Hi all.
This may sound a little vague, but...
I was at the computer store a few weeks ago, and saw this mobo for sale (I can't for the life of me remember which one it was. Maybe Asus or something) that said something on front of the box about having "long life parts" or something to that effect. Basically, it was boasting having some certain type of part in it that wasn't prone to dying, I think it was...
This made me think. I'm very used to chips dying on me after about 3-5 years (not all, but more than I'm comfortable with), and was wondering if some chips are perhaps designed with with certain parts that are expected to fail after X amount of time.
I know hard drives and CPU's have a certain lifetime expectancy (is it like 5 years or so?), but most of the things I'm thinking of don't have moving parts, don't burn like lava, and don't have an obvious excuse for dying that makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Example: what do they design the space shuttle, space stations, and satellites with? I would assume that their chips aren't prone to failing after 5 years... In fact, I would assume that they aren't prone to failing at all ("Uhh, Houston, our hard drive just died.") and yet half the crap in my computer has either already died on me (over the years, here's what I've lost: 1 sound card, 1 video card, more fans than I can count, 2 motherboards, 1 hard drive, 2 CD roms), or can probably be expected to die a sudden and mysterious death one day in the near future.
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Anyway, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. If they just design consumer hardware with sucky standards, that's nothing new. I'm just wondering if anyone knows whether or not some of these chips we're using are specifically designed to fail or not, or if they're purposely using weaker, cheaper materials that are known to deteriorate. That would NOT surprise me, so that we have to buy new stock every couple years.
...would help if I knew what that board was.
This may sound a little vague, but...
I was at the computer store a few weeks ago, and saw this mobo for sale (I can't for the life of me remember which one it was. Maybe Asus or something) that said something on front of the box about having "long life parts" or something to that effect. Basically, it was boasting having some certain type of part in it that wasn't prone to dying, I think it was...
This made me think. I'm very used to chips dying on me after about 3-5 years (not all, but more than I'm comfortable with), and was wondering if some chips are perhaps designed with with certain parts that are expected to fail after X amount of time.
I know hard drives and CPU's have a certain lifetime expectancy (is it like 5 years or so?), but most of the things I'm thinking of don't have moving parts, don't burn like lava, and don't have an obvious excuse for dying that makes a whole lot of sense to me.
Example: what do they design the space shuttle, space stations, and satellites with? I would assume that their chips aren't prone to failing after 5 years... In fact, I would assume that they aren't prone to failing at all ("Uhh, Houston, our hard drive just died.") and yet half the crap in my computer has either already died on me (over the years, here's what I've lost: 1 sound card, 1 video card, more fans than I can count, 2 motherboards, 1 hard drive, 2 CD roms), or can probably be expected to die a sudden and mysterious death one day in the near future.
-
Anyway, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist. If they just design consumer hardware with sucky standards, that's nothing new. I'm just wondering if anyone knows whether or not some of these chips we're using are specifically designed to fail or not, or if they're purposely using weaker, cheaper materials that are known to deteriorate. That would NOT surprise me, so that we have to buy new stock every couple years.
...would help if I knew what that board was.