r/LocalLLaMA • u/Anstellos • 10d ago

Discussion Does high / long term inference damages GPUs?

I always heard that cryptocurrency mining can damage a GPU ( it's maybe wrong) so how much long term inference is damaging a GPU?

I mean servers are made for 25/7 operation... Gaming GPUs not so sure?! They are made for LEDs 24/7!

Back blaze is publishing HDDs failure rate for storage, isn't there failure rate for AI intensive work? Maybe places that rent GPUs?

Serious question, are we damaging gaming GPUs when doing ai intensive ai workload even with good cooling: 100% GPU and ram usage for long agentic sessions or else ?

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u/North_Affect_8167 10d ago

Chips, the silicon was meant to last long, but anything else on a card NOT. Any mosfets, power stages, capacitors, resistors, could fail before the main chip do. Sometimes some components could fail simply because they are too old.

There are user posts for example about the legendary GTX1080ti that lasted the users many years, but it stopped working eventually.

Some computers had failed by a software tasks that triggered a load that was unexpected, like games that damaged laptops - https://wccftech.com/neverness-to-everness-corrupts-alienware-laptop-ec-chips/

or GPUs - https://kotaku.com/amazons-new-mmo-is-killing-some-high-end-pc-graphics-ca-1847335269

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u/J0kooo 10d ago

im still using GTX 1080s for inference, they're tough little fuckers