Topic: How long has your GPU lasted mining 24/7? (Read 27859 times)

Yes it does.  It was a fun hobby for when I was unemployed.  I'm still using those coins to buy Christmas presents for this year.  That's real nice to be able to do.

Merry Christmas all!

I would say a big fat Zero.  You can't mine Bitcoin with GPU's anymore, as the difficulty is way too high.

You know this thread is over 4 years old...but it does bring back memories...

Wow. Thats a lot man. How much you make per month?

My lovely card, RX 570 running 1 month with free electricity
so far so good now, no problem, no decrease speed, but i dont know what happen in future, i hope long time running in my house 

No, GPU mining Bitcoin hasn't been profitable for a long time now.

If you want to mine alt coins post in the altcoin section instead of resurrecting outdated posts.

WTF resurrect a 4 year old post?

hi, are you mining for 24/7 also?

2 x 7970 DCII 45% Fan (oc to 1125Mhz running between 65-68c)
2 x 6970 (running between 68-72c)

24/7 mining (down only for maintenance or restart computer after 3-5 day uptime)

work approximately 4 months now,still no problem.

6x MSI 7970 Lightning running 24/7 for almost a year now still going strong

got delta server fans blowing 210 CFM on each of those cards 

running 71-78 depends on ambient

Good thing my HD7850's both have the same big ass DCII and run 1200 mhz core, 45% fan and not above 57 degrees...

My initial 3x5850s have been running since may 2011 and still going strong.

7970 Asus DirectCU II lasted 14 months (mining, and some gaming time). One fan was oiled because of noise after 10 months. After 14 months the machine would BSOD every time I logged into windows (with Aero) or launced 3D apps. Was running 1100 Mhz @ 80'C. Awaiting a replacement.

Just keep the dust out of the heat sinks and they should last a long time. Mine start to crash after the filters clog up but cleaning it out restores them to new. My Sapphires undervolted/overclocked run ~62, my Mysts run much hotter ~76 in a closed case.

Yeah I got a 5750 (which is not a really impressive card in any case... but still some extra K or MH/s) for $40 on ebay including delivery and it's paid for itself at least 2 or 3 times over the last few months. The thing that gets me about this card is how incredibly stable it is compared to say dual GPU cards (like my 5970) or 6870. Also I have blocked the fan up a few times and it's gotten to 100+ degree temps without crashing, happily mining away for hours in that heat. Never seen that on a AMD card before.

My pair of 7970s I got day one they were released, and they have been mining non-stop to date, around 85C to 89C

Well she doesn't really determine how many GPUs I can have... my mother board does.  And she is all practical and shit and says "wait until that one burns out until you get a new one" so meh.

Eventually I will get a new mobo that has more PCI-E slots, but then I have to get a new processor, ram, etc.

As for everyone who is pissing and moaning about GPUs will never have an ROI, you are wrong.  I spent $80 on my 5850 and it has paid itself off already. 

Word to the wise:  If you are mining LTC or BTC, then you are doing it wrong!

wow dude really, your wife determines how many GPUs you can have LOL.  I might accept it as a cost factor, but its doesn't sound like the case.  Im sorry man, but thanks for being an example of how I will never let a woman control me.

Only card I've had die was an old 5870 - got it used, mined the hell out of it for 6 months until the screen started artifacting.  Sold it on eBay as spares/repairs for the same price I paid for it.

The 6970's fan is a bit wobbly after a year, and so far so good on the 2x 7950, 7850 and 7770. All are 6 months+.

4 x 7970 (running between 65-75c)
2 x 6990 (reaches temps from 65 up to 80)
1 x 6970 (65c)
3 x 6950 (65-75c)

24/7 mining (down only for maintenance or shifting to another area) approximately 6 months now.

Your definitely right about having an active ups and I do plan on buying one when I get more asics, more than just the few block erupters I have now. It just never was reasonable to do when running thousand of watts of gpu's

Since June 2011: 1-XFX6950,2-XFX-6970's.OC'ed a little to get 400mhs from the 6970's & 365mhs from the 6950    Going on ebay in a week or 2  

All have double lifetime warranty 

Just shut em down last week due to electric costs & my 30GH from BFL arrived,along with 1.2GH in BE's  

My advice never use new GPUs for mining, the ROI hard to sustain, get the second hands ones cheap.   Also mining does seems to affect my graphic cards that I used for playing games esp running 24/7

Unfortunantly if you don't have a (high quality, line active) UPS, ensuring good power from the outlet is difficult or just impossible. I am very skeptical of cheap (<$20) surge suppression devices that a lot of people will think are actively doing something, when in fact they are just a $0.50 MOV or two and some wires on the inside.

