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There are plenty of questions about what a safe gpu temperature is, but these seem focused on what temperatures a gpu will survive at in the short term, regardless of whether it may shorten the cards life.

I recently ordered a video card that I need to be able to run under constant strain at work, but its longevity is very important. I would not have intentionally overclocked it, but to my surprise, it was the "overclocked" edition (Sapphire Radeon HD 5770) that arrived in the mail (doh!).

What temperature should I try to keep a GPU to, if I not only want it to survive today, but want it to live a long healthy life?

P.S. We will probably be buying other cards, and any other longevity suggestions are welcome, but my actual question is specifically about temperature.

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    The unfortunate truth is that we don't know. For such information extensive statistics need to be made over long (also what is long? A year, two, five ten?) period of time using representative number of video cards working in various conditions. The lifetime of an average card is just too short for that. For example, the faults in nVidia GeForce 8000 series were unknown for some time after the cards appeared. Also there's the temperature change which can affect the situation. A common problem are solder joints cracking. That could be fixed by keeping card temperature constant.
    – AndrejaKo
    Jun 8, 2011 at 18:44
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    The temperature itself in that example is less relevant, because the heating/cooling cycles are the ones doing the damage.
    – AndrejaKo
    Jun 8, 2011 at 18:45
  • I agree with AndrejaKo -its a similar situation to servers in a data center. Its best to keep them at a constant temperature. As for what that temperature is? As low as possible ;-)
    – leinad13
    Jul 14, 2011 at 16:24

1 Answer 1

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<105°C

Junction temperature TJ usually is limited to +150°C for silicon ICs. Devices may operate momentarily at slightly higher temperatures, but device life expectancy decreases exponentially for extended hightemperature operation. Usually, the lower the junction operating temperature, the greater the anticipated life of the IC.

from http://www.allegromicro.com/en/Products/Design/an/an295014.pdf

There's a nice chart at http://www.interfacebus.com/Integrated-Circuit_Derating_Guide.html which shows 10 years at 108°C declining to 1 year at 148°C

The manufacturers quote a maximum temperature, for example 105°C for the GeForce 8800

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    Well. You edited while I was writing and I didn't notice. Good answer/references. I'll just delete mine and upvote :) As far as for me ... I try to keep mine below 80 deg C, simply because it's not hard to maintain and well below the danger zone.
    – Daniel B.
    Jul 29, 2011 at 15:37

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