Mining with my personal gaming PC, bad idea?

[Seethered]

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! 

[1715275495]

1715275495

[deslok]

as long as you cool it properly(which i assume you do since it's a gaming pc) and don't push any crazy clocks it should be safe, however any card can fail at any time for any reason even in normal use if your card is for whatever reason predisposed to fail(say a few thousand were made with a faulty VRM that fails after 1k hours of use) mining will increase the likelyhood of failure. Same as driving a car the more you drive it the more likley something is to go wrong even if everything should be fine

[RyNinDaCleM]

Do you ever use furmark?

Think of it like that...24/7! XD
IF your GPU gets hot from furmark then it will probably be a problem! What you can do is, let it mine for 4-5hrs. If it stays relatively cool <80°, it'll be fine!

What are you running? A 5770?

[RyNinDaCleM]

Also, you won't be able to game and mine full speed at the same time!

[deslok]

that sounds more like a 6850/6870 at stock clocks you wouldnt run a 5770 the way you would have to to hit that speed for a gaming pc because the memory underclock would cripple game performance

[GoldenBoar]

I mine on my gaming PC. A 6870. I just overclock it when I want to mine, basically, whenever I'm not gaming, and reset it to stock when I want to game. It only takes a couple of seconds.

https://i.imgur.com/miZVI.jpg.

[deslok]

I mine on my gaming PC. A 6870. I just overclock it when I want to mine, basically, whenever I'm not gaming, and reset it to stock when I want to game. It only takes a couple of seconds.

.

you game at 1280x720, you poor person

[RyNinDaCleM]

that sounds more like a 6850/6870 at stock clocks you wouldnt run a 5770 the way you would have to to hit that speed for a gaming pc because the memory underclock would cripple game performance

My 5770's run at a modest OC of 20% mining (@230MH/s) or gaming! =D (Though I use my 6950 for gaming these days!)
But, yes the 300Mhz mem clock would be a bit difficult to game on!

[Seethered]

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. 

[deslok]

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. 

I actually don't own any 6xxx cards even! but for a gauge on overclocking checking here (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison) is a good idea, don't imagine you'll get the highest ever recorded for your card without some heavy duty cooling but the ranges you see for your card give you some room to work in. you gain some room overclocking by decreasing the memory clocks (reduce power to one part to use it elsewhere) however don't leave anything running higher than 80*C for a long time it's not a good idea

[vapourminer]

you may want to monitor your gpu fan speed as well as the gpu temp. over 75% fan speed with prolonged use may shorted the life of the fan.

cgminer is good as you can set a max fan speed and it will underclock the gpu (if needed) to keep the fan speed at (or under) a target speed. it treats your gpu well.

[Seethered]

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.

[finway]

bad idea.

[GoldenBoar]

you game at 1280x720, you poor person

Sometimes. I've got a monitor and a TV connected to my PC. If I'm lying in bed, I use the TV, otherwise the monitor.

[Bit Ghost]

This sounds like a quick way to burn out your video card and all you'll get out of it is $5-10, if you're lucky.

Stick to gaming and let the professionals mine bitcoins.

[Seethered]

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.

[GoldenBoar]

This sounds like a quick way to burn out your video card and all you'll get out of it is $5-10, if you're lucky.

Stick to gaming and let the professionals mine bitcoins.

Professionals? If you say so.  Where do you think the knowledge and tools come from to overclock your GPUs? The real professionals are gamers.

[Bitmetal]

It's all about cooling. If you can keep it cool, and running stable while mining it won't hurt your GPU's any more than intense gaming would. Long gone are the days where a GPU fan is a 5 cent piece of junk prone to failure in 6 months. Most of them are fairly heavy duty now. If you mine 24/7 be sure that once a month you clean all the fans / filters in the case especially if you have pets. Clogged fans will do more to blow up your PC than anything else. That goes for rigs with or without a case. You'd be surprised how many dead bugs came out of my CPU heat sink after 1 month of open box mining. 

[jasonang]

Bad idea, if I mine my computer is very slow, I have to stop my other programs.

[GoldenBoar]

Bad idea, if I mine my computer is very slow, I have to stop my other programs.

At the moment I'm doing some programming in Visual C# 2010 Express, I've got a few tabs open in Notepad++, I'm seeding a few torrents in uTorrent, I'm listening to some Pink Floyd in foobar2000, got my namecoin gui running and the namecoin deamon, and Firefox with a few tabs open. I'm still getting around 330 Mh/s with no slow down of my computer.

I have noticed the slowdown your talking about though. I get it now and again when I visit certain websites, github for example. I just temporarily turn on on my workers off though and when I'm finished with that website, restart the broser and turn my second worker back on. Problem sorted. I can even watch video without any problem and still get 315 Mh/s.

You just have to configure your system properly.