Any suggestions, please?

[Li Li]

On Fri, 2010-09-10 at 08:24 +0800, Christopher Chan wrote:
> On Friday, September 10, 2010 03:40 AM, Li Li wrote:
>   My experience in places like that was that PSUs died more
> > often than in the lower voltage, higher amperage countries.
> >
> 
> Power supplies today are all of the switching type. I'd put it to heat 
> and humidity being the contributing factor rather than the voltage.
> 
Yeah-but it's still winter and cool in the southern hemisphere.  The
predicted high for Friday at Sydney is only 20 degrees C and this is
almost exactly the average for the date.  I don't know where Basil
lives, but unless he's way up north around Darwin he doesn't know what
humidity is.   I remember all of the populous places in Oz as being
mighty dry, and that was nearly 40 years ago; I'm told it is worse now
and last (southern) summer's fires attest to that.  

I've seen lots and lots of switching power supplies die from
over-voltage, spikes and the like.  They can arc spectacularly.  Their
whole method of working is very high voltages (albeit at small
amperages) and high frequencies: this stresses the cheap components
found in most consumer grade PSUs.  Add in the usual house dust that
clogs them (anybody else notice that home PCs, even in the cleanest
houses, are far dirtier than office machines?), a thunderstorm or some
idiot hitting a power pole with a car causing an inductive spike and
pow!

Now I'm interested: I'll ask people at my former employer if they have
any stats on PSU replacement frequencies, say in 100 V Japan and 250 V
Oz for comparable equipment.

-- 
Lilly
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