How dangerous is mining for your GPU?

[mika1977]

I care for my cards to stay with temperatures below 55 degrees Celsius with my AC room temperature is 24 - 25 degrees, and i have adequate cooling in my rig.

[penguinn]

Yeah, this is a lot of good information. Please keep it coming!

[ccc]

Cards will not fry themselves from mining 24/7. Just make sure they are not running too hot. Keep in mind GPU temperatures don't tell the whole story. Other components like the VRMs can get hot, and if you're not using risers, the heat from the cards can affect the motherboard as well. Make sure you have fans to blow all this heat away from the cards, even if you're using risers. Box fans work well.

[No 1]

mining isnt/wasnt inended for  "casual" man. just dump 5k in btc and speculate for life

[Marduk]

I've been running folding@home 24/7 for about 10 years now on my CPUs and GPUs.  Well, not quite 10 years on GPUs. I don't remember when the GPU client first came out.  However, I've run it on at least 4 GPUs 24/7 though. 

I always overclock everything (CPU/GPU/system memory) as high as I can go and still run Prime95 for 24 hours stable, and then I lower the clocks down just a little.  I used to game a lot, so I would test GPU overclocks running 3dMark in a loop for an hour or so, and then just play various games ALL day long and check for artifacting or crashes.

I would usually not run folding@home for a month or 2 in the summer simply because it would make my apartment too hot!  But in all that time, I have never fried a piece of hardware.  I usually upgrade every 2-3 years just so I have some new hardware to tweak.

[DDP]

I'm no expert, but I don't like the idea of getting the clock waaayy too high, even if I can keep the temperature low. I like to look at what others used as OC settings, and pick a setting somewhere over the middle range, but not too high either. There's always someone proud about reaching the limits of the card stability and posting it. I believe this one will have troubles in a few weeks/months.

[r1nftw]

I have 3x7950's - two of them are sapphire toxic, the 3rd one is PowerColor with two 92mm fans.My question is - the middle card(sapphire toxic) is working at the moment at 70C core temp and.....98C on VRM.I know that the VRM's could maintain normal work until 130C.So, will my card be able to cointinue normal work in the future?

[with the lemons!]

If you set fan high enough, so that core is cooled well, it should live as long as GPU that is used for web browsing. I never seen GPU with faulty fan, so I think they are very durable.

[Antropov]

How about mine HD5850 running at 775 core speed, 1108 mem speed @ 60-65 deg. Celsius? Is it going to burn? Shall I lower the settings or is it normal for aTi vgas? BTW this thread should be sticky...

[DDP]

65C is a low temp (especially if you're using air cooling). I run at 80C 24/7.

It will be better to run your card 24/7 at 90C, than working at 80C 12h/day, and 50C the 12 others, all year long. The change in temperature will change the density of components, and that is a bad thing for your hardware. Worst than just keeping it busy at a higher temperature.

130C is a bad idea. I don't like hitting the 90C, but maybe that's just me.

[Chrithu]

Actually mining might have helped me enlengthen the lifetime of my GPU itself. Setting my rig up for mining during times I don't use it for gaming or just use the main card for gaming (when the game has no crossfire support) was the first time that I actually watched the temps of my graphics devices. And I found that (possibly to enlegthen the fan lifespan) the cards ran at temps of 80C+ at stock clocks when gaming. I setup MSI afterburner to control the fans and increased the fanspeeds so now the cards run at around 70C while being overclocked by 120 MHz.

To answer the OPs question, and possibly repeat what was already said: Mining per se doesn't do more damage to the card than gaming. What is worn down faster than usual are the moving parts. The fans. While mining you should trust your ear. If it starts to sound strange it's better to look for a replacement fan and replace it before it has an outage.

If available for your card of choice it's also worth to install a fan with a bigger diameter than the standart ones. The bigger the fan the lower the speed needed to reach the same cooling and thuse the longer it's lifetime. Plus lower frequenzy is better for the loudness.

[madkind]

I think the magic number is 75, I alway try to stay under that.

[atp1916]

Anything 85C and under is fine for the GPU for 24/7 use.  It may get hot in the room, but the cards should be fine.

In the crate rig i got set up for my 3 7970s, they don't get above 75C.