4 ms·

Aren't you concerned with hardware degradation with your GPU running at 100% most of the time?

by qvrjuec 6y ago

polyterative 6y ago
just limit power to maximum efficiency. My card mines eth 52MH/s@100% and 49MH/s@55% power
coralreef 6y ago
The only thing that really degrades is fans. Running a GPU for ~3 years at 75-82c
cwkoss 6y ago
At those rates, the GPU will likely pay for itself before it fails.
Sohcahtoa82 6y ago
No. My GPU hovers at around 55-60 C while mining with the fans at 77%. Years ago, I was running an AMD R9 290. THAT ran HOT. Even with fans at 100%, it would hover around 95 C and constantly fight with thermal throttling. EDIT: And as someone else said, at these mining rates, it will pay for itself in 3-4 months.
barkingcat 6y ago
This is usually a non-concern. It's likely that the GPU will become obsolete in the time that it fails due to being run at 100% of the time. The other question to ask, if you compile programs, write webpages, and edit photoshop images: are you concerned with hardware degradation with your CPU if you run at 100% all time time, for example, compiling chrome that takes 3+ hours, applying photoshop filters to an image to get a production quality output, or for rendering a 3 hour long animated movie? Do you worry about the GPU when you are retraining a GPT-2 or GPT-3 scale AI framework? These questions are kind of ... dependent on each person. Presumably you buy a computer in order to perform computations. That is its purpose. Just because it's crunching bitcoins/cryptocurrencies doesn't degrade it any more than ... say running an AI framework on a GPU for 3 months continuously to generate a self driving model ...
- balls187 6y ago
  The flipside, if you have a CPU and you can't keep it pegged 100% of the time, are you wasting resources?
  - danans 6y ago
    No, because a CPU isn't a consumable resource, like electricity or labor. You should occupy the CPU with all valuable work (for whatever definition of value) but keeping it pegged for no reason makes no sense, and just wastes electricity.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - slaman 6y ago
      It's value deprecates over time though, as it's market efficiency drops relative to newer cards. Your return on the opportunity cost is maximized if you can do work closest to the time the card was acquired. If you buy a card and leave it in the box for 10 years you have not 'consumed' the card, but you have wasted a few hundred dollars. From an electricity and financial perspective if you have valuable work to do, your costs are minimized if you do that work closest to the purchase date. This is obvious if you have a significant workload, but maybe not as obvious if you are running CAD. Is the cost of a new card worth the time saved by the new card? Significantly more efficient if you can keep it busy.
    - amackera 6y ago
      In a way, by not running useful work 100% of the time, you're wasting the resource of time.
      - danans 6y ago
        I would argue that there is a lot less useful work available to run per unit available CPU time than there is time. Otherwise, there would be market for people to sell their spare CPU cycles. The only entities selling CPU cycles are big cloud providers who have much higher utilization in general.
xienze 6y ago
I was quite surprised by this, but when running NiceHash on my 2070S with no overclocking etc. it stays at ~60C, fans aren’t even audible, etc. And it generates the equivalent of $5 of BTC every day. Can’t complain.
Bayart 6y ago
The main causes of degradation in electronics are usually material failure due to thermal stress (cycles of expansion and contractor weaken the electrical pathways, resistance goes up, that causes more stress etc.) and electromigration due to over-voltage (the flux of electrons induces a shift in the position of the atoms it goes through). Considering mining is a constant load (not much thermal stress) and improving efficiency requires lowering the voltage those aren't really concerns. There's far less risk than overclocking a GPU for gaming. The only electrical part that may be of concern would be the voltage regulation, but that's still an outlier as long as cooling is adequate. Fans are know to fail because they're ran at high speeds all the time, but they're a commodity.
- tullianus 6y ago
  Electromigration can happen because of constant high temperatures as well!

Aren't you concerned with hardware degradation with your GPU running at 100% most of the time?

polyterative 6y ago

just limit power to maximum efficiency. My card mines eth 52MH/s@100% and 49MH/s@55% power

coralreef 6y ago

The only thing that really degrades is fans. Running a GPU for ~3 years at 75-82c

cwkoss 6y ago

At those rates, the GPU will likely pay for itself before it fails.

Sohcahtoa82 6y ago

No. My GPU hovers at around 55-60 C while mining with the fans at 77%. Years ago, I was running an AMD R9 290. THAT ran HOT. Even with fans at 100%, it would hover around 95 C and constantly fight with thermal throttling. EDIT: And as someone else said, at these mining rates, it will pay for itself in 3-4 months.

barkingcat 6y ago

This is usually a non-concern. It's likely that the GPU will become obsolete in the time that it fails due to being run at 100% of the time. The other question to ask, if you compile programs, write webpages, and edit photoshop images: are you concerned with hardware degradation with your CPU if you run at 100% all time time, for example, compiling chrome that takes 3+ hours, applying photoshop filters to an image to get a production quality output, or for rendering a 3 hour long animated movie? Do you worry about the GPU when you are retraining a GPT-2 or GPT-3 scale AI framework? These questions are kind of ... dependent on each person. Presumably you buy a computer in order to perform computations. That is its purpose. Just because it's crunching bitcoins/cryptocurrencies doesn't degrade it any more than ... say running an AI framework on a GPU for 3 months continuously to generate a self driving model ...

balls187 6y ago
The flipside, if you have a CPU and you can't keep it pegged 100% of the time, are you wasting resources?
- danans 6y ago
  No, because a CPU isn't a consumable resource, like electricity or labor. You should occupy the CPU with all valuable work (for whatever definition of value) but keeping it pegged for no reason makes no sense, and just wastes electricity.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - slaman 6y ago
    It's value deprecates over time though, as it's market efficiency drops relative to newer cards. Your return on the opportunity cost is maximized if you can do work closest to the time the card was acquired. If you buy a card and leave it in the box for 10 years you have not 'consumed' the card, but you have wasted a few hundred dollars. From an electricity and financial perspective if you have valuable work to do, your costs are minimized if you do that work closest to the purchase date. This is obvious if you have a significant workload, but maybe not as obvious if you are running CAD. Is the cost of a new card worth the time saved by the new card? Significantly more efficient if you can keep it busy.
  - amackera 6y ago
    In a way, by not running useful work 100% of the time, you're wasting the resource of time.
    - danans 6y ago
      I would argue that there is a lot less useful work available to run per unit available CPU time than there is time. Otherwise, there would be market for people to sell their spare CPU cycles. The only entities selling CPU cycles are big cloud providers who have much higher utilization in general.

xienze 6y ago

I was quite surprised by this, but when running NiceHash on my 2070S with no overclocking etc. it stays at ~60C, fans aren’t even audible, etc. And it generates the equivalent of $5 of BTC every day. Can’t complain.

Bayart 6y ago

The main causes of degradation in electronics are usually material failure due to thermal stress (cycles of expansion and contractor weaken the electrical pathways, resistance goes up, that causes more stress etc.) and electromigration due to over-voltage (the flux of electrons induces a shift in the position of the atoms it goes through). Considering mining is a constant load (not much thermal stress) and improving efficiency requires lowering the voltage those aren't really concerns. There's far less risk than overclocking a GPU for gaming. The only electrical part that may be of concern would be the voltage regulation, but that's still an outlier as long as cooling is adequate. Fans are know to fail because they're ran at high speeds all the time, but they're a commodity.

tullianus 6y ago
Electromigration can happen because of constant high temperatures as well!