The AC side of a quality switch mode PSU is usually pretty good at sorting some kinds of problems with the AC line. Many of the expensive ones can these days can even shut themselves down if they detect strange transient voltages, to protect themselves. There should be some good energy storage on both sides of the high frequency transformer, that helps give good smooth DC power on the output.

For example my Corsair HX1000 has even survived ~1 second complete power outages where most of my other computers and appliances have shut down, no doubt thanks to the huge electrolytic caps that must be inside it, and with not even 1% change on the DC output mind you!

How long your video cards for the most part, relies almost entirely on the power being provided to it. You will have the best success with clean power from the outlet, from the power supply, from the motherboard and finally from the voltage regulators on the card itself. Many people think its the temperature itself but high temps just put your voltage regulators closer to their highest tolerances, which then results in failing components

I have seen MANY card come and go, Though I do have 2 5870's xfx reference cards that have been going for just over a year now, They have only been on 300mem 800core on a 1v (think its 1.08 really) with 75% fan, So nice and easy on these cards and it has paid off, I did blow a 5970 in a month with 200/875 overvolted 100% fan Do'h

I have a 5770 that has been running for 2 years and 4 months now.

It still runs fine, except that whenever the miner application isn't running, the fan starts clicking for some reason.

Back in the day (last year) I ran 6 X 5970 and 3x 5830. Ran them for 13 months in the 80c range running 24/7.

All cards were purchased used on Ebay.

5830s never had a single issue and sold them for more than I bought them for. Had two fans die on 5970s, both were easily replaced. One 5970 died after about 11 months of mining, got the impression  that it was pretty heavily used prior to purchase though.

I've been actively trying to burnout my 5850... lol it's old and my wife says I can only have 2 GPUs so this is how I must get a new 7950

It's been running 24/7 at 90-95 degrees for a little over a month.

That damn thing gets SICK and DEAD, but a restart revives it. 

It's never gonna die.

About 15 cards.  I have bought and sold some but half of my cards started having fan issues after about two years.  I have 'refurbished' them by replacing fans, heat paste and heat pads and they work great.  I have never had a card totally die never to be repaired but I also do not overvolt my cards.

Two 5830's running 100% @ 75-80C constantly since mid 2011.  A fan just burned out on one of them last week.

7970 running since it was released and no problems yet, but I consider it still pretty new.

Just dust 'em and keep them under 85C and they seem to run forever.  I have 17 years of computer experience and these AMD cards seems to be REALLY well built.  I've gone through hdd's, ssd's, and blown up PSU's while these GPU's just keep churning.

One of my cards is a Gigabyte model 6950 2GB with the shader unlock.
It's been mining for just over 2 years 24/7 at around 65-70C. Mildly overclocked 50mhz on gpu core, memory clock is untouched, since I use the card to do other things also.
It'll play WoW and mine at the same time, cuts mining speed in half but WoW is very playable still, with an average of 40fps.

Without taking off the heatsink it looks like it was just the cermanic SMD capacitor that self destructed, on both sides. Call me sad but I actually enjoy it when it shits itself like that, nothing worse than a dead card without any evidence of what actually happened... 

Ouch. Was it the SMD capacitor/resistors on that side or was there a power transistor or something on the other side of the PCB?

Mine was second hand and they never broke down until I took them down when GPU mining was no longer profitable.

3 months now going 24/7 flat stick and all on FREE electricity 

8 x 7950
2 x 7970
1 x 5970
1 x 5830

Only just yesterday one of my 7950 had a Meltdown and self destructed, see below!!! Lucky Gigabyte has 3 years warranty...

A week, with different rate as Even I use the 7970 to speed up, still too slow.

I've had my 6950 running for a solid 3 years now with no problems so far.

I have a rig running since August 2011 with 5850's and its still running to this very moment, some fans have died over time and i just stuck some aftermarket fans on, and they are still mining away.

