I wouldn’t say I’m disalussioned, I’d say I’m lost, and desperate to find a fix that doesn’t include spending money lol. Was willing to try last resorts. I don’t HAVE money to spend, my circumstances don’t allow, and my PC is a big part of my life unfortunately. Without going into detail.
Anyway, I’ve tried it now, it didn’t work as expected LOL.
Unfortunately some things just break from usage.
That said, video cards don't break all that fast.
They break very slowly if they're kept in dust free environments like a case with proper dust filters & airflow setup.
You don't need to do anything exotic with PC hardware contrary to popular internet belief and in most cases it will be counterproductive. Somehow the first go-to for people who experience worse GPU performance is that they update BIOS and repaste their cooler, voiding warranty left or right. It's never been a fantastic idea, in general.
I'm running a 1080 since 2017, all I ever did was blow it out once a year. Most years, all that comes off is a thin layer of dust, nothing caked, just thin dust. Of course ambient conditions may vary, but it all starts with decent air quality in your room and a dust filtered case. Beyond that its just luck of the draw, plus the strain you've put the hardware under. If Memory has been operating close to temp limits for a long time or has the chance of exceeding it momentarily during normal use, you're going to find cards lasting far shorter. Here, again, dust comes into play as it can push cards out of their safe tolerances, perhaps not on the GPU die, but elsewhere on the pcb. There are notable examples of memory dying for lack of cooling. EVGA especially had some cool (or hot...
) stories to tell there
If you want GPUs to last, when you see that cooler performance slowly inch back, or temps slowly creep up, its time for the simple cleaning job. If you keep losing a few mhz on your OC to remain stable, its time to dial in a slightly lower power target / clock down a bit. The 1080 I run now does it at 90% power target; the net loss of performance is 5% at best; temps are still royally below 80C.
You could also repaste it at that point - but that's introducing risk, for what is essentially marging of error performance loss.
TL DR; try those lower power targets, remove your OC, and see where you can get stability again. Also, consider the options of selling off whatever life is left in it. An honest ad with an honest price might fetch you more than you expect today. Even if just for a collector
And if money is short, consider second hand markets for your next card. It might end up feasible to get a Pascal card or even an x60~x70 Turing as people start upgrading now. They'll be good for another few more years for most things, especially at 1080p~1440p they destroy most content still, today.
