Are video cards the component most prone to failure?

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tzhu07

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In my entire computing history, I've found video cards to have the highest failure rate.

I think buying higher end cards doesn't help either.

On the opposite end, I've never had a CPU fail. Always purchased Intel.
 
I've had many many fans die, a few hard drive's, and one PSU. That's it I think, never a video card.
 
Three video card failures for me. 1 Nvidia, 1 AMD/ATI, 1 very old S3 virge. Which, thinking about it, probably is the most failure prone component for me. I've had one DOA hard drive and 1 DOA optical drive. All things considered I suppose I've been pretty lucky.
 
It really depends, if you had a card that mined, perhaps the fan might die, if you overclock your card maybe the vrms could get fried, maybe you had a bad batch of something.

It really all depends, some people have never had to RMA anything, other people have to RMA things all the time. Its all the product of mass production some units will always have flaws.
 
It's all luck I guess. I've had very back luck with GPU too, it's the component I've experienced the most failures with.

My list of dead GPUs
GF 2 MX
GF 6800
GF 8600 GT
GF 9800 GT
GF GTX 680

That's almost my entire list of GPU I've owned, with the exception of Radeon 9600 and GTX 295

HDD and PSU about 3 each, IIRC.

Never had a CPU or motherboard failed
 
Never had a GPU fail on me. Even my Voodoo 3 was rocking all the way up to when I sold it a few months ago. (Kinda wish I didn't now actually)
 
I also, never have had a video card fail. Pretty much exclusive to motherboards and mechanical hard drives. I have had 2 motherboards fail in the past couple of months. Both were Gigabyte remanufactured units that came from RMA about 3 years ago. The 1st one decided to shoot sparks from the CPU power plug and fry a couple TRIAC diodes, and the other decided to silently die to never post again.
 
Hard drive and PSU are what go in my PC's first. They die so frequently I couldn't exactly tell you which were first.

2nd is the optical drive of whatever flavor. CD, DVD, and BR drives seem to be very hit or miss either lasting for years on end (old Plextor drives were amazing for longevity, new ones are blah) or dying in the first one on me. I do burn lots of stuff though for friends and family.

3rd would be video cards for me with most of the failures that I've seen happen with cards I've bought in the last 5-7 yr or so. Prior to that they seemed to most never die and I ended up throwing them away or giving them away as donor parts in old PC's I fix for family from time to time.

RAM and motherboards are a distant 4th but then I never used crap like PCChips or the suspiciously cheap RAM either back in the day.

I've killed CPU's but never had one die on me. Not even Cyrix or VIA.

For OEM (ie. Dell, Acer, Lenovo) PC's that I've fixed the motherboard, PSU, and hard drives all seem to die at incredible rates. They always use the cheapest stuff and seem to design it to last just past the warranty date. OEM servers from those vendors are a different story and seem to hold up lots longer.
 
I'd place GPUs and motherboards the most likely to come DOA, but probably hard disks and power supplies the most likely to fail in service.
 
Hard drives for me. I've never had a video card die on me in the past 20 years. GPU's are very prone to heat issues if you don't have decent cooling these days you're slowly suffocating the life out of them. It was much worse back in the day, but that's still probably one of the highest reasons for failure. That and fans dying are a silent killer that you often don't realize.

Investing in a good case with plenty of air flow is nothing but win in my experience. The extra $20 is worth 10x that just for noise and heat dissipation alone. Not including the modular everything these days.
 
tzhu07 said:
In my entire computing history, I've found video cards to have the highest failure rate.

I think buying higher end cards doesn't help either.

On the opposite end, I've never had a CPU fail. Always purchased Intel.
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I fix computers for a living and I see far more hard drives fail than anything else. I've always purchased AMD CPU's and haven't had one fail. I've only seen a few fail (intel or AMD) that weren't caused by overlclocking or the user being an idiot.
 
Hard drives are the component I've had fail the most. I've only ever had one video card die, and it was a GTX 280 which had extremely hot VRMs.
 
Had bunches of HD die on me, followed by GPUs (9600 GT, and gtx 260 nvidia cards), and a few ram sticks (most annoying component to diagnose!!!!)
 
Simmonz said:
I fix computers for a living and I see far more hard drives fail than anything else. I've always purchased AMD CPU's and haven't had one fail. I've only seen a few fail (intel or AMD) that weren't caused by overlclocking or the user being an idiot.
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Thanks. That's really good insight since you run through computers more than most people here.

