[SOLVED] Some newbie questions on graphics cards

[TopHatterCT]

Hello all. Newbie here in the custom pc space. So I bought an entry-level card, the GT 1030 for some e-sports titles and light AAA games. I'd like to ask about my concern, which is I got impressed by the GT 1030 performing better than I expected that I kind of got greedy for more and overclocked it to try squeeze out more juice from it. It handled the oc values I dialed in pretty well, but my n0ob a** got too itchy up to my fingers and I ended up tinkering with MSI Afterburner anywhere from 2-4 times everyday for almost two weeks. So my concern now is: have I shaved off a lot of lifespan from my graphics card by playing around with MSI Afterburner that much for that long? I'm hoping not, since at the end I did settled in a very good oc and going by the state of the GPU market I want to keep it for as long as I can.

Another question I have is, will filling all the headers in my motherboard with fans slow down my graphics card? I think I heard about that somewhere, that GPUs powered solely by pcie slow down because of other components competing for power on the mobo, eh idk? Thank you for your responses in advance.

 

[Schlachtwolf]

Answer to all your questions is ....... no. You may have shaved 1 week off your cards life, so you only have around 9 years and 11.3 months life left instead of 10 years. It is a low powered GPU so heat etc will never be an issue in a half decent case with a fan.
Motherboards supply the PCIe lanes and mobo headers with different (12v, 5v, 3v etc) currents, using all the headers will not slow the GPU.

 

[TopHatterCT]

Thank you for your response. I must confess, it's an ASUS passively cooled variant, which in a YouTube video was demonstrated to hit thermal limit and throttle when overclocked. But I strapped on a 60mm fan on top of its bulky heatsink and hooked that directly to the psu to make it run full whack all the time, and it stays at the 60C vicinity, even after a few hours when fully loaded continuously. Here's hoping that it will further improve once I get a decent case and fans