xtreme Plus cooler...it'll also solve the noise issue (this is my in-bedroom computer and is currently pretty loud...) - it's in the mail now.