Gamers will generally try to avoid buying preowned graphics cards that have been used for mining. Running them 24/7 at full pelt tends to “age” they quicker than one that’s just been used for gaming.
Also, undervolting isn’t always the correct choice it depends on how valuable the coin being minded is relative to energy costs. Someone mining in their dorm room for example may not be paying based on electricity useage.
My understanding was that gaming cards are pushed far harder, at higher temps, with fluctuating power and thermals, which causes more issues than a single stable power limit and temperature
I have no data to back this up but anecdotally this makes a huge difference in wear.
Electromigration matters on the order of 100 years.
Intel messed up their life expectancy calculations, and thus they died after 2~3 years. I think 2 are still alive.
Only the B2 stepping of chipsets should be affected by this tough.
https://www.anandtech.com/show/4142/intel-discovers-bug-in-6...
https://techreport.com/news/20326/intel-finds-flaw-in-sandy-...
I'll probably just upgrade to Zen3 soon, so it'd not be worth the effort (the machine in question is off and in storage).
You might be thinking of spinning disk drives rather than GPUs. A lot of people suggest that leaving an HDD powered up and spinning is better than spinning up and down frequently, due to the temperature going up and down a lot and the added wear on this mechanical device. This is completely different from a GPU though.
Miner cards have longer, sustained high temps. This is bad for life.
Gamer cards have lots of thermal cycles. This is very bad for life.
Miner cards are more likely to be undervolted to improve power efficiency and thermals. This is good for life. (Lower peak temperature, less electromigration).
Gamer cards are more likely to be overvolted and overclocked to improve peak performance. This is very bad for life. (higher peak temperatures, more electromigration).
https://www.dfrsolutions.com/hubfs/Resources/services/Temper...
The major risk factor for GPU’s is electromigration which is a major factor in GPU lifespan and directly relates to usage. A 40 hour a week gamer is extremely rare, but a mining GPU is pulling 168 hours a week.
Solder fatigue breaking of solder balls is common. I have fixed lots of GPUs by reflowing them. GPUs do cycle over a large temperature range-- delta-T can be 50C+. While maps are loading, etc, you can have delta-T's of 25C+ every few minutes.
Indeed, you have lots of people doing this:
https://turbofuture.com/computers/How-to-Fix-a-Dead-Graphics... https://www.instructables.com/How-to-repair-your-Graphics-Ca... https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Temporarily+Repair+a+Lost+Cause...
This is a thermal cycling induced failure mode. (Of course, a home oven doesn't accomplish proper reflow, so this is more of a "fix things for a couple months" trick as described in the posts).
That said, specific manufacturers can always introduce defects so your mileage may vary.
A) solder joint failure (thermal cycling) B) capacitor failure (sustained heat).
Electromigration is a distant, end-of-life condition-- representing only a tiny fraction of failures of non-overvolted devices in a normal use period.
As your link itself says, in the top answer:
"But then there is an important question: How much does this decrease the lifespan? Knowing this, should you make sure that your graphics card stays cool all the time? My guess is no, unless an error was made at the design stage. Circuits are designed with these worst-case situations in mind, and made such that they will survive if they are pushed to the limits for the rated lifetime of the manufacturer. "
Not to mention crypto miners will often have the GPUs overclocked on top of running full tilt to get every last hash out of it. It's about as brutal of a situation as you can get for a GPU.
This is false because miners often undervolt to achieve better efficiency. The popular GPU mining algorithms are all memory-bound, so you can undervolt your core clocks quite a bit and still get >95% of the original performance.
For collage dorms for example rarely charge based on electricity use. Some apartment complexes also include electricity as part of the rent.
Those situations are rare. A student in a college dorm isn't going to be able to afford multiple GPUs for a mining rig, and if he's mining with one GPU, he's likely going to keep it when the crash comes rather than trying to sell it into a flooded market. Apartment mining is more believable, but even then power consumption is going to be an issue for them because of noise. They're also going to be vastly outnumbered (in terms of GPUs operated) by professional miners because most people don't have a few thousand dollars to drop on generating highly speculative assets.
I have met several counter examples.
Most people prioritize the longevity of the cards. Resale value is not negligible.
you absolutely can wear out a GPU with excessive mining.
Do you think the copper wiring in your house also wears out?
It depends what you mean by "wear out". Hardware does fail with time.
To put things in perspective, not so long ago it was believed that below a certain stress delta some materials were immune to fatigue and practically eternal. However it was soon apparent that that belief was not factual, and a phenomenon labelled very high cycle fatigue started to become a research topic. This type of fatigue is characterized by cracks being induced even at very low stress levels due to defects such as impurities and even crystal size in metal matrices.
Though I'm not sure how much actual damage you'd see in practice, whether the ICs tend to die with intense use before e.g. the capacitors mentioned above.
When I started buying new parts as an adult, the failure rates of e.g. GPUs were pretty disappointing in comparison to the biased expectations I had from those survivor PCs.
I'm really sad about new laptops having everything soldered on. If something fails, you either need a good reflow station (and skills) or you have to toss the whole thing, which is insane.
It also makes parts ridiculously expensive, like a system board for a Dell Precision now goes for ~$500 where it used to be under $100. All because the CPU, GPU, VRAM and even RAM are soldered on.
Honestly, I hate where all of this is going. So much for everyone going green.
Here’s a fun report from NASA that I love to cite (it is also the citation for my lifespan claim).
https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFail...
Both pages are focused on aerospace engineering (and perhaps fault-tolerant systems in general), so I'm not sure how I'd rate them as authoritative sources for the lifespan of electronics in general. Possible faults in a gaming GPU might not be as critical if they cause something to fail once a year, for example.
Another less related to electronics, is simple heat cycles.