Can overclocking a GPU damage or break it?

[GamerBlake]

I have an EVGA XC2 Ultra 2080 Ti and I’ve been using the EVGA Precision software and I’m wondering if I can damage the card if I screw something up or will it just shut down before that happens?

[Chris Pratt]

Yes? OCing anything carries that risk. In practice, though, as long as you don't go too crazy, you probably have no worries. Most of the tools like Afterburner won't let you push it too far, anyways.

[Mpire934]

25 minutes ago, GamerBlake said:

I have an EVGA XC2 Ultra 2080 Ti and I’ve been using the EVGA Precision software and I’m wondering if I can damage the card if I screw something up or will it just shut down before that happens?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRfmNmnKYvs

[For Science!]

Generally speaking using any electronics in any manner is gradually damaging it, and using it in a overvolted state will damage it faster. If you are asking whether you will instantly kill it, I think the answer would be no, at least not for this generation with EVGA (with the Pascal cards, it could happen for some EVGA models). 

[GamerBlake]

21 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

Yes? OCing anything carries that risk. In practice, though, as long as you don't go too crazy, you probably have no worries. Most of the tools like Afterburner won't let you push it too far, anyways.

Well I mean I wasn’t thinking of doing anything “crazy”.

 

What I meant was like, let’s say the highest stable overclock for my card was +120 core/ +1000 memory. If I was testing and did +200 core/+1500 memory would it break the card or fry it? Or would it just become unstable and then work again when I lowered the overclocks to stable levels?

[Demonic Donut]

4 hours ago, GamerBlake said:

Well I mean I wasn’t thinking of doing anything “crazy”.

 

What I meant was like, let’s say the highest stable overclock for my card was +120 core/ +1000 memory. If I was testing and did +200 core/+1500 memory would it break the card or fry it? Or would it just become unstable and then work again when I lowered the overclocks to stable levels?

It would be extremely unlikely to damage it unless you increase voltage or let it run too hot. It will crash at some point. But nothing will be hurt. I say extremely unlikely because there is probably someone, somewhere that will say they broke a card by increasing clocks. Or heard of it happening etc. But the first thing I do with a graphics card is OC it.

 

Never have OCs applied at startup until you know it's stable. That will save you needing to boot in safe mode etc.