Can't Do Anything While Mining

[Macil2018]

I was wondering if this is a video card issue or a limitation of Bitcoin mining or what. But when I have my miner running - weather my video card is overclocked or not, the second I open YouTube to watch a quick video or something or really do anything video related weather it be YouTube or not, my computer locks up and I have to restart it.

Now, I would like to point out last week I bought 2 Radeon 5830 cards and ran them both on one machine and everything worked fine. Since then I purchased 1 new Radeon 6970 and took 1 of the 5830s out to put in my wife's computer and run mine with a 6970 and 1 5830. Since then I'm having the lock up issue but it was fine with just the 5830s. It would obviously immediately lesson my performance in mining, but I could still watch something if I needed to or wanted to rather.

So should I return this video card as there is a problem with it? Or deal with it and just find another computer to use to play around on?

Oh yeah, and last but not least I did want to point out that during the night I believe my computer locked up while I was sleeping because when I woke up to check on it my screens were black and unresponsive but my tower was still running. So these lock ups could even be in-part unrelated to watching any videos or playing games or anything but I've not confirmed it yet.

Any help is as always, greatly appreciated!

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[Xenland]

Did you try opening your miner with the -f30 flag?

[mewantsbitcoins]

Lowering the aggression should help. Also keep an eye on the temperatures - the night lock up may be due to overheating

[cosix]

you can't watch youtube while you mine, unless you disable hardware acceleration. Also, if you're doing extreme overclocking, watching any types of video will cause the miner to crash, so lower your clocks while you watch a video.

[Macil2018]

By default my card runs at 880 MHz out of the box. At this clock speed it averages around 85-89ºF when mining. If I overclock the card it runs pretty average around 90-93ºF. I can only overclock it to 900 MHz, any higher and my entire monitor goes this real off color grey and my system totally locks up. I'm very new to overclocking so I don't fully understand a lot of this. But I do know the YouTube thing happens while I'm mining regardless of overclocking. And the lock up happened while I was running at 900 MHz.

Taking the fans off auto bring my video card down to 75-80ºF when I crank it to 100% power but is that bad for the fans? How long can they operate under that level of RPMs before burning themselves out? It also is very annoying as it sounds like a vacuum cleaner running when its cranked up that high.

[mewantsbitcoins]

Anything above 80 is way too high for sustained high load.

Enable unofficial overclocking and lower the Memory clock. For exact settings you'll have to experiment but it should probably be in 300-400MHz range. It will lower the temperatures.

Like cosix mentioned disable hardware acceleration if you want to watch video.

More info on these matters can be found on the mining board

[Sukrim]

But I do know the YouTube thing happens while I'm mining regardless of overclocking. And the lock up happened while I was running at 900 MHz.

Just turn off hardware acceleration in the flash player...