I have always wondered
I have always wondered
Are there any negative effects from playing running games at the highest level, or is it safe to run them continuously?
Technically yes. Just like how driving your car on a racetrack hurts your car. Is your car rated to make its max horsepower? Yes. Will it eventually affect the car from running so hard all the time? Yup. In the case of GPUs, it should run just fine for years and years no issues though. And when you're playing games, the GPU usually isn't always at 100%. Too little to really be concerned about in the case of computer components playing games and stuff.
Let me rephrase the question: "Does running your hardware at maximum power eventually harm your pc in any way? I've always wanted to know." The answer is yes and no. Yes, because everything eventually fails, and running at full capacity 24/7 will accelerate wear. No, because with proper voltages and cooling, you can push your hardware to its limits for many hours daily over years. This might shorten its lifespan, but processors, for example, can last a very long time. Other components like MOSFETs and capacitors have specific ratings, and if temperatures rise too high, their lifespan decreases significantly.
Using hardware causes it to heat up. The mechanism for heating and cooling repeatedly can cause thermal mechanical stress. But this is already accounted for so that's not really a problem. However higher heat does lead to degradation of the electronics. Except since we don't really know what the life span of any given part is, we can't really make an educated guess on how long any part will last.
So basically, the answer is yes running your hardware hard will kill it faster, but we don't know how long it's supposed to last anyway.