How to make a card last..

[zCypher]

I still have an old Ti4200, the fan stopped working on it and the card kept working anyway. I've never had a video card fail on me. It has to be related to your power outages. Get a better quality power supply and a good battery backup to rule that out. The savings in avoiding video card failure should pay for the psu and battery backup.

 

[DarkRogue]

You don't really need a massive PSU, and getting one that's far too overpowered may even hurt you from an efficiency standpoint.

If you're only going to use 1 GPU, a good quality 500~600W unit will be more than enough, even with overclocked quad cores. You don't really need to look into 800W+ units until you start doing SLI or Crossfire with multiple GPU's. The biggest thing here is good quality. I'm not sure what manufacturers are available in Europe, but a few of the better brands here in the US should have units available there as well.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Rules of thumb i have followed since 2006 that hasn't yielded me one bad card,minus a lousy asus direct cu2 560ti that was a flake....

Keep my gpu under 70cel most people like it under 80cel
Buy decent or quality power supplies with plenty of 12v amps avoid no name or unknown brands
no extreme ocing,if its fast enough for you,leave it at stock or with a minor oc unless you got a disposable income and can afford a new one at will
have a case with excellent airflow,my favorite being the antec 900,currently using the 300 and for me its all about function,not fashion

 

[Screech]

positive pressure

http://www.silverstonetek.com/techtalk_cont.php?tid=wh_positive&area=usa

can help keep the dust away, but there is a lot of luck of the draw in this sort of stuff.

 

[NoSoup4You]

I've never had a component die on me, with only one exception - an Enermax 600W Noisetaker II power supply started making loud buzzing noises about 18 months ago. I don't know if it was dying but I couldn't risk keeping it considering how potentially dangerous a balky psu can be to your other components.

I follow simply rules - I always buy quality power supplies and I always use a battery backup for clean, consistent power.

I have a Corsair 550W at the moment, which replaced the old Enermax. Some might argue it's too weak for my system but I've never been a fan of the "OMG I need 1200W for my single gpu setup" mindset. I have used APC battery backups for the last, I don't know... close to ten years. Before that, I only had typical "Dell" pc's which I didn't really use for gaming beyond simple stuff like Age of Empires. Ever since I got serious about building gaming pc's, I have never and would never run a pc without a battery backup.

And for what it's worth, a buddy of mine had an Antec 500W burn out on him and in the process fried every single component in his case. I'm talking cpu, motherboard, RAM, Video card, hard drives, even the DVD drives. Everything completely fried. And he had a C2D, 9600GT, 4GB's RAM...etc. This was a couple years ago and all that equipment was only about a year old at the time. Lots of $$$...

 

[T_Yamamoto]

You don't really need a massive PSU, and getting one that's far too overpowered may even hurt you from an efficiency standpoint.

If you're only going to use 1 GPU, a good quality 500~600W unit will be more than enough, even with overclocked quad cores. You don't really need to look into 800W+ units until you start doing SLI or Crossfire with multiple GPU's. The biggest thing here is good quality. I'm not sure what manufacturers are available in Europe, but a few of the better brands here in the US should have units available there as well.

:thumbsup::thumbsup:

positive pressure

http://www.silverstonetek.com/techtalk_cont.php?tid=wh_positive&area=usa

can help keep the dust away, but there is a lot of luck of the draw in this sort of stuff.

:thumbsup:

 

[Paul98]

I would guess it's the power cutting out. Out of all my computers, the only parts I have had go bad are two mother boards, and one graphics card. All of them had lasted at least 4+ years. I just had what seems to be a motherboard go bad due to power going on and off a bunch of times at 4am on thursday. But it was also 5 and a half years old. Will be replacing it on monday so hopefully that is what went out.

 

[Denithor]

I'll throw in my $0.02:

1) Get a good quality PSU. Best makers are Seasonic, Corsair, Antec, FSP Group (Fortron Source), PC Power and Cooling. Not sure which of those are available over there but those are the best makers we can get here in the US. As noted, does not have to be an extreme wattage model, 400-600W should be perfect for a single GPU setup.

2) Get a good UPS, one that plugs into your PC and shuts it down if power is lost and not back on before the battery runs out.

