Hacker News Reader

Comment by cle | Hacker News Reader

I don't know much about GPUs and am curious how this "burn out" happens, do you have a link for those of us who'd like to read more about this?

View on HN

There's three main ways GPUs wear out, silicon electromigration, electrolytic capacitor dryout, and fan bearing failure. And the first two happen much faster at higher temperatures. Temperatures are similar between gaming and mining, but miners run 24/7 compared to gaming 1-2 hrs/day, so the GPUs age like 10x faster. But still, GPU failures are pretty rare, I think the concern is overblown.

Miners undervolt and often underclock though: heat is their enemy, so they’re more particular about this than gamers are these days.

They also sometimes do GPU BIOS modifications, which is a fun thing to discover once the card ends up on the second-hand market and you happen to buy one. Luckily the fix is to reflash the BIOS using a matching one from TechPowerUp GPU database, but this assumes that you even know that this is something to pay attention to.

Source: happened with an RX 560 that I bought second-hand. Driver installation failed in Windows 10 due to the modified GPU BIOS. Was fixed with a reflash of a stock GPU BIOS using atiflash.

Any idea what they modified?

I didn't check it, but if I had to guess, it might have to do something with allowing the card to run using settings that make it more suitable for mining. Someone more familiar with GPU mining can correct me here.

Usually memory timings, at least on my 5700 XT

Totally true- I went through the process of manually overclocking my 2080ti for max hash rate and the best settings involved setting a power limit that is less than half the card’s 100% limit.

> Heat is their enemy

Sometimes literally: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fr8bp8a2QS4

"A Bitcoin Miner Heatstroked In His Sleep. This Is What Happened To His Organs."

> electrolytic capacitor dryout

Has anyone spotted electrolytics on a card in the last ten years or so?

Uhhh every single one. Here's the Nvidia 3070 for example: https://www.techpowerup.com/review/nvidia-geforce-rtx-3070-f...

I don't recognize the manufacturer's mark on those, but they're almost certainly solid polymer capacitors and not electrolytic.

Anedoctal but my two last GPUs burnt out after a few years. Bought new GPUs from reputable suppliers. Never mined or overclocked besides factory overclock (which for most of the time I had disabled). I was playing a lot more than 1-2 hrs/day. I guess it was the worse of both worlds. Heavy usage + cycling.

I’ve purchased graphics cards from the used market, and used them for years. Never any problems. One of my go to cards is 5 years old … that’s when I bought it - I’m guessing it’s much older.

Just normal wear, accelerated because it's always under load. The used cards are fine most of the time if the temperatures were stable under 80-90 degC.

The main cause of failure is the VRM, those components are the hottest, least reliable and least cooled.

Sadly, sometimes a blown transistor or capacitor can take out the whole GPU.

Too much heat causes flex and movement that can break solder traces, and makes it easier to let the magic smoke out.

Flex is caused when the temp changes. Mining cards stay at the same temp and don't move around a lot while overclocked gaming cards are getting flexed multiple times a day

If your GPUs run too long hot, the board literally starts to melt (the plastics, solder, etc).

on contrary, miners tend to run gpus undervolted and underclocked for efficiency. gamers tend to run gpus overclocked (and sometimes overvolted) for performance.

Miners care enough about power efficiency and longevity; they don't run cards super hot.

Most scale oriented mining rigs I've seen pack cards super close together, even if you run them at reduced frequencies thermal environment is not great. See https://us.v-cdn.net/5021640/uploads/editor/do/j86gsm9cxvl2.... for example.

Aside from a few top end models modern desktop GPUs are not designed for continuous operation at max load. When you combine than with higher temperature the lifespan of the cards is indeed reduced. The real question is how much this matters.

Latest Nvidia GPUs have large Tensor cores and RT cores but miners never use them. I wonder is it better for the situation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com