There's three main ways GPUs wear out, silicon electromigration, electrolytic capacitor dryout, and fan bearing failure. And the first two happen much faster at higher temperatures. Temperatures are similar between gaming and mining, but miners run 24/7 compared to gaming 1-2 hrs/day, so the GPUs age like 10x faster. But still, GPU failures are pretty rare, I think the concern is overblown.
They also sometimes do GPU BIOS modifications, which is a fun thing to discover once the card ends up on the second-hand market and you happen to buy one. Luckily the fix is to reflash the BIOS using a matching one from TechPowerUp GPU database, but this assumes that you even know that this is something to pay attention to.
Source: happened with an RX 560 that I bought second-hand. Driver installation failed in Windows 10 due to the modified GPU BIOS. Was fixed with a reflash of a stock GPU BIOS using atiflash.
I didn't check it, but if I had to guess, it might have to do something with allowing the card to run using settings that make it more suitable for mining. Someone more familiar with GPU mining can correct me here.
Totally true- I went through the process of manually overclocking my 2080ti for max hash rate and the best settings involved setting a power limit that is less than half the card’s 100% limit.
Anedoctal but my two last GPUs burnt out after a few years. Bought new GPUs from reputable suppliers. Never mined or overclocked besides factory overclock (which for most of the time I had disabled). I was playing a lot more than 1-2 hrs/day. I guess it was the worse of both worlds. Heavy usage + cycling.
I’ve purchased graphics cards from the used market, and used them for years. Never any problems. One of my go to cards is 5 years old … that’s when I bought it - I’m guessing it’s much older.
