Rig cooling with external fans. Kill the GPU fans to save life?

[skaughtz]

25 year computer hobbyist, first time miner.  I dropped 7 of my GPUs into an Ethereum mining rig (1080Ti/1080/2070/2060S/2060/1070/1070).  I have it in my laundry room (underground and 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the rest of the house) exposed to open air, with a box fan blowing over the whole setup.  Each card is basically overclocked to +500MHz on the memory, -200MHz on the core clock, and running at 75% power.  With the box fan blowing over them, all but a tiny half-sized 2060 is running at around 50 degrees Celsius or less with the fans set at 45%.

 

Without the box fan most of the cards don't go above 60 degrees Celsius under their own cooling.  I have been hesitant to turn the fan speeds down because, God forbid the box fan dies (I just bought it two days ago), at least I know that the cards will be able to keep themselves from frying.  But now I am running the fans faster than I need to, potentially lessening the life of the fans without need.

 

What is the best course of action here?  I check on the rig daily, so any disruptions to normal function should (hopefully) be caught pretty quickly.  Is my concern about fan life valid, or can those things run at 40-50% for infinity?  Would dropping them to 25% extend the life at all?  I appreciate any advice.

[Chris Pratt]

31 minutes ago, skaughtz said:

25 year computer hobbyist, first time miner.  I dropped 7 of my GPUs into an Ethereum mining rig (1080Ti/1080/2070/2060S/2060/1070/1070).  I have it in my laundry room (underground and 10 degrees Fahrenheit cooler than the rest of the house) exposed to open air, with a box fan blowing over the whole setup.  Each card is basically overclocked to +500MHz on the memory, -200MHz on the core clock, and running at 75% power.  With the box fan blowing over them, all but a tiny half-sized 2060 is running at around 50 degrees Celsius or less with the fans set at 45%.

 

Without the box fan most of the cards don't go above 60 degrees Celsius under their own cooling.  I have been hesitant to turn the fan speeds down because, God forbid the box fan dies (I just bought it two days ago), at least I know that the cards will be able to keep themselves from frying.  But now I am running the fans faster than I need to, potentially lessening the life of the fans without need.

 

What is the best course of action here?  I check on the rig daily, so any disruptions to normal function should (hopefully) be caught pretty quickly.  Is my concern about fan life valid, or can those things run at 40-50% for infinity?  Would dropping them to 25% extend the life at all?  I appreciate any advice.

I don't know about "infinity", but running the fans at 50% shouldn't meaningfully impact their life negatively. 

[skaughtz]

3 hours ago, Chris Pratt said:

I don't know about "infinity", but running the fans at 50% shouldn't meaningfully impact their life negatively. 

Passengers was an underrated sci-fi flick.

 

I am only concerned because if/when the crypto market crashes, I will probably throw all of these back into the gaming computers that they were pulled from, which have now been turned into simple HTPCs.  If I can sacrifice a few bits of coin for extending their lives, I would like to.