How can components's lifetime be shortened by thermal conditions or by wrong usages?

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Jun 23, 2013
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Hello, i was wondering how can thermal conditions and sudden power loss reduce the lifetime of a chip/board circuit? Lastly after playing demanding games my GPU's temps go above 60s (sometimes reaches 67ºc) and when i quit the game i inmediatey turn off the pc and i can feel the heat around the case. Am i damaging the GPUs by doing this? I was a bit worried about that. Regards
 

aigomorla

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Less heat means less load on the physical components.
Also means it works more efficiently.

Sudden powerloss can lead to spikes, or can cause damage from something needing power to park itself.

It has to do with how AC power is delivered to the PSU, and how the PSU takes the AC power and converts it to DC power which is then fed to your PC.

And depending on GPU, they have heat tollerances of up to 90C... almost boiling temp for water... Most GPU's also have a thermal throttle / shutdown, which will force your PC to shut down incase GPU is overheating... or you will artifact really bad showing that your GPU has throttled. Sometimes this can lead to GPU damage as the solder points / pins / pcb will be damaged from the excess heat.

when you say imediately shutdown do you mean you pull the plug off the wall? or you undergo windows shutdown? or you hold the power button for 3 seconds?
 
Jun 23, 2013
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Less heat means less load on the physical components.
Also means it works more efficiently.

Sudden powerloss can lead to spikes, or can cause damage from something needing power to park itself.

It has to do with how AC power is delivered to the PSU, and how the PSU takes the AC power and converts it to DC power which is then fed to your PC.

And depending on GPU, they have heat tollerances of up to 90C... almost boiling temp for water... Most GPU's also have a thermal throttle / shutdown, which will force your PC to shut down incase GPU is overheating... or you will artifact really bad showing that your GPU has throttled. Sometimes this can lead to GPU damage as the solder points / pins / pcb will be damaged from the excess heat.

when you say imediately shutdown do you mean you pull the plug off the wall? or you undergo windows shutdown? or you hold the power button for 3 seconds?

Thanks for the info ! I quit the game and inmediately click on turn off in Windows Start Menu
 

Deders

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67c in nothing to worry about on a GPU, whether it's AMD or Nvidia.

If you have an older AMD CPU, like an Athlon or a Phenom then 67 is too high but temperature readings can be inaccurate and AMD's CPU temperatures are best read from the socket probe instead of the CPU probe.
 

CRCSUX

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What card is it? I had my card @ 105 last night trying out bf3 (4890) ran nice tho.
 

Murloc

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67°C is pretty low for a GPU. I can reach 80°C when I'm playing.

My fan curve goes to 100% at 90°C and it never goes that fast so I assume it never goes much over 80°C.
 

SecurityTheatre

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Hello, i was wondering how can thermal conditions and sudden power loss reduce the lifetime of a chip/board circuit? Lastly after playing demanding games my GPU's temps go above 60s (sometimes reaches 67ºc) and when i quit the game i inmediatey turn off the pc and i can feel the heat around the case. Am i damaging the GPUs by doing this? I was a bit worried about that. Regards


I'm not exactly sure your question. Thermal failure of an IC can happen from overheating, which can result in either melting the package, or thermal expansion causing a separation between gate oxide and conductor.

Additionally, heat increases electron tunneling and slows semiconductor switching, resulting in lower stability and/or a lower tolerance for high clock speeds.

Finally, thermal stress can cause damage to components over the long term by repeatedly cycling the heat within the IC. This is a pretty minor thing, but constantly powering up and powering down a device can cause minor reductions in lifespan due to this.

However, 60-70c is no big deal in a modern GPU, as they are often rated much higher (maybe 90c).


Sudden power loss can lead to spikes in voltage in transformers, where the collapsing magnetic field feeds back into the coils and can make a several thousand volt spike. Decent electronics are well protected against this, but if protections have already failed, it certainly is possible to cause damage this way. In a modern computer, this is exceedingly unlikely.

In a very old all-analog television, I think this explains why the volume often spikes loudly at the moment the TV is switched off, as the excess voltage hits a number of areas in the circuitry.
 
Jun 23, 2013
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What card is it? I had my card @ 105 last night trying out bf3 (4890) ran nice tho.

2xEVGA GTX 760 ACX 4GB the first one barely goes above 65 and the second one touches 67, sometimes 70 depending the ambient temperature.
 
Jun 23, 2013
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I'm not exactly sure your question. Thermal failure of an IC can happen from overheating, which can result in either melting the package, or thermal expansion causing a separation between gate oxide and conductor.

Additionally, heat increases electron tunneling and slows semiconductor switching, resulting in lower stability and/or a lower tolerance for high clock speeds.

Finally, thermal stress can cause damage to components over the long term by repeatedly cycling the heat within the IC. This is a pretty minor thing, but constantly powering up and powering down a device can cause minor reductions in lifespan due to this.

