Ask GN 67: Does Mining Hurt GPUs? Next-Gen GPU Launch?

By Steve Burke Published January 02, 2018 at 8:36 pm

Hardware

This episode of Ask GN is very likely part 1 of a two-parter. We had so many good questions from the previous round that we had to cut a few out for this one, but given the proximity of CES, we may film another prior to the show. For this one, we take several questions that relate to heat generation within a computer, particularly those focused on component failure and early death of components. GPU mining is, of course, a popular topic to do with component longevity, and so makes a lengthy appearance in this episode. We also relate the information to 3D rendering and animation/production work, as it's all really the same idea: Load a component at 100% for most (all?) of its life, then see how long it lasts.

The video is below, with timestamps following:

Timestamps

01:03 – “CES Coming Up – We Need Requests!”

02:23 - Klust413: “What's your honest guess for the gaming versions of Volta release frame? Would late Q1 be likely?”

06:21 - sergio Gonzalez: “the minning of cryptocurrenci can damage the pc parts if you work in the same pc and mining ?”

14:09 – honeyforce: “@Steve Burke Is it possible to irreparably 'fry' a system through heat by gross user error? like not using TIM, or forgetting to plug in a pump/fan then gaming. I'm pretty sure there are some built in protections to bios & cpu, but can't recall hearing a trustworthy answer. Not sure @ differences b/t short/long term exposure. Pretty sure there are avg consumers out here who throttle for months before realizing they need to clean a heat sink etc. and their system goes back to normal”

18:40 – Titan Xm Diagnostic video commentary on manufacturing tolerances

22:04 - megascrapper2: “What will happen if you use a modern desktop CPU without any heatsink? Will it thermal throttle aggressively or will it simply refuse to turn on because there is no cooler detected?”

23:29 - Judas Iscariot: “It's kind of ridiculous that they're launching a "new" product called "Ryzen+" (or whatever) that's effectively the same product but fixing the platform issues (memory compatibility, better clocks, etc) of their original Ryzen line.”

27:21 – David: “This might be a slightly off topic question, but how does your usual upload look? I have the impression that a lot of "smaller" youtubers (looking towards you, Science studio etc., nothing huge like Jay or Linus) spend some time in the comment section liking and responding to comments after the upload. is that true?”

28:40 - Ryan Frick: “Are number of available PCI-E lanes a limitation of the CPU or the Motherboard? Bitwit and Paul made a comment in passing about the ryzen 400 series chipsets possibly supporting more PCI-E lanes, but I thought ryzen cpu's were limited (had less available) compared to intel processors. IIRC I thought the intention behind ryzen having less lanes available was in part due to actual amount used by the target demographic and to decrease cost.”

Host: Steve Burke

Video: Andrew Coleman

Ask GN

Steve Burke

Steve started GamersNexus back when it was just a cool name, and now it's grown into an expansive website with an overwhelming amount of features. He recalls his first difficult decision with GN's direction: "I didn't know whether or not I wanted 'Gamers' to have a possessive apostrophe -- I mean, grammatically it should, but I didn't like it in the name. It was ugly. I also had people who were typing apostrophes into the address bar - sigh. It made sense to just leave it as 'Gamers.'"

First world problems, Steve. First world problems.