And my temps arent even low 80-90. So I can say GPU's are pretty strong..

I have 3 7950s running for 4months now at 64-68 degrees! Not sure why its so cool? Surely a good thing though..

I have 3 6970 (80~85) and 1 6850 (68~72). Temps are OK? , The 6970 are new- 1 week and they have high temps is that normal?

More than two years of mining with my 5850s @ 70 C

83 - 7950s?  sheesh man..

they can't die with proper cooling, and therefore low temp and voltage, and even if this happen, you would have already replaced them

i've had assorted cards running since around mar '11

never had a 5830 or 5870 die (~30?), two of my 5970's (out of ~10) had one core go bad

5830 for 2 years and 2 months.
5770 2 years and 1 month.

I just retired them both last month after getting Block Erupters.  Both GPU's are still functional.
Sam

I have had 83 7950s running for 3 months at max tems of 60c core 80c vrm no dead card yet 

Every single card I've run around 70 deg C has lasted over 2 years.  Mostly 5770s and 5830s from the early GPU days.  The ones I let go into the 80s are all dead for various reasons.

This is a complex argument that depends on so many factors. For example, the quality of the components that the card vendor used when the card was assembled following the reference designs, and again is different if they've changed the reference design. To make it really complex, the quality of the wafer the die is made from, and then the quality of the fabrication itself of the GPU core and some of the other components will have various impacts on how many of the shipped products fail. There are always going to be unavoidable elemental contaminants in the silicon and there will be some physical flaws with the die after fabrication, in every chip. The QA testing of silicon and the final fabricated processor is its own little expensive industry that you could study for 10 years at university and get a PhD in and yet still not grasp all of what is going on.

This is continued onto all of the hundreds of subcomponents of the card, even the tiny SMD resistors and capacitors that are all over the cards.

Of course though the parts that fail the most will be the ones under the most load and operating as close to, at, or over (eg. when overclocking) their rated design limits.

Critically, for our purposes, we should follow that having substantially lower temperatures has a great increase in the lifespan of a card. Of course, the card you are mining with now could die 10 seconds from when you read this, but statistically, if you had n number of cards, less will fail when running at lower temps.

It's important to realise that with things like GPU cores, MOSFETs and other transistors, and capacitors is that their mean lifespan does NOT vary linearly with increasing high temperatures. If you drew a graph it would look almost exponential, going exponential as you reach temperatures in the 80-120 deg C range for most parts you'll find on a graphics card. I suppose it is useful that AMD now has hard limits to the temps that cores/VRMs can reach, which are monitored by the hardware itself on the card and will force a driver crash, a hard lock or reboot the computer if they are exceeded. This stops noobs from buying a 7990 for $1000+ RRP and running the cores at 150 deg C and wondering why they now have a paperweight (but it's also useful if say, the thermal compound loses contact).

tl;dr - cooler temps = long life, but failures always can happen due to unrealistic user expectations, poor user handling of the card, design limitations of the cards and its part, cost versus product quality considerations, and the inherent material/manufacturing flaws in all microprocessor and integrated circuit devices.

For what it's worth I've abused countless 4870x2 cards back in the day at 90-100 deg C temps for YEARS of continuous operation (BOINC projects eg mostly MilkyWay@Home GPU), then quite a few 5970's, including one I've kept which is now watercooled and going strong for many months of 24/7 mining now. I have a 6870 that has also done at least 8 months of 24/7. I have a 5750 that is more lower-end of the spectrum that I've made run so hot it smelt like burning PCB (scrypt mining, probably memory controller or VRM overheat) but it still works flawlessly on SHA-256 crypto. I've also had (and later sold / given away to family or friends) several other 4xxx, 5xxx and 6xxx cards some of which ran distributed GPU computing tasks for months or years of 24/7... in fact I don't think I've ever had a card fail permanently.

4 Months of mining now, 24/7.

5x7950, 2x6950, 1x7870.

All cards are happy.

Apparently running GPU's at full load 24/7 decreases their life expectancy.  I've heard of some miners that are running their cards at over 100 degrees for months straight without any issues however. How long have you run your rigs before burning out your GPU? (Or without burning them out if you've been mining for a few years now)