I think I'll trust Gabi over the other guy.  Mining it is!  I'll make sue it doesn't go over 80 Celcius. 

I mean, I might not be a 20-rig 40 Ghash/s "professional", but I'd like to think it's the little guys like me that are helping the community stay afloat.

Aw snap, now we have some people saying it's a bad idea.

I guess I could invest in a mining rig so I won't have to worry about using my nice PC.

Alright I'll be sure to use cgminer.  Here's to hoping I can use my beloved PC for mining and not fry it! 

I'm at a dorm too, so the electricity+fiber optic internet is free. Maybe I'll eventually invest in a rig just for mining.  Even with the low price of bitcoins these days, with free electricty, it couldn't hurt to set up a 300 dollar mining rig.  Yay college.

Thanks for the quick replies guys.  And deslok, very impressive.  You guessed my card right just by my hash rates.  So sounds like I should overclock it for when I want to use it for mining, and then turn it back down when I'm actually using it.

Stock it runs at 775 Mhz, I was thinking maybe go up to 810 Mhz? The past few nights that I have mined with it, it's gotten pretty hot at 76-77 Celcius.  Overclocking might push it farther than I'm comfortable with. 

Hey bitcointalk,

I just started getting into bitcoins last week, and have started to mine with my computer.  It's my gaming PC that I spend a lot of time on, and it actually gets a pretty solid 220 Mhash/s.  It wasn't built with the intent of mining on it, and I am afraid that when I leave it mining overnight and for long periods of time that it is hard on the GPU.  I don't want to kill my GPU or cripple its ability, as I still want to game on it.  I have heard of GPUs frying before, and know mining is probably not the best thing for it.  Should I not mine on it if I value it this much?

Thanks!