However, 60-70c is no big deal in a modern GPU, as they are often rated much higher (maybe 90c).


Sudden power loss can lead to spikes in voltage in transformers, where the collapsing magnetic field feeds back into the coils and can make a several thousand volt spike. Decent electronics are well protected against this, but if protections have already failed, it certainly is possible to cause damage this way. In a modern computer, this is exceedingly unlikely.

In a very old all-analog television, I think this explains why the volume often spikes loudly at the moment the TV is switched off, as the excess voltage hits a number of areas in the circuitry.

Wow nice answer. Thats what i was looking for. That means turning on and off often can short the lifetime of a component. In that case is recomended to keep it running as long as possible ? I mean it would be healty for the hardware if they are running cool?
Sorry if i expressed wrong or wrote the wrong way the questions. Im still learning english
 

SecurityTheatre

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Wow nice answer. Thats what i was looking for. That means turning on and off often can short the lifetime of a component. In that case is recomended to keep it running as long as possible ? I mean it would be healty for the hardware if they are running cool?
Sorry if i expressed wrong or wrote the wrong way the questions. Im still learning english

There is some debate about whether the hot/cold cycle is worse for the hardware than constant heat (which also has wear effects). I think the conclusion is.... don't worry about it. Do what is practical or economical - choose for other reasons. The wear from heat is minor and not important.
 
Jun 23, 2013
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There is some debate about whether the hot/cold cycle is worse for the hardware than constant heat (which also has wear effects). I think the conclusion is.... don't worry about it. Do what is practical or economical - choose for other reasons. The wear from heat is minor and not important.

Thats what i wanted to hear.. "Dont worry about it" said by someone who seems to know about this. Thanks you all guys for your explanations and be patient with my doubts.
 

who?

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Sep 1, 2012
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I sometimes allow my computer some cool down time before I shut it off but if this was really a concern we would have heard about it long ago.
 

redyouch

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Aug 6, 2013
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Less heat and 'consistency' leads to a longer life for components.

Powering on/off/on/off/etc leads to spikes as previously suggested. Power outages lead to spikes. Generally, some components die (in a datacenter) after a power outage. Hence, UPS is the norm in enterprise conditions.

That would lead you to want one at home.
 

Ben90

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The question was what is the maximum safe temperature for 24/7:

Idontcare said:
Anything below TJmax is fine if you don't mind your CPU's expected lifetime to be "on the other side" of the 3yr warranty period. (meaning 3.1yrs or some such)

The QA engineering that goes into the process development itself is all geared towards ensuring this much just from a minimization of extenuating liabilities standpoint to Intel's books.

There is no single temperature threshold above which your cpu's lifetime suddenly diminishes. It is a continuous function that is dependent on an exponential of the operating temperature thanks to the physics that underlie the Arrhenius equation.

As a rule of thumb, for every 10C higher your operating temps the expected lifetime of your CPU is reduced by 50% (think of half-life). Whatever your expected cpu lifetime is if operating at 50C, call it X years, you can expect that lifetime to be cut in half if you operate your cpu at 60C, so X/2 years, and again cut in half once more if you operate it at 70C, so X/4 years, etc.

That may sound dire but understand the lifetime is engineered into the IC from the "top-down" in terms of the thermal specs. Meaning your thermal spec was set for your chip with the desire to minimize the number of in-field fails that would occur under warranty.

So making the assumption that your CPU has an expected lifespan equal to (really we should assume greater than as Intel would not be silly enough to make the mean of the distribution equal to their warranty period and then have to deal with the entire left-hand side of the distribution failing under warranty) the standard warranty period (3yrs) when operating at TJmax is a reasonable assumption. Then for every 10C below TJmax you operate the chip you should double the expected lifespan.

If TJmax is 90C and you operate at 80C then a very reasonable lower-estimate of your CPU's expected lifespan would be 6yrs (2 x 3yrs warranty period). If you operate at 70C then 2x2x3yrs = 12yrs expected lifespan.

What is the basis for my arguing this? At TI we required our process technology to be developed so as to enable the minimum lifetime requirement of 10yrs operating at max spec'ed operating voltage and max spec'ed operating temps in continuous 24/7 operation. It is SOP for the industry.

Now where you can really cook your goose (cpu) is over-volting and running hot. It doesn't take much to be operating your CPU in a voltage/temperature regime that in combination the two factors contribute to lowering the expected lifespan of your CPU to something <1yr.

Not too mention there is always a distribution to the lifespan and your particular chip could have some intrinsic weakness/flaw in it that puts its expected lifespan at a value below the mean of the distribution and by operating at elevated temps and volts it is destined to fail substantially sooner than the warranty period. (I killed my QX6700 in something like 18 months, never operated above TJmax or above Vccmax, but had lapped the IHS so no warranty replacement for me)
 
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