Caring for electronic components

[EverythingIBM]

Alright, a few recent posts (and the conviction of observing different motherboards) has arose a question in my mind, what's the best way to care for electronic components, particularly motherboards if you really want them to last a long time?
I know there's a lot of people out there, like myself, who have older electronic equipment and don't want it to die (well not at least before they do!).

So here's what I gathered currently:

#1 proper cooling. Probably keep the components cool is one of the most important things. I learned that soon enough!
#2 quality capacitors. If I'm not mistaken Rubicon is the best.
#3 proper power supplies. Spikes in power, or faulty voltage can really hurt electronics: seeing as that's what drives them.
#4 good metal case & cable management (I've seen far too many cables get chewed; especially in dell's attempt for compact desktops).

Now the next question is the actual varying electronic components themselves. I noticed a lot of different things in the newer motherboards, whereas the older ones basically consist of a few capacitors, resistors, and transistors.
First I noticed the 300GL had little cloth coverings for these coiled copper things:


What advantages would it pose to cover those things with special coverings? I would certainly cover all of them on my computers if you can buy those coverings somewhere.

And lastly, is there anything else you can do to care for your systemboard's components, coverings or anything like that? It would be interesting as a project to do.

[ch_123]

That contraption is an inductor, which stores electricity in a magnetic field (as opposed to a capacitor which stores electricity in an electric field). Why you'd use one over the other is something to do with AC and DC and the properties of electrical waves that I don't remember much about, and Googling around doesn't reveal any straightforward answer that doesn't require reading through reams of text.

Covering one with cloth sounds like usual IBM silliness - a piece of cloth isn't going to prevent interference reaching the component, nor from it interfering with other components. I see uncovered ones on old electronic equipment all the time, I think they can survive quite happily without one.

[microsoft windows]

Another good way to care for computers is shutting them off at night.

A computer, though, can last basically forever if well-cared for.

[EverythingIBM]

Inductors are used often (not always) as noise filters.  Use em in guitar amps to filter out the 120VAC hum.

Don't get excited by cloth.  Guitar amps use REAL ones (called chokes)

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Also used if you build your own speakers.

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Just make sure your PC fans keep running.  When it dies chuck it out.  It's a motherboard, not your mother.


(don't they teach this stuff in school anymore...)

I'm not going to buy a new motherboard for all of my computers [if] they fail. Not to mention in laptops it's a great inconvenience. One thing that bothers me about new motherboards is the fact you have to get compatible RAM (and new RAM can be pricey; probably one of the most expensive component of a computer I'd say). Most of my RAM is incompatible with standard motherboards anyhow...

Oh my mother was chucked out years ago.

[Rajagra]

Another good way to care for computers is shutting them off at night.

Hmm, not sure I agree. Servers left powered on continuously often seem to last forever. When do they fail? When you turn them off. Especially hard disks.

Worst thing you can do is keep turning them on and off frequently. Each time you do you get surges, and thermal changes, causing stress to the system (and socketed chips can work loose in older systems )

Turning a computer on and off once a day is a reasonable compromise. Standby (S3) is largely the same as a power off, so if you do that repeatedly it also incurs risk.

[Phaedrus2129]

The cloth or rubber sheath over a coil is there to prevent coil whine. Sometimes coils can develop an annoying high pitched whine, and the rubber or cloth dampens it. You can achieve the same affect by smearing clear nail polish over the coil.

[EverythingIBM]

The cloth or rubber sheath over a coil is there to prevent coil whine. Sometimes coils can develop an annoying high pitched whine, and the rubber or cloth dampens it. You can achieve the same affect by smearing clear nail polish over the coil.

Thanks for that! Now it all makes sense... so if I hear any whining in my coils I'll know what to do.

Hmm, not sure I agree. Servers left powered on continuously often seem to last forever. When do they fail? When you turn them off. Especially hard disks.

Worst thing you can do is keep turning them on and off frequently. Each time you do you get surges, and thermal changes, causing stress to the system (and socketed chips can work loose in older systems )

Turning a computer on and off once a day is a reasonable compromise. Standby (S3) is largely the same as a power off, so if you do that repeatedly it also incurs risk.

Servers are made to be running 24/7.

I think it's perfectly fine to turn systems on/off each day. The only thing that degrades are hard disks it seems.
There shouldn't be any power surges, and a CPU shouldn't come loose. I've never had that happened and I'm probably one of the more voracious individuals when it comes to powering a system on/off daily.