I wonder if the reason video cards have failed on me is because I have an obsession with making my computers as quiet as possible, and that philosophy often times goes against best cooling practices. This then results in my video cards always getting too hot and eventually dying one day.
 
tzhu07 said:
Thanks. That's really good insight since you run through computers more than most people here.

I wonder if the reason video cards have failed on me is because I have an obsession with making my computers as quiet as possible, and that philosophy often times goes against best cooling practices. This then results in my video cards always getting too hot and eventually dying one day.
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You're welcome. It's possible if you're making the fans spin so low that the heat is killing them but if you were overheating much of the time the games would have artifacts or the computer would restart. If they last you 2-3 years that's not so bad sicne that's the warranty on most cards. It also depends on which cards you're buying. Ones with stock fans tend to get much hotter than ones with custom fans like the Gigabyte WindForce, MSI Twin Frozer, Asus Direct CU or EVGA ACX. I've sworn off stock fans since I've neevr been satisifed with the cooling performance. With the custom fans I can run the GPU fans lower because they do a better job.
 
Had a reference 7970 fail but won't mention brand. Thankfully it was covered by RMA without incident. The card had not been abused and was only a year old so was surprised at the failure. Manufacturer ruled bad VRM as cause of death. It was sent to a galaxy far, far away to continue on in its afterlife. No other parts failures to this point--knocking on wood.
 
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tzhu07 said:
Thanks. That's really good insight since you run through computers more than most people here.

I wonder if the reason video cards have failed on me is because I have an obsession with making my computers as quiet as possible, and that philosophy often times goes against best cooling practices. This then results in my video cards always getting too hot and eventually dying one day.
Click to expand...

So you are a videocard serial killer and you asked yourself why in your case it ends up failing?

It is easy to fix tho. Your videocard as your PSU/CPU produce heat. You can counter this by having excellent airflow in your case the idea is to have a closed case so airflow has no other option to vent outside of the loop.

There are plenty of people in the "case/enclosure" forums who did what you have in mind (very silent case and videocard) if you ask them for help you prolly can end the videocard massacre.
 
In my experience the components that fail the most:

1)HDD
2)PSU
3)Motherboard
4)Memory

The most dependable:

1)Video Cards
2)Sound cards
3)USB devices
4)CD-ROM/BD Drives
 
In my experiences at work, I've seen way more HDD failures than anything else. PSU's would probably be next in line. We don't really have computers with dedicated GPU's at work though.

As for my computers, I've had a couple failed HDDs over the years, but only had to RMA one video card that was acting up (AMD 6950). I just remembered I did have an old Dell 8400 that came with a Radeon x300 card that died after about 3 years of use. Everything else has been pretty solid.
 
In my experience:

1. Hard drives - 2 failed from physical damage (WD Raptors, was not pleasant...), 2 from bad sectors, 1 from worn out parts
2. Memory - 4 sticks, all DDR2 from Corsair... I suspect it was the voltage requirements needed to run at 1067 MHz
3. Video cards - 2 NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTX, one after the other after 6 years of use probably from the "environmentally friendly" lead-free solder weakening over time...
4. Power supply - 1 Antec that was a lower-end model to begin with, lasted 5 years
5. Optical drive - 1 DVD-RW drive was killed by Starforce DRM back in 2004, so not a fault of the actual hardware

I've never had a motherboard or CPU go bad on me. I've had a couple of sound cards die on me... but it was really my fault :eek:. This is from about 15 years of experience in building my own systems.
 
I don't know if it counts, but the only component I have consistently had failure issues with over the years has been SATA cables.
 
PSU's and HDDS seem to most common in my experience.

I'm too cheap right now to try solid state drives.
 
Hard drives are the main component that fails in my systems. Probably 2 dozen or so over the years.
I've only had 1 GPU have a problem, a GTX 260 that artifacted in Counter Strike Source, worked fine in everything else though. I stepped up to a GTX285 using EVGA's step up program.
 
I've had a psu, motherboard, memory, hdd, and fans fail on me but never a video card or cpu.

Sent in a 7950 for an rma due to what I later found out was a driver issue.
 
I never had GPUs die but I've had a faulty ones before, had to undervolt it. I've had fans, PSUs and mobos and RAM die on me.
 
Hard Drives. It's why RAID Arrays with hot spares were invented.
 
I've owned about 50 hard disks and had 2 fail, 2 others were destroyed by faulty power components. I've owned less than 20 graphics cards and had at least 5 defective. YMMV ;)
 
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