How can I make my GPU last as long as possible?

[bacon4life]

I am not talking about pure gaming performance but the general life of the card. I have read a lot of stories online where people's cards just flat out die on them, and I really don't want that to happen to mine because I want to make it last as long as possible. It still maxes out all my games at 1440p getting at least 60 FPS.

Right now I have an Asus R9 290x that has an idle temp, of 35*C and a max temperature (when gaming) of 79*C. That is with the stock fan curve. Should I make the fan curve more aggressive to help combat the heat put out of this card?

Is there anything else I can do to help prolong the life of this card (again not in gaming horse power)

 

[JalYt_Justin]

79C is still fine gaming temp. To be honest, there's nothing that you can do to prolong the life of a card. If it's going to die, there's nothing you can do to stop it.

That being said, those horror stories of people's GPUs dying are pretty far and few between. The average card will live for 4-5+ years, just like most other system components. The chances of the GPU dying are pretty much equal to every other component. It's not something to worry about since it's not really something you can prevent anyway.

 

[Martell1977]

Just keep is clean and after a few years, if temps rise, change the thermal paste. Use compressed air to blow out dust, for the CPU and PSU as well.

I still have a Radeon 6870 running in an older desktop with no issues. Just take care of it and it will last as long as it's build quality will allow.

 

[kajjot]

Heat and dust are your only concerns. I wouldn't worry too much but make sure PC is well ventilated and dust doesn't build up on GPU heat-sink.

 

[Cioby]

Try changing your air flow. I changed my coolers on the case with the old 980ti and I gained like 5-10 degrees while gaming. And it was honestly not that logical to change the coolers, it seemed okay the way I had them but just switch them from in to out in every possible way and see which gives you the best temperatures on both the GPU and CPU. I did the same thing with my new case, at one point I got like -15 on my CPU but the GPU got hot as hell, tinkered around a bit, got another big Noctua fan and they both run fairly nice. 79 is not that much but it will get hotter with time and with summer.

 

[JoeMomma]

Try changing your air flow. And it was honestly not that logical to change the coolers, it seemed okay the way I had them but just switch them from in to out in every possible way and see which gives you the best temperatures on both the GPU and CPU.

Good point!

I am an engineer and my old PC GPU was overheating. I did the cleaning and thermal paste route but it wasn't good enough. I 'designed' a new cooling layout that I thought would work, but didn't. Then I tried doing what I call 'experiments' at random, really wacky things that made no sense.

Eventually one of my experiments worked. I screwed an extra 90mm fan onto the GPU shroud so the new fan blew into the GPU fan. I called it my Twin-Turbo cooler.

 

[Cioby]

I'm a software engineer, does that count? actually my previous case had a cooler located exactly onto the GPU and blew air on it, when I changed case since this one I had to cut down to make room for my huge new GPU, I lost that nice cooling solution but eventually it worked out with new fan directions.

If this doesn't work, his GPU might have some issues since it goes so high compared to the low idle temp

 

[TJ Hooker]

The GPU will likely be obsolete before it breaks. You're more like to experience a fan failure, capacitor failure, etc than for the actual GPU to die, unless you're really abusing it. Not much you can do about fan failures (basically just luck and how fast they're spinning for how long). Capacitors would probably benefit from lower temps, but GPU temps and capacitor temps aren't necessarily linked.

As said above, keeping things cool/dust free can never hurt.