Well I've heard some VERY disturbing news lately after some discussions with people in the industry, about poor components - Remember the infamous bulging / leaking caps that datied back 2003-04 ? Well it seems there are new problems surfacing - someone I know running a shop says he is getting a large amount of returned graphics card and power supplies - NOT because of chip problems but because of burnt resistors and caps - Someone even claiming they've noticed bulging caps on a new product - enough to raise your blood pressure. Same guy also told me that hard drives are failing like crazy - I had an argument with him saying it is impossible and he tried to convince me that he sees a 50% return rate on Maxtor & Seagates and 4 out of every 10 gfx cards returning the same week ! I must be lucky then (knocking on wood). It appears the high-end capacitors can last about 20000 hours, now I assume that most components don't use that, and a more realistic figure is 8000~10000hours - weird because I have my old ASUS A7V133 motherboard that has tons of caps on it, it worked from 2000~2007, 24/7, never turned off, and doesn't have ONE bulging cap, they are all intact and the board ran rock solid.....so I dunno - people I know around me keep telling me about a 40-50% failure rate - that is scary ! So much that the store I purchased my parts from ages ago before I did business online, was telling me that they stopped offering in-store extended warranties because of the overwhelming returns lol
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