i push my GPU to the limit at least once a week and run it like that for a few hours
i only had 1 time that it overheated and shutdown on me. that was back in november and it hasn't done that since.
it does seem to get pretty dang warm along the vent at the top, but its not a big deal to me
my HD is a bit noisy but so far no hardware problems with it, so i dont care to swap it out even though its a seagate drive.