Does anyone have any first hand experience with failures related to 24/7 crunching? Overclocked or stock?

I ask because a posting on another forum indicated failures from stress of crunching 24/7. There was no specific information given, so I don't really think that it was a valid statement.

Anyone?
____________
mike

Of course I got failures with overclocking, immediately after test-parcour (which should be run in any case before working on WUs. In my opinion this is not a matter of 24/7, but of stability and time you invest in testing and adjusting your clock rates and fans (not forget the case fans !).

Both GTX 260 I tested overclocking by Rivatuner in a excessive manner, afterwards I flashed the BIOS, included fan settings. If the cooling and temperature can be controlled, only different WUs (for example in folding@home with upcoming the "big" WUs) can compromise your OC-settings. Hardware issues can never be excluded if you overclock or not. No one can guarantee a 24/7-operating. It´s risky, whatever you do in crunching business, especially in beta projects.

My new 9800GX2 runs stock at first time, because I have no experience with that monster, it was applied directly to GPUgrid, but cooling seems to be fine. [I changed GTX 260 versus 9800GX2 during the term of one WU, it´s working. ]

Find your best settings (stock/ocerclocked with fixed fan) and reduce the clock a bit to get some tolerance. In my opinion don´t count on automatic fan-control by driver settings, I would fix the fan speed in any event you think about 24/7, just to control temperature or to prevent your fans from damage by periodical running up and down.

Good luck.

Thanks for the response, I guess I should had worded my query differently.

I am interested in complete failure of the video card from crunching.
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mike

You mean irreparable blackout ? Or temporary disfunction ? Just crunching (shader usage), or up to collapse of the 2D-function ?

Heard about some cases in the folding-forum. See
http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=49
http://foldingforum.org/viewforum.php?f=38

Ruin of the card to the point of being unusable.

There are those that contend 24/7 crunching will destroy a video card.
____________
mike

The trouble is the lack of context.

I have run computers 24/7 for years with no problems. There is a group that also thinks that when you run computers you must run them up to the edge of stable performance. I have long taken the stance that in the case of over-clocking that it is not a good thing for scientific computing. That does not mean that I think that those that do over-clocking are evil ...

All that being said. It is certainly possible that if you take the computing equipment to the edge and are not that skilled in the maintenance of machines tweaked to this performance level that you can experience machine failures due to heat (primarily), or by voltage (because of mis-adjustment(s)) ...

And some cases are not always configured to allow the heat to be removed when you add several, or even one, high performance GPUs then run them full speed for 24/7 ...

Oh, well, just my thoughts ...
____________

The trouble is the lack of context.

I have run computers 24/7 for years with no problems. There is a group that also thinks that when you run computers you must run them up to the edge of stable performance. I have long taken the stance that in the case of over-clocking that it is not a good thing for scientific computing. That does not mean that I think that those that do over-clocking are evil ...

All that being said. It is certainly possible that if you take the computing equipment to the edge and are not that skilled in the maintenance of machines tweaked to this performance level that you can experience machine failures due to heat (primarily), or by voltage (because of mis-adjustment(s)) ...

And some cases are not always configured to allow the heat to be removed when you add several, or even one, high performance GPUs then run them full speed for 24/7 ...

Oh, well, just my thoughts ...

If it helps, I have several cards here that have run 24/7 on GPUGrid since July last year with no failures.

I have also never lost a CPU, ram or hard drive due to 24/7 crunching. I damaged a mobo some years ago, but that was my stupidity coupled with a live psu and a screwdriver.

Your mileage may vary.
____________

Can I assume that you have no failures to discuss?

If it helps, I have several cards here that have run 24/7 on GPUGrid since July last year with no failures.

I have also never lost a CPU, ram or hard drive due to 24/7 crunching. I damaged a mobo some years ago, but that was my stupidity coupled with a live psu and a screwdriver.

Your mileage may vary.

Can I assume that you have no failures to discuss?

No I do not. Do you?

What I was saying is that some report failures and blame GPU Grid, BOINC, etc. when the problem is that because these programs run the system at full speed for long periods of time which will, in fact, stress the system upon which they are run.

