6 ms·

Can electronics actually wear out?

by vimy 6y ago

tw04 6y ago
Absolutely, it's materials science. Most electronics like this aren't meant to be run full-tilt 24/7, especially not under the conditions that crypto mining typically occurs. Subpar cooling, potentially dirty air - so lots of dust and particulate. 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.
- gruez 6y ago
  >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.
  - Retric 6y ago
    That depends on how valuable the last 5% of your hash rate is and local electricity prices. Running an OC especially for memory can objectively be the correct choice. For collage dorms for example rarely charge based on electricity use. Some apartment complexes also include electricity as part of the rent.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >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.
      - Fomite 6y ago
        "A student in a college dorm isn't going to be able to afford multiple GPUs for a mining rig" I have met several counter examples.
    - R0b0t1 6y ago
      Power cost is not typically something people consider when deciding to overvolt. Have you ever done any mining? Most people prioritize the longevity of the cards. Resale value is not negligible.
      - Retric 6y ago
        Yes though I stopped. At 22c/kWh it’s 2$/year per watt. Which makes a huge difference when optimizing your setup and cooling.
    - deepakhj 6y ago
      I’m running at 50% gpu which lowers my tdp to 165 watts and gpu temp of 70C.
- CyberDildonics 6y ago
  Everything you just said is total nonsense. This idea that you are going to "wear out" a GPU is something people started saying when they were obviously bitter about not being able to find GPUs and seeing them being resold later for more than retail after they had been used for mining. There is nothing to back this up unless something melts.
  - f430 6y ago
    by wear out means losing power/heat efficiency you absolutely can wear out a GPU with excessive mining.
    - CyberDildonics 6y ago
      That's not how electronics work. Do you think the copper wiring in your house also wears out?
miloshadzic 6y ago
Yes
nottorp 6y ago
Dunno about the silicon, but the cooling system will be absolutely hosed after a year or two of running at top speed 24/7.
- bserge 6y ago
  Not if you have filters set up and clean/change them regularly. I'm assuming miners monitor their temperatures, as well, as long as it's under 80 degC, chips will work for years under load. Though VRM components are of rather poor quality compared to GPUs, CPUs and RAM, that's a major failure point.
rualca 6y ago
> Can electronics actually wear out? It depends what you mean by "wear out". Hardware does fail with time. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermo-mechanical_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermo-mechanical_fatigue
- Toutouxc 6y ago
  The second article mentions thermal cycling -- I always thought that running 24/7 is actually less damaging then cycling (i.e. a gaming rig or a MacBook that does 30->90->30 °C multiple times a day.)
  - rualca 6y ago
    For the wear and tear of thermal cycling to pile up, it's not required to have reboots or shutdowns. All it takes is to have temperature fluctuations that in turn developt stress fluctuations, which induce fatigue wear on materials. Low amplitude cycles are better and less damaging than high amplitude cycles, but the damage is still there building up. 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.
mckirk 6y ago
There is the effect of 'electromigration' at least, which causes atoms of conducting materials to be transported over time because of the current (if I understand it correctly). That might be an issue over the long term, especially at the ridiculously small scale of chip manufacturing we've reached now.
- atleta 6y ago
  Not only that, there is also diffusion caused by difference of concentration, which is increased by heat. And you have that concentration difference at the p-n boundaries/junctions in an IC. 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.
- pantalaimon 6y ago
  But how big of an issue is that really in practice? You still see 20+ years old machines chugging along just fine.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    That's a bit of survivor bias. I used to buy truckloads of old PCs and recycle them when I was a teenager. I initially thought that this old tech was just really built to last, but in reality I was selecting the 1% or less that could survive being shoved around a rat-feces-infested warehouse at freezing temperatures before ending up in my parents' garage, to their dismay. Those survivors seemed to last freaking forever afterward, but again, that's because they were the random fraction that just happened to have that perfect balance of durability. 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.
    - bserge 6y ago
      Haha, I also noticed that used parts that lasted ~2-4 years have a lower failure rate than new ones. All the ones that fail, fail early, and the surviving ones go through a sort of "extended burn-in" so to say.
zajio1am 6y ago
Yes. Higher temperature leads to faster degradation of capacitors. My experience with running PC routers 24/7 in non-air-conditioned spaces (with ~40 degC in summer) is that after 5+ years systems that were rock-stable started to crash/reboot once per several days and must be replaced.
dantillberg 6y ago
As someone with experience running a GPU mining farm for ~2 years, my anecdote: I had about 5% of cards break down during that time, and the majority of those were just fan failures.
falcolas 6y ago
Yes. It’s estimated that modern electronics have a lifespan of about 5 years. And they don’t always fail in obvious (or obviously bad) fashion. 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/ObservedFailures1.html https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFail...
- Delk 6y ago
  In case someone goes looking for the source for that citation, it's on slide/page 37. It further cites another web page which no longer exists but is available at the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20150906010133/http://www.aerospace.org/2013/08/05/design-hardening-of-commercial-technologies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150906010133/http://www.aerosp... 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.
agumonkey 6y ago
One phenomenon I know is electromigration, changes in the material structure that modifies its electrical property. Another less related to electronics, is simple heat cycles.
- mbajkowski 6y ago
  Additionally, transistors can experience aging through various mechanisms [1], some of which are permanent and some of which can be fixed with a reset. Most manifest via a shift in threshold voltage of the transistors, which can impact the operating frequency of chips or stability of sensitive circuits such as memory cells. When ICs are designed they usually have a lifetime operating profile, i.e 5y or 10y with max voltage and operation for x% of that lifetime at a given temperature. Simulations are then run pre and post degradation to ensure requirements can be met. Different fabs such as tsmc and samsung will provide models/info for the transistor aging as part of their design tool kits. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_aging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_aging

