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I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

arunphilip wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

Of course there is. Gaming GPU that has been working 24/7 for a year will have it's lifespan reduced. But it depends a lot on how well it was taken care of during it's mining days.
When I was mining years ago, I undervolted all of the cards and have cut power consumption dramatically. That reduced the impact of 24/7 operation.
You have to know how long has the card been mining and what condition the cooler is.
That said, I wouldn't get a ex-miner card without a hefty discount.

It's effecting more than just "gaming bros". I too am for a free market, I don't want it artificially steered for one group or another. I can however, see the writing on the wall. Nvidia will probably be able to handle weathering the storm as they only have their eggs in one basket and stand only to gain from GPU sales being stupid high. People are going to need cards one way or another and some will pay for it. So sure, AMD and Nvidia will make a lot on their cards, but AMD needs to sell actual PCs. Ryzen, and it's chipset, they spend lots of cash on hardware R&D on these as well as software devs to support those verticals..... They have so much riding on the success of these products and their sales together.

The extra cash brought in from GPU sales isn't going to save them from the loses of the other markets they are trying to compete in. Especially right in the middle of their largest release against Intel in a decade. Add RAM prices on top of it and people will just plain out not buy new computers. Beyond the gamer cards, even the lowest end crappy GPUs are priced at 200+% their original MSRP price. So it is very much a matter of making an impact with their products and getting people to buy into their platform NOW. If you have an AM4 motherboard right now, you will most likely hold onto it through the upgrade paths that will be available to you. You can easily pop in a Ryzen+ or Ryzen 2 CPU if you want, but if you waited out this cycle and never got a B350/x370 board because things were too pricey... Well then, when prices do come down after those releases are long gone, the Intel platform may make more sense instead and those future Ryzen+ and Ryzen 2 sales are lost. If you had got a year plus use and already owned the board, it might have been a different story.

The effect is not just felt immediately, it is felt a few years down the road unfortunately.

PrincipalSkinner wrote:

arunphilip wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

Of course there is. Gaming GPU that has been working 24/7 for a year will have it's lifespan reduced. But it depends a lot on how well it was taken care of during it's mining days.
When I was mining years ago, I undervolted all of the cards and have cut power consumption dramatically. That reduced the impact of 24/7 operation.
You have to know how long has the card been mining and what condition the cooler is.
That said, I wouldn't get a ex-miner card without a hefty discount.

Yeah, if we ever see a mass exodus from the mining world then I'm hoping to see RX 580's going for somewhere around the $100 mark. I'm curious just how many physical RX 580/570 cards are there. When the market gets flooded with them I think I'll see if I can find a pack of them for somewhere like $300

It may give AMD's new Ryzen APUs a pretty big sales boost though.

PrincipalSkinner wrote:

arunphilip wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

Of course there is. Gaming GPU that has been working 24/7 for a year will have it's lifespan reduced. But it depends a lot on how well it was taken care of during it's mining days.
When I was mining years ago, I undervolted all of the cards and have cut power consumption dramatically. That reduced the impact of 24/7 operation.
You have to know how long has the card been mining and what condition the cooler is.
That said, I wouldn't get a ex-miner card without a hefty discount.

The biggest factor in reduction of lifespan probably has a lot more to do with cooling or lack thereof. I've been running my folding rig for a few years and haven't had any GPU failures. But I make sure that all components in the box have the ability to breathe and I keep my ambient temperatures from rising too high for too long. If you cool them properly, I believe any reduction in life expectancy is probably a statistical nit.

just brew it! wrote:

It may give AMD's new Ryzen APUs a pretty big sales boost though.

True, but how many people stuck Intel due to them having IGP already?

Considering they are Vega cores... I have a fear that some budget miners are going to show how "useful" they are. Hell, there was an article already up a week ago showing how CPUs might be the next area for miners frustrated with the ever increasing price and availability of GPUs.

If a profit can be made on paper, they will do it.

Just sold my GTX 1070 for 500 euros which I bought for 370 euros more than year ago. Filthy miners.

arunphilip wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

I'll second what BIF said, it comes down to if the cards were properly cooled or just run all out at high temps. I have a GTX 480 FTW that I even overclocked further for giggles to watch the lights dim. That card is now 8 years old, and was run 24/7 under F@H load when not used for gaming or rendering. It's still running F@H as I type this, keeping the kitchen heated. I attribute it's long lifespan to it being a watercooled card, temps were always kept low.

Unfortunately I would assume any mining cards were abused and run at 80c all the time, I believe that's what AMD"s drivers default to before ramping the fans. I'd suggest avoiding used cards (though they are still being bought up by miners, at current used prices you might as well buy new)

MSI RX 580 8GB for $400. Progress?
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product. ... 6814137118

I wondering how people have brought the Ryzen 5 2400G to get by on low end gaming until dGPUs return to normal?

Kougar wrote:

arunphilip wrote:

I'm not sure if this has been discussed previously, but do we know if the lifespan of GPUs will be affected by them having run 24x7 at full load in a mining rig for months? Particularly the ones that use smaller process nodes, due to migration? Would it be a significant risk to pick up GPUs with a mining provenance if one plans to keep such a GPU for 5 years or so?

I'll second what BIF said, it comes down to if the cards were properly cooled or just run all out at high temps. I have a GTX 480 FTW that I even overclocked further for giggles to watch the lights dim. That card is now 8 years old, and was run 24/7 under F@H load when not used for gaming or rendering. It's still running F@H as I type this, keeping the kitchen heated. I attribute it's long lifespan to it being a watercooled card, temps were always kept low.

