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Comment by akelly | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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