If there is a problem, or a weakness in the system, the use of a program such as BOINC is going to probably push the system over the brink ... is that the fault of BOINC? Not really ...

Just like race cars lose engines through explosions and other catastrophic events because they are pushed to the edge, any minor flaw or event will cause failure, so it is with BOINC ...

Good explanation ...

And since I could not figure out what you are trying to say I cannot come to the rescue with an appropriate saying ... your note one.

There is one other cause of failure that you did not mention and that is "latent defects". That is a defect on the chip that is there, but not significant to cause immediate failure of the component. The US Military used to test chips to prove that they met specifications ... then they would get a part number in the 5400 series... the same logic element manufactured to commercial specification would be labeled with a 7400 part number ... and the testing was usually the only difference ... the testing to qualify the part ...

The problem was the testing ran the part up to its limits ... and the stress almost always caused the beginning of a defect that would grow over time ... so paradoxically, the mil-spec parts were less reliable than the commercial equivalents ... I had a commander hit the roof once when he asked me how we were repairing a test bench ... and I told him we were putting in parts I bought at radio shack before deployment ... when he ordered me to stop, I told him I could do that and the tester would be off-line for the rest of the deployment while we shipped the card back to the states, or we could repair the tester as we had on other cards earlier in the cruise ... and never had a failure of the "less qualified" parts ...

When a new airplane comes off the assembly line the test pilots fly the beast and confirm the calculated "flight envelop" before regular pilots fly the darn thing ... before we had computers that allowed simulations and calculations of the flight envelops, many times they were guestimates and these were only confirmed in early flights with some attrition of aircraft and pilots ... the P38 had a an interesting defect where in a steep dive parts of the control surfaces were locked into position by the air moving across the surfaces ... thus the dive ended with the aircraft and pilot pointing out of the dirt ... a minor hidden, latent, defect ... now called shock compressibility (or only compressibility) and was solved with dive brakes and the movement of one of the surfaces up a few inches. (See Richard Bong as the USA's highest scoring ace, P38 Lightning and for contrast Erich Alfred "Bubi" Hartmann whose record is not likely to be equaled soon ...)

I only give these examples as a contrast in that they may be easier to understand ...

But, I agree with ETA that the "problem" with OC is not directly the speed, it is the heat ...

The quibble section ... :)

The highest failure rate components are those that have mechanical actuation, fans (also because they are made cheaply to keep the cost down, but that means their life is expected to be short), and disk drives (CD/DVD too). ALL OTHER THINGS BEING EQUAL ...

Failures are most common on cold starts because of the effect of "inrush" currents (the article discuss this only in some contexts, but the problem is true for all electrical devices, inside the chips we have transistors, capacitors, and resistors ...)

Which is one of the reasons some of us like to leave our PCs on at all times ... :)

The age problem is the balance between "infant Mortality" and natural death of the devices at their normal life time as shown by the "Bathtub Curve" , which in our context is relevant as the running components hot causes the end of life portion of the curve to be pulled to the left ... See Thermal management of electronic devices and systems (for more google "electronic failure heat")

For those REALLY dedicated, Google "gamma ray electronics failure" though most articles discuss high-altitude events where this is a serious problem it is little known that most of the packaging material for chips emits radioactivity, soft gamma and beta that all can impinge on the chips causing a "soft event" but in the presence of a stressed part can be the camel that broke the straws back ...

Oh, and my mind is a very cluttered attic ... and this is as focused as I get ...
____________

Thanks ETA ... that was very interesting.
____________

Hi Paul,

I actually meant to include the latent defects into "2. Catastrophic failures" without actually mentioning them. Your explanation is much better than "some just fail at some point due to some reason".

And an interesting note about transient errors caused by radiation: Intel uses a "hardened" design and I guess all other major players too. I don't know how they do it, but single bit errors due to radiation should not make the chips fail.

Regarding note (1): it means spinning something negative into something positive. Still I have no idea which English saying I'm looking for..

