Lifespan of a GPU in mining

[Emoclaw]

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.

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[Ultegra134]

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

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.

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.

[faanigee]

I would think more of 1.5 to 2 years?

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

[greatauror28]

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.

[MFahad]

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.

[wacko]

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.

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).

[jeswin]

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