GPU overvolt only for benchmarks: safe or no go?

[Dunkan77]

Hello,
I have read quite a few pages and articles on overclocking and overvolting a GPU and most of them report that they ran ran overvolted hardware for years without any problems or sudden death.
Before you start pelting me with "THIS IS STUPID AND VERY DANGEROUS" kind of comments, I am aware that there always are risks and it has never been and never will be TOTALLY safe as even if your card and all of its components run at, say 30 deg. C even under heavy OC and OV, it uses up electrical circuits so diminishes hardware lifespan more quickly.
But I know that hardware can last for decades: I have had a GPU for 12 years and it still runs fine but it has never been overclocked although it has seen extreme temps because of bad airflow (90 deg. C or more) when gaming even on less demanding ones.
So here is my question: can I overvolt my GPU just for benchmarks and to see just how much I can push it. I WILL NOT run it like that all the time, it's just once in the card's life to see how well I did in the silicon lottery. I have an EVGA GTX 970 SC with ACX 2.0
Please do not go mental on this thred as I have seen people literally attacking me for asking questions.
Thank you for a quick answer

 

[madmatt30]

You would be wasting your time overvolting any 970 IMO.
The 970 has a locked tdp limit - that evga maxes out at 196w from what Ive seen - pushing extra voltage makes you hit that limit sooner & when it does it will throttle the core clocks.
By all accounts max the power limit slider in afterburner & oc the core & memory but pushing extra voltage is quite simply a waste of time.

 

[Dunkan77]

You would be wasting your time overvolting any 970 IMO.
The 970 has a locked tdp limit - that evga maxes out at 196w from what Ive seen - pushing extra voltage makes you hit that limit sooner & when it does it will throttle the core clocks.
By all accounts max the power limit slider in afterburner & oc the core & memory but pushing extra voltage is quite simply a waste of time.

I have tried putting the power slider all the way to 110% and I haven't observed throttling. It has been running like that for 3 months and I have just recently dialled it back to 103% because I calculated the avg. power use and it was 102.4%. I started to see on the graph a slight throttling under heavy load and the power usage going through my limit as this area in the game required more GPU power. I didn't take into account the spikes in power when calculating the avg. so this might be the cause for the 10-15 MHz thottling. It's not the temperature as it has never exceeded 73 C