And dataman, thanks for the flowers :)

MrS

...life usually hands me onions and I am not sure that learning how to cry really makes it as an aphorism ... but that is just me ...

...life usually hands me onions and I am not sure that learning how to cry really makes it as an aphorism ... but that is just me ...

Hopefully, at least sometimes they are sweet Vidalia onions. :)

And thanks to both you and MrS for the excellent discussions on this topic. Gives me something to think about with my 9600GSO (tends to run constantly in the low 70's celsius)...

one main thing is to watch out on how hot it gets. that can kill a system by overheating the parts. but really on this topic. no it wont happen.



but their is a very very very small chance it could happen. like 1 in a billion

Actually, number 2 might be more of a problem than you might think. The GT200 is a very hardy chip and can take some serious heat. However, I'll be receiving my THIRD GTX 260 (192) tomorrow if UPS cooperates. Two have failed me so far under warranty.

The first failure was unexplainable. It failed while I was away at work. The second, however, I caught. The fan on the video card stopped. Completely. 0 rpm. I noticed artifacts in Crysis and closed out the game. The GPU was at 115 deg C and climbing. I monitor all system temps via SpeedFan. When I discovered the video card fan wasn't spinning, I immediately shut the system down. I let it sit for an hour, then restarted it. The fan spun up properly and everything worked, but the video card failed and refused to POST 2 days later.

I now use SpeedFan's event monitor to automatically monitor temps and shut the system should any of them go higher than what I deem allowable, hopefully this will prevent any future RMA requests. It's not difficult to set up.

Point is, if you're running your system under high loads for a sustained period of time as you do with BOINC or FAH, you really need to keep a close eye on things as much as possible. Automated is best IMHO. If my system had shut down in the middle of my Crysis session I would've been annoyed, but at least my video card wouldn't have cooked itself. I leave my system unattended so often (sleep and work), that it just makes sense to have something there in case something goes awry while I'm away.

Jeremy

Heat is a common problem for the lifespan of any part, and failures are not as many people think selden or rare but they actually are common.
I have had such an problem with a gigabyte mainboard which i never got support on, the problem with most problems are related to overheating one or more parts.
The board i have is cooled by those fanless blocks but what for instance happened with this board is that the manufactor did not construct this coolblock at the right way, causing the northbridge chip case to meld.
The coolblock only had partial contact with the chip case, but nobody can /will check these parts untill failures appear.
I can show you pictures of this if asked, what most people don't know is that many parts on a mainbord are only cooled by airflow in the case or are not even cooled at all.
Hence super high temps on these parts some actually become 128 C or hotter i remember a guys which made picture with a thermal camera showing the heat spots on most mainly mainboards showing very high temps.
Another discussion is about harddrives and their temps, we think the lower the better but i have read documents from google that it actually seems to be more the moderate temps (between 45 and 65) where they get better and life longer. I also found out myself when i still worked as IT person on medium/large companies that spinning up a drive frequently does more damage to them then letting them run 24/7. Ofcourse we talk about enterprise drives here and not everybody wants to run his pc 24/7. But i allways tell people to leave the machine on when they know they need it again i a few hours.

Anyway we can go on forever on this topic and i have read hundreds of reports and tests made by friends working with the same huge systems.
I general a computer can allways fail especially when operated outside their parameters like temperature/frequency and/or voltage.
This can occur by intend ( OC, test, benchmark ) or by failure of parts.
(breakdown of fan, cooling system)
And ofcourse nowadays manufactors make the parts not to last long but last the expected lifespan they want.

Another discussion is about harddrives and their temps, we think the lower the better but i have read documents from google that it actually seems to be more the moderate temps (between 45 and 65) where they get better and life longer. I also found out myself when i still worked as IT person on medium/large companies that spinning up a drive frequently does more damage to them then letting them run 24/7.

Yes and is nice to see such very handy info, because we allways am concerned about our hardware. In fact sometimes a little bit too much :)

Two of my GTX280 died crunching 24/7 (Gpugrid/Folding/SETI) with a 16% OC (only clock and shaders, not memory). They last aprox. two month each. Since then, I do not OC my GPUs and only crunch about 10 hours/day

I lost an ATI HD4850x2 at stock due to excessive temperatures.

