power supply

[shankle]

I had a Dell gx280 which ran for 11 years. Never had to replace the power supply.
I then bought a HP Pavilion (in my infinite stupidity) and about 2 years later the
power supply failed. I fail to understand this. Is it a hardware thing that could
this happen to any computer or what?????

[dedndave]

it's hard to say, really - there are any number of reasons

poor power supply design is a possibility - power supplies are a science, all their own

lack of proper ESD handling - some companies do a better job than others in regards to static handling
static discharge can reduce the life of a component without causing it to immediately fail
i would think HP is pretty good on that one - maybe after it was out of their hands, though

[anunitu]

Depends on parts venders..Remember the big "Bad capacitors" thing from a few years back,might be they bought a bad batch of power supply's,OR the power supply maker bought bad parts if they changed venders. New systems tend to go cheap on parts to keep their prices low enough to compete in the market...Want a perfect PC? then build it yourself from the best parts,but it will cost you.

Knew a guy in Albany that did just that,his hobby was building systems from scratch,and finding all his parts himself.

Barebones.

[FORTRANS]

Is it a hardware thing that could
this happen to any computer or what?????

Hi,

   The answer is yes, it can happen to any computer.  But
it happens more rarely with quality products.  But rare is not
the same as never.

Regards,

Steve

[shankle]

Thanks guys for your responses.
So I guess it's an iffy thing that depends on what pressure the manufacture
is under to sell his product.

So the little guy buys his computer hoping for the best to get 5 years out
of it.  :(

[anunitu]

If you are old enough,you might remember sellers doing "Burn in testing",that was from WAY back,so most might never have heard the term. This was to insure the system could be relied on,also was known as a "stress test"

[shankle]

And I'll bet it is calculated to fail 1 day after the warranty runs out.
One wonders what happened to a thing called quality control.
I think the auto industry is getting it crammed down their throat
by the foreign manufactures.

[dedndave]

burn-in testing is still performed on many electronic products - required for military and most commercial equipment
for semiconductor devices, if it's going to fail, it will do so in the first N hours of operation
burn-in accelerates these failures

as for Jack's statement, i couldn't agree more
products are designed to fail
if you want to sell more widgets, you wouldn't want to sell reliable widgets - lol

one of the things that always comes to mind is coffee makers
it's like, 3 years in, bang! - time to buy a new one

if and when i get my little company going, i intend to sell products that last longer than i will

[hutch--]

I learnt this one the hard way years ago, had a spare power supply waiting but saw no reason to change the existing one, it literally went BANG while I was working on it so I changed the power supply but too late, it spiked the board on its way out and the board was stuffed, unfortunate as it was a very rare Intel board for a Northwood processor. Since then I use expensive ANTEC power supplies of reasonably high wattage output and have not had one go BANG since.

They cost about 3 times the junk ones but seem to be worth the effort.