Can electronics actually wear out?

by vimy 6y ago

Can electronics actually wear out?

tw04 6y ago

Absolutely, it's materials science. Most electronics like this aren't meant to be run full-tilt 24/7, especially not under the conditions that crypto mining typically occurs. Subpar cooling, potentially dirty air - so lots of dust and particulate. 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.

gruez 6y ago
>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.
- Retric 6y ago
  That depends on how valuable the last 5% of your hash rate is and local electricity prices. Running an OC especially for memory can objectively be the correct choice. For collage dorms for example rarely charge based on electricity use. Some apartment complexes also include electricity as part of the rent.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >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.
    - Fomite 6y ago
      "A student in a college dorm isn't going to be able to afford multiple GPUs for a mining rig" I have met several counter examples.
  - R0b0t1 6y ago
    Power cost is not typically something people consider when deciding to overvolt. Have you ever done any mining? Most people prioritize the longevity of the cards. Resale value is not negligible.
    - Retric 6y ago
      Yes though I stopped. At 22c/kWh it’s 2$/year per watt. Which makes a huge difference when optimizing your setup and cooling.
  - deepakhj 6y ago
    I’m running at 50% gpu which lowers my tdp to 165 watts and gpu temp of 70C.
CyberDildonics 6y ago
Everything you just said is total nonsense. This idea that you are going to "wear out" a GPU is something people started saying when they were obviously bitter about not being able to find GPUs and seeing them being resold later for more than retail after they had been used for mining. There is nothing to back this up unless something melts.
- f430 6y ago
  by wear out means losing power/heat efficiency you absolutely can wear out a GPU with excessive mining.
  - CyberDildonics 6y ago
    That's not how electronics work. Do you think the copper wiring in your house also wears out?

miloshadzic 6y ago

Yes

nottorp 6y ago

Dunno about the silicon, but the cooling system will be absolutely hosed after a year or two of running at top speed 24/7.

bserge 6y ago
Not if you have filters set up and clean/change them regularly. I'm assuming miners monitor their temperatures, as well, as long as it's under 80 degC, chips will work for years under load. Though VRM components are of rather poor quality compared to GPUs, CPUs and RAM, that's a major failure point.