Since bought an AC unit for the room which cost less than the card.
____________

Well you said it right excessive temps are at longer periods a disaster some cards need better cooling then provided by manufactors.
So to be honest if i buy a card i allways try to find one which blows the air out of the case.
And I allways look at the cooling on it and the previews if the card is cooler then its competition
Or if i can find a better solution to cool it like watercooling or a better heatsink.
Like my previous card which is a nvdia 6600 Gt which is a notorious hothead (up to 160 C) i tweaked it with a watercooler and got it at stressed at 68 C and believe me not many are able to get it that low.
So in both your cases it probably run too long at full power without enough air(cooling) flow, but to be honest its almost a science on itself to get optimum airflow in your machine.
Nevertheless i allways make sure mine does and ofcourse allways have huge pc cases, even my htpc has the biggest case i could find and is full of 12" cooling fans :D
And all fan slots have the best fans available ( sounding like a little airplane ;)) meaning the best airflow with the least of noise.
My main case tops it with a radial fan blowing on my mainboard in my stacker case on top i have my watercooling fans 3 x 12" then i have 2x12" on the backside blowing out, on the front another 2x12" fans blowing on to the 4 drives inwards.
Then ofcourse the single fan on the mainboard chipset and the 2 fans from my power supply and my VC fan so in all enough to make some people crazy ;) (woman)

The card which is a real hothead was running at temps exceeding 110 C
not F with the normal fan from the manufactor, when just gaming .. hell i must not think for that card doing a dc project.
To your information its not being used but still runs fine even after 5 years of use.
And no the manufactor send me a answer on my question about the card running at 110 c when i was gaming that it could have much higher temps without really failing, if they lied about the temps then ofcourse i can't help that.
If they made up a story to get rid of me sending emails about these temps then i can't help it.
And yes your partially right about drive temps, but then again i was not talking about a 10k or 15k drive but a plain 7k drive.
Read the google documents about drive temps in large clusters and the fail rates, Its a proven fact and they run also plain sata 7.2k drives.
Since the high speed drives fail much faster, google needs storage not faster thats why they run sata/sas instead of iscsi or other solutions.
My 2 seagate boot drives am running constantly at 65 C since i bought them about 2 years ago never been cooler. And yes there is a huge fan blowing cold air on them which doesn't cool them down much.
The other drives are samsungs which run much cooler (37 C) if not together with the seagates. But since they share the same drive case they are at 43 now.
Hence the samsungs help to cool the seagates.

@ JockMacMad TSBT

Are you aware that using AC in the same room as your crunching machines may mean that you are paying several times over for that power? I'm not entirely sure about my figures, but basically, if you're dumping, say 100W in an AC'ed room, then I believe the AC unit will require a significant fraction of this to remove the heat (if the heat is being moved to a hotter place as is usual).

Perhaps someone else can provide numbers - I live in the UK where we sadly have no need for AC!

Well lol yea i have been reading it several times also.
Since in my old job i had a cluster of 2100 drives devided over many cabinets running for the huge databases we had, those scsi drives where also kept at temps near 15 C.
In fact i have also run some tests for the company on workstations also to see what was the best temperature to maintain them at, but yes those are all enterprise drives which are sturdier then normal desktop drives.
And i must add the newer drives seem to be much weaker then the older drives, probably related to the much finer surface of the platters.
Except the new glass platters which seems to be able to operate with higher temps.

Sorry ET after i started up the old beast i saw that i misinformed about the old card its a 6800 GT nvidia from Gigabyte
The 6600 came out a bit later.

Does anyone have any first hand experience with failures related to 24/7 crunching? Overclocked or stock?

I ask because a posting on another forum indicated failures from stress of crunching 24/7. There was no specific information given, so I don't really think that it was a valid statement.

Anyone?

