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