Unfortunately I would assume any mining cards were abused and run at 80c all the time, I believe that's what AMD"s drivers default to before ramping the fans. I'd suggest avoiding used cards (though they are still being bought up by miners, at current used prices you might as well buy new)

If anything is "worn out" in a properly cared-for GPU (or CPU, for that matter), it would be the fans, and not the chips themselves. I'd go so far as to say that if you get a good price on a used GPU that you suspect may have been driven hard and put up wet, test it first. If it works, then just consider replacing the fan and then run it until it gives up all of its little GPU core ghosts.

Very nice points from all of you about thermals and fan wear. Thank you BIF, Kougar, and PrincipalSkinner.

In my huge collection of ancient video cards, I have only noted two points of failure: fans get stuck or break (dust in bearings is not good) and capacitors, which inevitably age, blow up.

Still using an nVidia 7600GS somewhere (passively cooled) and I have given various AMD gpus to friends that are still using them daily. I used 2xRX 280 for mining in 2013 (6 months 24/7) and I still have them and they work great.

As others pointed out, the secret is good cooling (you must experiment with in/out fans and fan placement), high-end power supplies (seasonic high-end platinum models) and reasonable maintance (cleaning dust 1-2x/year).

The importance of good power supplies must not be understated: ripple/noise will wear components much faster.

I've only ever had cards die from fans or VRMs exploding (and only VRM issues on water cooled cards that were pushed to the absolute limit). I wouldn't hesitate to buy a card that was mined on.

Yesterday I was poking around Newegg checking to see what was in stock (nothing that wasn't a combo) and a couple of hours later I got the obligatory graphics card email... They were sold of the items listed in the email. I had to chuckle.

Pville_Piper wrote:

Yesterday I was poking around Newegg checking to see what was in stock (nothing that wasn't a combo) and a couple of hours later I got the obligatory graphics card email... They were sold of the items listed in the email. I had to chuckle.

"We'd sell you these if we had them!"

Wonder what my Cysis frame rate would be?

Pville_Piper wrote:

Wonder what my Cysis frame rate would be?

CPU-limited, sadly. You could run at an obscene upper limit for resolution if your display hardware could manage it, but for all its graphical prowess Crysis' engine doesn't do much to leverage more than two cores. What I'd love to see is the game ported to a more modern edition of CryEngine, like the one that drove last year's Prey...

I think you missed the joke...

Looks like Seti researches can't even place GPU orders with OEMs to expand computational capacity at two of their observatories. Pretty crazy.

So Newegg sent me an email today, 20% off select GPUs (sold by newegg). I clicked it to see what these "select" GPUs were... three different Vega 56's at $999 and one Vega 64 at $1,200.

In the 20 minutes since reading that email, two of the three Vega 56's were sold out.

I got an email a few days ago about a 1080 that was in stock in EVGAs b-stock lineup. Paying $619 instead of $800-900 for a 1080 isn't so bad until you stop and think about it. That's still $70 over MSRP for what would otherwise be called a refurb.

Redocbew wrote:

I got an email a few days ago about a 1080 that was in stock in EVGAs b-stock lineup. Paying $619 instead of $800-900 for a 1080 isn't so bad until you stop and think about it. That's still $70 over MSRP for what would otherwise be called a refurb.

Yeah... some people have had good luck with those, but I wouldn't touch a refurbished GPU with a ten foot stick since I suspect the odds of getting one with coil whine are pretty high. And paying over the cards MSRP for a refurbished card would tick me off anyway.

If you need a GPU just check Newegg/Amazon when they restock their listings in the morning. For example I've noticed Massdrop always starts the day's new listings every 8am, though I've never seen any of these GPU drops mentioned previously in this thread yet.

I just started the hunt for a new graphics card as well... Thought I'd leave this here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/extern ... 36597.html

Not exactly the bargain of the century, but if you're desperate...?

I have noted these before... Unless you want to buy a motherboard combo, these are about the best deal.

With the inevitable cryptocoin mining crash beginning to take hold (coin values are down to a third of their mid-December peak), a few graphics cards are actually in stock at your favorite e-tailers. The generous folks at Newegg have recently dropped their asking price for the miners' favorite Radeon RX Vega 56 down to just 171% of MSRP instead of the 300% of MSRP that they were demanding a few months ago. Miners are starting to dump their used cards on e-Bay for 110% to 150% of MSRP.

Hang on, gamers, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

The price drop is because there's tangible evidence that vastly superior Etherium ASICs are releasing soon.

There's still Monaro for miners to waste GPU resources and electricity on, but Etherium miners are the lion's share of the Crypto-mining market right now.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

With the inevitable cryptocoin mining crash beginning to take hold (coin values are down to a third of their mid-December peak), a few graphics cards are actually in stock at your favorite e-tailers. The generous folks at Newegg have recently dropped their asking price for the miners' favorite Radeon RX Vega 56 down to just 171% of MSRP instead of the 300% of MSRP that they were demanding a few months ago. Miners are starting to dump their used cards on e-Bay for 110% to 150% of MSRP.

Hang on, gamers, there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

There will be a day when the market is absolutely flooded and these things will be cheap as dirt. I hope now that day is in sight and everyone that's in the market is wise enough to hold out. Don't buy at the STILL inflated prices just because they've started to come down.

Chrispy_ wrote:

The price drop is because there's tangible evidence that vastly superior Etherium ASICs are releasing soon.

There's still Monaro for miners to waste GPU resources and electricity on, but Etherium miners are the lion's share of the Crypto-mining market right now.

And people said that it couldn't be done... It was specifically designed not to allow you to an asic to mine etherium...

I'm worried about the long-term damage from this mining thing. It wasn't that long ago that the entry to a half way decent gaming card was well over $300. But those days $500+ CPU's were not uncommon. But it may have reset the market's expectation. Same with RAM. Perception of value is powerful.