So far, I've had 1 GTX260 out of 10 fail after 4 months of crunching. The fan bearings were totally wore out. It took 5 weeks to get it's replacement.As allways my stuff runs stock speeds.
____________

I use XFX brand cards since they give a lifetime warranty if you register them. If mine burns out, I just do an replacement with them, though I've yet to have one die anyway. Keeping any video card cool is the other major factor. Just like your CPU, the cooler you keep your GPU, the less likely you are to see failures or errors.

Looks like my 9600 gt is showing sings of break down as well
I get random errors and saw some weird pixels when booting
I even tried folding@home which run for a couple of units and non finished all where errored out.
So i guess vc die from dpc projects

So i guess vc die from dpc projects

lution the manufacturers would have to offer special 24/7-versions of their cards: slightly lower clocks, slightly lower voltages, maybe a better cooling solution and the fan setting biased towards cooling rather than noise. Such cards could be used for 24/7 crunching.. but who would buy them? More expensive, slower and likely louder!

Well get to work then.

Humans have a protein called telomerase that repairs such damage when it occurs in DNA, but Computers don’t have an equivalent just yet.
We might all live for much longer if the Telomerase gene was not stuck at the end of a Chromosome (which shrinks with age)! Cancers would probably not be such the problem either. It’s such a pity nobody is studying this Cure for All Cancers Solution.

...Without Telomerase DNA stays damaged, so there is a greater risk of Cancer and other illnesses.

Just because someone is researching something does not mean they are looking for a cure. They might just be looking!

Anyway back to the topic – Video Card Longevity

It’s a good idea to use a fine mesh fan filter...But they don’t just keep the dust off your components. I looked at a system about 2 years ago and was told it made a loud pop/bang noise and stopped suddenly. There was a bluebottle fly lying at the bottom of the case.

Hear, Hear.

It's the Cholestorol arguement.

Your quack will tell you your cholestoral is to high and give you drugs to reduce it (Statins) lipitor etc.

What your quack never tells you is that most (up to 90%) of the Cholestorol in your body is MADE by your own Liver. From that you could assume your Liver is trying to kill you by making an excessive amount of Cholestorol. Actually Cholestorol is needed by every cell in your body for life and if your Liver is making more of it, it's doing it for a reason.

Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries) is caused by plaques made of Cholestorol (soft) and Calcium (hard) so drugs companies came up with 'lets make a drug which reduces the Livers' ability to produce this terrible substance' and they came up with Statins (Billions of $$$ are spent on Statins every year) despite the fact that Lipitor is known to cause memory loss and is in the dock for causing Cancers.

So why does your Liver begin producing excessive Cholestorol? To repair you, that's why. Your Arteries get damaged in use and your body would normally repair them using substances like Collagene, however, if you lack sufficient quantities of Collagene your body uses...YES Cholestorol which acts like a sticking plaster which the body places over the damaged area in your arteries. Your Liver is NOT trying to kill you it's trying to save your LIFE.
____________
Radio Caroline, the world's most famous offshore pirate radio station.
Great music since April 1964. Support Radio Caroline Team -
Radio Caroline

Both these research teams took the inverted smart approach. If something is essential for life, they want to kill it.

...publish in a few obscure journals...

Unfortunately this sort of research undermines science and interferes with the work of descent scientist that are really trying to do something positive.

A question to you
I have a inprogress WU 19-KASHIF_HIVPR_dim_ba4-28-100-RND7953_0 running but not in my tasks. How do i get rid of it ?
It is putting strain on my 295 to the extent that I have had to go back to 1 WU at a time. tempertures have going over 65C
Thanks
Ross
____________

Hi Ross

actually the WU you mentioned is in your list, but way down.

In your task list select the "Show: in progress" instead of "Show: all", just above the top row, and you will see it.

kind regards

Alain

Edit - and BTW 65 C is by now means (too) hot, but well within limits. My GTX260 runs at 77 C, which is still cool.

