3 ms·
Only as anecdata, in my practical experience over the years, I needed to change many power supplies[1], and very few motherboards. (excluding replacements due t
by jaclaz 7y ago
Only as anecdata, in my practical experience over the years, I needed to change many power supplies[1], and very few motherboards. (excluding replacements due to upgrades)
I would go a little bit further and say that the PSU is probably the most replaced "standard" part of a PC, followed by hard disks.
I also a couple times repaired a PSU replacing this or that failed component, but it is simply not worth the time and money, as spare new PSU's are cheap enough, the replacing is very easy whilst even procuring a single chip or capacitor is complex for non-professionals, besides the soldering tools, etc.
Hopefully the parts that age or however tend to fail will remain in the (easily replaceable) PSU, otherwise we will see an increase in replaced motherboards.
Some sort of (standard) "daughterboard" with the voltage regulating components would have made more sense (to me), but surely it makes less sense from an industrial manudacturing point of view.
[1] be it due to capacitors, power transistors or mosfets or whatever, and due to whatever reasons, be it aging, power surges, etc.
- unlinked_dll 7y agoAre you buying bottom of the barrel PSUs? I've had the same Corsair unit in three machines over the last decade. Works perfectly fine.
- aliswe 7y agoMight be the power grid.
- jaclaz 7y ago>Are you buying bottom of the barrel PSUs? If you mean that "standard" OEM PSU's (think Asus, Fujitsu, IBM/Lenovo and a few - mini-ITX Shuttle cases) are "bottom of the barrel", yes. Then, since often an used, original, non-standard (say) IBM/Lenovo PSU can be found for a mere 100-150 € on e-bay, I started getting el-cheapo (though not el-cheapest) ones with no appreciable decrease (or increase) in durability, putting them externally and re-mapping the cables. For the mini-ITX cases (that use a not-very-common form factor) I gutted new 1U server PSU's and managed to fit them in. The PC I am writing this with (ASUS) is 2008 and I replaced a PSU in 2012 and one in 2016 or 2017, cannot remember. Out of the four IBM/Lenovo's I have at another office, dated 2010 or 2011, two have still their original PSU, two have the external adapted ATX, no other parts replaced. All in all (and for whatever reasons) I would estimate that over a 5-10 years lifetime of a system[1] there are: 1-2 replacement of PSU's 1 replacement of hard disk(s) No replacement of other parts, let alone the motherboard. Sice 2012 I am at the third Fujitsu ThinClient (used as router) with PSU failing (in this case they are so cheap second hand that I change the whole little machine). [1] the mini-ITX's (there were three of them) before being decommissioned) lasted 2003-2018, i.e. 15 years, running NT 4.0 or 2K 24/7 each with 2 PSU replacements, the last one, being a server grade PSU most probably would be just fine for another five or more years.
- murillians 7y agoThat is an insane rate to be going through PSU's. Many of the enthusiast PSU's myself and friends have put into our computers usually outlive the other components. Generic grey box PSU's off ebay usually dont have the same standards as a SeaSonic or Thermaltake unit