3) Dust, dust, dust. Clean out your system at least every 6 months or so, not 'once in two years' as you indicated above. Compressed air cans are cheap. Dust clogs up fans so they don't cool efficiently and can mess up bearings so the fans don't spin smoothly in extreme cases (trust me, I've seen this happen).

4) I'd suggest a 7850 as the new 28nm cards consume less power and run MUCH cooler at the same speeds as the older 40nm cards. Or wait until nVidia launches their new lineup, if nothing else should help with the price.

 

[skipsneeky2]

I've never had a component die on me, with only one exception - an Enermax 600W Noisetaker II power supply started making loud buzzing noises about 18 months ago. I don't know if it was dying but I couldn't risk keeping it considering how potentially dangerous a balky psu can be to your other components.

I follow simply rules - I always buy quality power supplies and I always use a battery backup for clean, consistent power.

I have a Corsair 550W at the moment, which replaced the old Enermax. Some might argue it's too weak for my system but I've never been a fan of the "OMG I need 1200W for my single gpu setup" mindset. I have used APC battery backups for the last, I don't know... close to ten years. Before that, I only had typical "Dell" pc's which I didn't really use for gaming beyond simple stuff like Age of Empires. Ever since I got serious about building gaming pc's, I have never and would never run a pc without a battery backup.

And for what it's worth, a buddy of mine had an Antec 500W burn out on him and in the process fried every single component in his case. I'm talking cpu, motherboard, RAM, Video card, hard drives, even the DVD drives. Everything completely fried. And he had a C2D, 9600GT, 4GB's RAM...etc. This was a couple years ago and all that equipment was only about a year old at the time. Lots of $$$...

Don't remind me,i had a 750w thermaltake tr2 take out a i7 2600k,gtx580 machine last Feb i believe,the psu and build before was a i7 940 and gtx295 and the psu of choice was a thermaltake toughpower 750,so i figured the tr2 would be fine for a stock clocked system boy was i wrong,the whole system=poof like your friends.

 

[MrK6]

I'll throw in my $0.02:

1) Get a good quality PSU. Best makers are Seasonic, Corsair, Antec, FSP Group (Fortron Source), PC Power and Cooling. Not sure which of those are available over there but those are the best makers we can get here in the US. As noted, does not have to be an extreme wattage model, 400-600W should be perfect for a single GPU setup.

2) Get a good UPS, one that plugs into your PC and shuts it down if power is lost and not back on before the battery runs out.

3) Dust, dust, dust. Clean out your system at least every 6 months or so, not 'once in two years' as you indicated above. Compressed air cans are cheap. Dust clogs up fans so they don't cool efficiently and can mess up bearings so the fans don't spin smoothly in extreme cases (trust me, I've seen this happen).

4) I'd suggest a 7850 as the new 28nm cards consume less power and run MUCH cooler at the same speeds as the older 40nm cards. Or wait until nVidia launches their new lineup, if nothing else should help with the price.

All excellent advice.

OP, if your power fluctuates that much it could be to the point that the PSU cannot compensate and it is damaging your components. Graphics cards on a whole are probably the most fragile component in a typical system, and their dying could be the manifestation of this problem. I think using a UPS as an intermediary to get cleaner power to your system would be the way to go.

 

[DarkRogue]

3) Dust, dust, dust. Clean out your system at least every 6 months or so, not 'once in two years' as you indicated above. Compressed air cans are cheap. Dust clogs up fans so they don't cool efficiently and can mess up bearings so the fans don't spin smoothly in extreme cases (trust me, I've seen this happen).

Cans of air are incredibly cheap, and they are excellent at dislodging dust in even the most stubborn areas like heatsinks.

However, I also have some camera equipment I need to take care of as well, so I picked up on of these: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produc...r_Blower_.html

Best thing ever. xD
I've even stopped buying cans of air now, since this thing is usually enough to clean my PC as well. And you don't have to stop every once in a while as the can tends to get too cold to handle and air pressure drops after lengthy use.

 

[JBT]

What PSU are you running on all these? I buy nice PSU's usually. I've NEVER had a video card die.