Hi
that WU is not showing up in my tasks list . it and other were the cause of all the problems early this week . has July 30th expire date on it.
normaly I can crunch a WU in 7.5 hrs but now takes 9hrs.
As it does not show up in tasks how do I abort or kill it?
Thanks
Ross
my 295 freaks at over 73c smartdoctor alarm goes off new fan etc
using good airflow
Ross
____________

OK, let us try to get this right now.
Looking again in more detail at that WU, it indeed is cancelled and crunching it further serves no purpose and yields no credit.
So, are you saying that it is still on your machine?
In that case, select the WU in your BOINC task list and abort it. Not fun, I know, but part of the game I am afraid.

Hope this solves your issue now.

Kind regards

Alain.

Well Ladies and Gents,

To talk about card longevity I am adding my 2 cents. I have been using two systems to run gpugrid for about 2 years now. On one system 2x XFX 8800GT's in SLI. On the other 2x XFX GTX280's in SLI. While my 8800's have been rock solid since bought (other than a fan replacement but that's another pissy story about XFX), my 280's have been replace a total of three times, possibly a fourth coming. Thank the Lord they are XFX with double lifetime warranty but this is rediculous. The cards lasted a year before they had to be replaced the first time and about 6 for the second replacement. Makes me wonder if XFX sends out refurbished cards as replacements?

I only run Gpugrid on all my cards and they use automatic fans when they get hot, controlled by the driver. What I have noticed over the two years is that when the driver doesn't load properly on startup or goes corrupt the thermal solution does not function correctly and a few times I found my cards at 105 celcius. Again thank the Lord I was at the computer, but how many times have I not been and the system ran at 105.

I don't believe that I should have any issues with my 280's but I don't think that gpugrid is that taxing that it should be killing GPU's. XFX says that there might be power issues on my system that's killing cards but I have a PC P&C 1200 with all voltages right on spec and the cards were on an OCZ PSU the first time they died.

So this leaves me wondering. Should I stop Gpugrid to save GPU's or are they faulty GPU's or is it a faulty GPU design to start with and just get them replaced as they break?

Just my 2 cents.

In less than 1 years time I've RMA'ed 3 GTX 260's already and right now I'm looking at RMA'ing 5 more GTX 260's (4 BFG's & 1 EVGA) plus 1 possibly 2 GTX 295's. Oh and for good measure throw in a Sapphire 4850 X2 & Sapphire 4870 that are going to need to be RMA'ed.

From what I'm hearing about Sapphire that could be a nightmare trying to get them to RMA 1 Card let alone 2 Cards. BFG is good about it and already told me when I get ready to RMA the Cards to let them know & they would set it up. EVGA I haven't had any dealings with but I'll find out I guess.

Personally having this amount of Video Cards go all at once tells me their just not made to run 24/7 @ full load and your going to have trouble with some of them if you do.

You are in fact correct. I had to look at my records. My bad!

However this new information compounds my statement as it's only been 3/4's of a year and two sets of gpu's replaced.

I wonder if other people have has the same issue and as bad.

Cheers

I built the systems two years ago. That's why that sticks in my head.

You may wish to set the fan speed manually either with the Evga utility or Ntune in Windows or Nvclock-Gtk in Linux. This would cut down on the heat issues.

Looks like I'll be RMA'ing 5 GTX 260's with the Clock Down Bug either today or tomorrow, I have a GTX 295 that will do the same thing off and on but hasn't for a few days so I'll keep it for now and see if the Proposed Fix GDF mentioned later this month fixes it permanently or not. As long as it doesn't get any worse I can live with it for a few days more ... :)

Just so ATI doesn't feel left out I RMA'ed 2 of them yesterday, 1 4850 X2 & 1 4870, both were used at the MWay Project but quit working, the 4850 X2 in about a months time, the 4870 took about 6 month's before going bad.

After roughly 8 months of life my GTX280 card (EVGA) died. The good news is that I am in the 1 year warranty, the bad news is I missed the fine print. If you have EVGA cards you have to register them ON THEIR SITE to get long term warranty conversion (90 days from purchase, save receipt you also need that for an RMA).

Word to the wise ... you also need S/N and P/N off the card or box ... though if you got a rebate it is going to have to come off the card.