[Phaedrus2129]

Idea. When a computer is shut down the hard drive motors should switch over to +5VSB power (instead of +12V) so that they can spin at ~1/2 speed while the computer is off. That way there's less spin-up/spin-down stress. Of course, you'd need PSUs to sport a few more amps on the +5VSB (especially since it's powering the CMOS circuitry, keeping the time, charging the CMOS battery, and powering your USB devices when your computer is off already), and will increase idle power consumption quite a bit. But going from 1->1/2->1 is probably less stressful than going 1->0->1. Also they could use a jumper system to enable/disable that feature.


I'm a genius.

[EverythingIBM]

Idea. When a computer is shut down the hard drive motors should switch over to +5VSB power (instead of +12V) so that they can spin at ~1/2 speed while the computer is off. That way there's less spin-up/spin-down stress. Of course, you'd need PSUs to sport a few more amps on the +5VSB (especially since it's powering the CMOS circuitry, keeping the time, charging the CMOS battery, and powering your USB devices when your computer is off already), and will increase idle power consumption quite a bit. But going from 1->1/2->1 is probably less stressful than going 1->0->1. Also they could use a jumper system to enable/disable that feature.


I'm a genius.

Or you could simply keep the HDDs running at 12V and power off everything else.

[Ekaros]

The cloth or rubber sheath over a coil is there to prevent coil whine. Sometimes coils can develop an annoying high pitched whine, and the rubber or cloth dampens it. You can achieve the same affect by smearing clear nail polish over the coil.

This I had an mobo which kept annoying whine AsRock I think it was...

[instantkamera]

Idea. When a computer is shut down the hard drive motors should switch over to +5VSB power (instead of +12V) so that they can spin at ~1/2 speed while the computer is off. That way there's less spin-up/spin-down stress. Of course, you'd need PSUs to sport a few more amps on the +5VSB (especially since it's powering the CMOS circuitry, keeping the time, charging the CMOS battery, and powering your USB devices when your computer is off already), and will increase idle power consumption quite a bit. But going from 1->1/2->1 is probably less stressful than going 1->0->1. Also they could use a jumper system to enable/disable that feature.


I'm a genius.

Or we could stop using spinning disks sometime in the near future...

[paardvark]

Or we could stop using spinning disks sometime in the near future...

With the current prices of ssd's? Ugh.

[firestorm]

I don't even think this is worth worrying about, aside from making sure you use quality parts if you build a system yourself.  A good motherboard and good PSU go a very long way to having a reliable system.

Chip creep and such, caused by heat cycles (expansion and contraction,) is not the prevalent problem that it was 15+ years ago.  And I have not seen nearly as many problems with hard drive motors wearing out since 3.5" drives became the norm.  Plenty of 5.25" MFM hard drives, or the infamous Quantum Big Foot drives (low cost high capacity 5.25" drives from ~1997), would have trouble spinning up after some time from the sheer mass of the platters.  I actually found that very favorable, since a simple "whack" would revive the drive and permit data retrieval.  The voicecoils that actuate the arm in the drive is what I normally find has failed and is much more damaging (i.e. fatal) - I see no realistic way to prevent this, aside from not using a drive at all.

I don't recommend turning a computer on and off numerous times per day, but a single power cycle per day is a very good idea IMO.  I believe there will be more stress on a drive from running 24/7 (i.e. higher running hours) than from the daily stress of a single spin-up (and it happens far more often than that if power save settings enable powering down drives.)  It's like believing you would save fuel and wear by leaving your vehicle running while you run into a store.  You will get more "running hours" out of equipment that way, but the majority of those hours will be idle time and would not likely (IMO) result in more actual operating hours.

[instantkamera]

With the current prices of ssd's? Ugh.

a) I was being somewhat facetious.

aa) I said NEAR future. Not present day. Although, I would argue they aren't THAT un-affordable even now. The good ones run you (intel x25-M), but we are just talking about something that gives the same or slightly better performance than a spinning disk, without the spin, or the disk. It can be done, and has been done. Netbooks are becoming fairly popular, and SSD is a good choice within that market.

[pex]

The Great Capacitor Folly of 2000-2002 created a bunch of capacitors set to leak for an indefinite period into the future...as long as mfgs had them sitting around and adding them to electronics.  One way to care for your electronix is to check your caps and remove and replace as needed!