rualca 6y ago

> Can electronics actually wear out? It depends what you mean by "wear out". Hardware does fail with time. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whisker_(metallurgy) * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermo-mechanical_fatigue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermo-mechanical_fatigue

Toutouxc 6y ago
The second article mentions thermal cycling -- I always thought that running 24/7 is actually less damaging then cycling (i.e. a gaming rig or a MacBook that does 30->90->30 °C multiple times a day.)
- rualca 6y ago
  For the wear and tear of thermal cycling to pile up, it's not required to have reboots or shutdowns. All it takes is to have temperature fluctuations that in turn developt stress fluctuations, which induce fatigue wear on materials. Low amplitude cycles are better and less damaging than high amplitude cycles, but the damage is still there building up. 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.

mckirk 6y ago

There is the effect of 'electromigration' at least, which causes atoms of conducting materials to be transported over time because of the current (if I understand it correctly). That might be an issue over the long term, especially at the ridiculously small scale of chip manufacturing we've reached now.

atleta 6y ago
Not only that, there is also diffusion caused by difference of concentration, which is increased by heat. And you have that concentration difference at the p-n boundaries/junctions in an IC. 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.
pantalaimon 6y ago
But how big of an issue is that really in practice? You still see 20+ years old machines chugging along just fine.
- nitrogen 6y ago
  That's a bit of survivor bias. I used to buy truckloads of old PCs and recycle them when I was a teenager. I initially thought that this old tech was just really built to last, but in reality I was selecting the 1% or less that could survive being shoved around a rat-feces-infested warehouse at freezing temperatures before ending up in my parents' garage, to their dismay. Those survivors seemed to last freaking forever afterward, but again, that's because they were the random fraction that just happened to have that perfect balance of durability. 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.
  - bserge 6y ago
    Haha, I also noticed that used parts that lasted ~2-4 years have a lower failure rate than new ones. All the ones that fail, fail early, and the surviving ones go through a sort of "extended burn-in" so to say.

zajio1am 6y ago

Yes. Higher temperature leads to faster degradation of capacitors. My experience with running PC routers 24/7 in non-air-conditioned spaces (with ~40 degC in summer) is that after 5+ years systems that were rock-stable started to crash/reboot once per several days and must be replaced.

dantillberg 6y ago

As someone with experience running a GPU mining farm for ~2 years, my anecdote: I had about 5% of cards break down during that time, and the majority of those were just fan failures.

falcolas 6y ago

Yes. It’s estimated that modern electronics have a lifespan of about 5 years. And they don’t always fail in obvious (or obviously bad) fashion. 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/ObservedFailures1.html https://c3.nasa.gov/dashlink/static/media/other/ObservedFail...

Delk 6y ago
In case someone goes looking for the source for that citation, it's on slide/page 37. It further cites another web page which no longer exists but is available at the Internet Archive: https://web.archive.org/web/20150906010133/http://www.aerospace.org/2013/08/05/design-hardening-of-commercial-technologies/ https://web.archive.org/web/20150906010133/http://www.aerosp... 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.

agumonkey 6y ago

One phenomenon I know is electromigration, changes in the material structure that modifies its electrical property. Another less related to electronics, is simple heat cycles.

mbajkowski 6y ago
Additionally, transistors can experience aging through various mechanisms [1], some of which are permanent and some of which can be fixed with a reset. Most manifest via a shift in threshold voltage of the transistors, which can impact the operating frequency of chips or stability of sensitive circuits such as memory cells. When ICs are designed they usually have a lifetime operating profile, i.e 5y or 10y with max voltage and operation for x% of that lifetime at a given temperature. Simulations are then run pre and post degradation to ensure requirements can be met. Different fabs such as tsmc and samsung will provide models/info for the transistor aging as part of their design tool kits. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_aging https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transistor_aging