I suppose my only good take away is that with luck I will be in replacement mode if the other cards start to fail and are not covered ... of course, with next generation cards on the verge now it is also possible I can get replacement cards for a whole lot less than I spent on the originals if I just want to stay at current production levels (or near enough) ...

I've RMA'ed probably 10 GTX 200 Series Cards & 2 ATI 48xx Cards this year alone & haven't had a bit of a problem getting the Manufactures to back their Card & send me a Replacement ASAP ... Of course as Paul said you have to read the Fine Print and Register them as soon as you get them or you may be SOL & have to eat the Costs. Most of my GTX are BFG's which have a Lifetime Warranty so those Cards are good to go for a long time if I choose to continue to run them.

The ATI Cards only have a 1 year Warranty which is due to run out soon so I'll have to eat the costs there but with the new cards coming out I'll be ready to move up anyway ... :)

Most of my GTX are BFG's which have a Lifetime Warranty so those Cards are good to go for a long time if I choose to continue to run them.

I have 2 Leadtek Winfast GTX280's that died on 14 September '09, precisely after 6 months of crunching GPUGrid more or less 24/7 (less because my rigs are gaming rigs, so whenever me and my son were playing we would disable GPUGrid).

Cooling issues are out of the question, as my cases are Tt Xaser VI, with 3x120mm + 3x140mm case fans (soon to be 5x140mm + 1x120mm), plus another 120mm fan on the CPU cooler, and 1x135mm + 1x80mm in PSU (Gallaxy DXX 1000W). Not to mention A/C in every room where I have a PC.

Edit: forgot to mention, no OC. I've never OC'ed, I'm for rock solid stability. I prefer to buy components with high stock (factory) performance instead of low performance components to OC later.

Edit 2: I'm blaming crunching, specifically GPUGrid, because I sleep better knowing I have identified the culprit :))
____________
Semper ubi sub ubi.

I have 2 Leadtek Winfast GTX280's that died on 14 September '09, precisely after 6 months of crunching GPUGrid more or less 24/7 (less because my rigs are gaming rigs, so whenever me and my son were playing we would disable GPUGrid).

Cooling issues are out of the question, as my cases are Tt Xaser VI, with 3x120mm + 3x140mm case fans (soon to be 5x140mm + 1x120mm), plus another 120mm fan on the CPU cooler, and 1x135mm + 1x80mm in PSU (Gallaxy DXX 1000W). Not to mention A/C in every room where I have a PC.

Edit: forgot to mention, no OC. I've never OC'ed, I'm for rock solid stability. I prefer to buy components with high stock (factory) performance instead of low performance components to OC later.

Edit 2: I'm blaming crunching, specifically GPUGrid, because I sleep better knowing I have identified the culprit :))

could it be that the manufacturers cards don't pass the 24/7 full throttle test!!!!

bfg GTX260, still going like the energizer bunny.

could it be that the manufacturers cards don't pass the 24/7 full throttle test!!!!

Yeah, pretty sure that's actually the issue.

bfg GTX260, still going like the energizer bunny.

Hmmm, probably the reason I bought 3 BFG GTX285's a week ago :)))

Hi,
I'm using a Palit GTX260 Sonic 216SP graphics card.
Yeah I know, that is the one that is OC'ed by the manufacturer.
I know everyone says they are b###sh#t and not even worth buying.

I will NEVER OC anything in my computer myself. For a good lifetime of your computer, buy good equipment and UNDERclock it (or leave it on stock ratings).

Funny thing #1: The Nvidia VTune utility they had on disk keeps my gpu at ca. 65 °C, while being at 40-45 % speed of the two fans.
Funny thing #2: When manually setting the GPU's fan speed to 100%, I can cool down the GPU to 45°C under full GPUGRID load! On the downfall, it is loud as hell then.
Funny thing #3: Playing AION (my I-really-love-it-MMORPG) which uses a modified CryEngine1 as graphics engine, my GPU yawns and goes to bed while still giving me 60+ fps...

=Lupus=

i run stock settings for my FOC 216 260 from BFG...

70% fan with window closed = 63 C
70% fan with window open = 55 C.