In this article we will talk about mining on video cards and about how mining affects the components of your computer... We are regularly asked the question: "Can mining damage or shorten the life of a video card?"
Can mining damage your graphics card?
Yes and no. It depends on how you tune and optimize your graphics card. If you use the correct settings, you have nothing to worry about!
Like any electrical component, the graphics card consumes energy during operation, and most of this energy is converted into heat. Under load (games, rendering, mining, etc.) these components get hotter than usual. This heat must be dissipated from the hot core of the graphics card (and VRAM).
In some cases stable mining on video cards can be safer than games... When mining with a video card, the load is distributed evenly all the time, therefore, there are no jumps and sudden drops in temperature that can damage the video card. When playing games, there are load times, different structures and tables that load the video card in different ways and at different times. This causes the temperature of the graphics card to rise to 70 ° C or even 80 ° C and then drop back to 50 ° C.
When mining with the correct settings, the heat load on the video card should be distributed fairly evenly all the time. For example, a video card can run at 65 ° C all the time. You can read about optimal mining temperatures here.
How do I prevent damage or shortening the life of my graphics card?
The video card can be damaged during mining if it is operated at temperatures above 80 ° C or 90 ° C for an extended period of time. This will really shorten the lifespan of the video card.
But there is a simple and effective way to lower the temperature of your graphics card without sacrificing performance.
In case you missed physics in school ... Using a graphics card that draws 200W of power is almost the same as using a 200W heater.
This means that in order to reduce the heat dissipation of the video card, we must reduce the power consumption of the video card. Fortunately, there are many tools out there to help you do this. MSI Afterburner one of the most popular overclocking tools.
Just reduce power limit in MSI Afterburner up to about 70% - 80% and you will notice a drop in temperature. You can find other overclocking settings here.
Another important note is that the graphics card needs sufficient airflow. If you are a gamer and the video card is in the case of your computer, then make sure that the video card can "breathe". If the temperature is higher than 75 ° C and reducing the power consumption does not help, open the side panel and the temperature condition will improve.