🚀 go-pugleaf

On Mon, 11 Mar 2013 17:49:43 +0100, taxalot <taxalot@meh.fr> wrote:

>> In a properly designed and cooled system there should be nothing a game
>> can do to damage your video card.  Video cards are designed to run full
>> out at high temperatures.
>
>Something I wonder, in computing with general, is if heating can have 
>long term effect on the machine. Although launching a game won't kill 
>your system, how about running BOING or cloud computing stuff 24/7 ?
>
>-Moa Dragon

I've found electronic components are like a lot of things that operate
best under consistent conditions.  In other words if it gets hot and
stays hot most of the time, it's usually not a problem (because
remember most CPUs and GPUs are designed to shut themselves down if
they do reach dangerous temperatures).

But what will kill electronics, and many other things for that matter,
is too much heat CYCLING.  i.e. getting hot as hell then cold as fuck,
rinse and repeat over and over.  That results in expansion and
contraction of things and that eventually leads to things not making
contact with each other, etc.

This is one reason powering a PC down is often considered harder on it
than leaving it running all the time.  In most cases with regard to PC
parts, running a little hot, as long as your components aren't seizing
up is not too much of a problem, because under normal indoor temp and
humidity conditions, the heat cycling is not enough to cause too many
problems during the average lifetime of a PC.  

However there are some things to consider like if a fan fails or a
driver has a bug that affects temperature sensing or similar... that's
why I say it's good to always monitor temps.  I use a program called
Argus monitor for this.  It has good logging and can be set up to
alert you when things get over a certain temp.