Topic: How long to keep a PC continuously mining? (Read 852 times)

From my experience I do not see any performance degradation at all after running mining rigs for months on end. I periodically choose to shut down for cleaning as stated earlier, but most of  my rigs do not crash, hang, reboot, or lose any mining performance whatsoever. I have rigs running under both Windows and Linux and can make the same claim for both.

The key is to create a solid working environment, meaning quality hardware and risers, a stable OS install, proper settings, stable drivers, and tweaking your GPUs to run optimally. This does not mean run everything balls to the wall trying to eek out every last hash, as then you will probably run into many issues. I try to optimize my rigs to get a good hash-rate versus lower power consumption while still being stable.

If the settings I choose make a rig unstable where it cannot run a solid week without running into problems, such as hangs or reboots, than I know I was too aggressive in something and will back down the clocks or up the voltage sightly to stabilize it. If after this it is still ustable I will look into other factors, such as drivers, PSU, are the connections tight, etc., until I can get the rig stable.

After building quite a few I know what works and what doesn't so it is easier now than it was at first, but the main point of all this is that a mining rig is very capable of running very solidly for long periods of time (months), without user intervention. If your rig is having trouble and routinely hangs or reboots, you are missing something in its build or configuration. You might want to back off on timings a bit to start. I can assure you that 1 or 2 Mhash/sec loss per rig will be more than offset over the long run by the continuous run-time of weeks or months on end versus having to reboot or restart a hanged rig every few days that may run slightly faster.

I think it depends on the temperature and air quality, if you mine ETH for example, adjust the fan speed to about 80%, lower the TDP to around 60%, and reduce the engine clock, the temperature will be good to continuously run several months without reboot for NVIDA cards.

You should probably do a weekly or half monthly or even monthly cleanup and maintenance
Other then dust accumulation and temperature u are probably good to run them for years
Probably also turn off if there are thunderstorms or bad electricity conditions

Was there like a periodical decline (daily or weekly) in the performance in running it continuously that long?  Usually, I experience some slowness after a day or two of just keeping the computer on.  But that's of course just a regular computer setup.  If I may ask, what's your setup for your mining rig?

Think in relation to servers.  Silicon actually has a VERY low failure rate over time, and actually if it runs fine for the first week you're in good shape.  As has already been said dust accumulation and adequate airflow are really the only major concerns from a maintenance viewpoint.

As long as it can run. Starting and stopping a computer constantly is actually bad for the components and it's actually better to just leave your electronics on all the time for the most part. Dust filters can help in a case setup, but truthfully all you need is a cheap can of compressed air every few months and you'll be set. Keep some thermal compound on hand as well.

As others have said, two things to keep an eye on are dust and heat. Computers are fine to run 24/7 and many in business environments do just that. Schedule a regular cleaning, maybe once every 3 months or so to vacuum out dirt and dust, and keep an eye on heat as you may need to add airflow in the warmer months. The routine cleaning will obviously help with heat as well.

The other two things to watch out for is humidity, don't keep your rigs in too humid of an environment (90%+ humidity) and also if you live somewhere where it storms a lot make sure you use quality surge suppression. This can be in the form of a surge suppressor that you plug your PSU into. Spend a few dollars here and get a quality brand, not the cheap $2-3 outlet types from Walmart. Tripplite makes a quality unit with a steel housing for about $25-$30, but there are some Belkin brands (plastic housing) that work ok too that are maybe $10-$15.

+1 you just have to watch temperature and that's all

Check the monitoring software for your rig, you can have automatic alert in case it becomes too hot (mail + sms)

All you have to watch is temperatures, except that, you can leave it as long as you want. But if you see too high temps then you might reconsider letting it on for many hours and also you should check for a cooling method.

If you're not in a dusty region, probably keeping it running for months wouldn't hurt, otherwise just dust them off every few weeks

Been running mine for 4 months straight bro. Nonstop except for when i restart the computer after installing drivers, crashes, etc.
You should be fine.

If it aint broke, dont fix it.

For the hardware it's better to leave it on. It's the changes in temperature from starting and stopping that wears and damages, so as long as it doesn't overheat leave it 24/7.

24 hours operating according to my experience

If the temperatures are fine and you're air quality is adequate, it's not a problem. Windows can last for months without a reboot. Sometimes it reboots randomly. 

I have a PC, Intel i5, with a Nvidia GPU, which I'm using to mine an Altcoin. I'm not using the PC for any other task. The PC's been running 7 days straight now running the miner software. Will running it continuously for many weeks or so damage the PC?