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+--- Thread: Sleeve bearing vs ball bearing GPU fans (/thread-7727.html)
Sleeve bearing vs ball bearing GPU fans - devilsadvocate - 08-08-2018
There is one thing that miners and hashcat rig owners have in common. Some of us run our machines 24/7/365.
However, in order to do this with the least amount of maintenance, Founders Editions cards still seem to reign supreme due to the use of fans with ball bearings.
I discovered recently that some Nvidia 10 series GPUs (mostly Gigabyte Windforce) are shipped with fans that use sleeve bearings instead of ball bearings. Whether your are a miner or a hashcat user, the way to go is undoubtedly GPUs with fans that use ball bearings, not sleeve bearings.
This phenomena is documented on a crypto currency blog if you are at all curious. https://cryptomining-blog.com/tag/windforce-repair-fans/
The short version of what happens is that sleeve bearings will have all of their internal lubricant evaporate in about 3 months and then the fans will fail almost exactly at the 3 month mark. At this point, you will be replacing the fan or worse, the GPU. A GPU that uses a ball bearing fan, on the other hand, probably wouldn't see fan failure for several years (most ball bearing fans are rated at 50,000 hours), assuming that the GPU is kept relatively dust free.
That brings me to my question. Has anyone in either the miner or hashcat community built an index of which GPUs use ball bearing fans and which GPUs use sleeve bearing fans? This information would be very valuable so that any potential purchaser of a GPU could make an informed buying decision.
Does such an index exist? Perhaps I am not looking hard enough. *goes to Google*