← Back to context

Comment by Melatonic

19 hours ago

It's the opposite actually - most GPU used for mining are run at a consistent temp and load which is good for long term wear. Peaky loads where the GPU goes from cold to hot and back leads to more degradation because of changes in thermal expansion. This has been known for some time now.

10 comments

Melatonic

Reply
Yizahi  18 hours ago

That is commonly repeated idea, but it doesn't take into account countless token farms which are smaller than a datacenter. Basically anything from a single MB with 8 cards to a small shed with rigs, all of which tend to disregard common engineering practices and run hardware into a ground to maximize output until next police raid or difficulty bump. Plenty of photos in the internet of crappy rigs like that, and no one guarantees which GPU comes whom where.

Another commonly forgotten issue is that many electrical components are rated by hours of operation. And cheaper boards tend to have components with smaller tolerances. And that rated time is actually a graph, where hour decrease with higher temperature. There were instances of batches of cards failing due to failing MOSFETs for example.

  • Melatonic  16 hours ago

    While I'm sure there are small amateur setups done poorly that push cards to their limits this seems like a more rare and inefficient use. GPUS (even used) are expensive and running them at maximum would require large costs and time to be replacing them regularly. Not to mention the increased cost of cooling and power.

    Not sure I understand the police raid mentality - why are the police raiding amateur crypto mining setups ?

    I can totally see cards used by casual amateurs being very worn / used though - especially your example of single mobo miners who were likely also using the card for gaming and other tasks.

    I would imagine that anyone purposely running hardware into the ground would be running cheaper / more efficient ASICS vs expensive Nvidia GPUs since they are much easier and cheaper to replace. I would still be surprised however if most were not proritising temps and cooling

  • whaleofatw2022  17 hours ago

    Let's also not forget the set of miners that either overclock or dont really care about long term in how they set up thermals

    • belval  17 hours ago

      Miners usually don't overclock though. If anything underclocking is the best way to improve your ROI because it significantly reduces the power consumption while retaining most of the hashrate.

      3 replies →