I did some calculations on a napkin and discovered that out of the last six computers I owned, the average lasted only 7,000 hours of use (about 2 years) before it died of something truly severe. By severe, I mean motherboard / CPU problems that developed long after the waranty expired.
Am I just unlucky? Ruling out software and driver problems, how long does an average desktop computer last under regular use before something really expensive breaks?
You have to define use. Many people leave their computers on all the time. Some don’t. Many computer parts don’t wear like normal parts so it really doesn’t matter if someone is “using” them at all. The keyboard and mouse would be the only things to suffer along with any cluminess type damage.
Most computers should be able to run 4 - 5 years of daily use on 24/7 without much problem. The companies I have worked for often used many that long and some even longer. That is about the limit on technological obsolescence as well so most computers should last long enough to make you really desire another one for reasons other than a critical failure.
You will see the whole distribution though. Some computers fail in the first month and some will chug along for ten years in you want them too.
My P-90, which I got back in…oh, 1993 or 1994 will still run. I don’t like it, and am tempted to kick it whenever I see it (still have the tower), but it ran as of January of this year. (I had turned it on to clean it out before I tried to donate it, then found almost no charities will take towers.)
I actually have data on this, which I can’t share, and mean time to even the most trivial failure is much greater than your experience even for more complex computers than the one you have. MTTFs of course go up as the machine gets simpler.
I think you need to find a new computer company. My wife’s machine lasted over seven years before the power supply exploded - she did have a disk failure in that time, not that expensive to fix. I have a machine which is 8 years old, though I hardly power it up anymore. I got a new CD drive, and one of the USB ports is dead. My Sun workstation was on 24/7 for at least 6 years and never died. They finally took it away as obsolete.
What brands do you buy, if you don’t mind me asking?
To get a good answer to this question, you’d have to decide which parts qualify as “something really expensive” that could break. By my count, there are five “major” parts to a computer, defined as something which could reasonably cost $100+ to replace:
[ul]
[li]Processor[/li][li]Mainboard[/li][li]Memory[/li][li]Hard Drive[/li][li]Graphics Card[/li][/ul]But computers are quite modular. If any one of the above fails, you can just replace it for much less than the cost of the computer.
There is one last component that can fail expensively, although it doesn’t cost much itself. If the power supply fails, it can sometimes fail in a way that fries every other major component of the computer or catches on fire. But that rarely happens.
Well, the ENIAC I, with it’s 18,000 vacuum tubes, ran for 9+ years, from February 15, 1946, until it was turned off for the last time on October 2, 1955.
But I think the Univac II holds the record for longest time in actual, commercial use. The model II was introduced in 1957, and I believe the last one was taken out of service in the late 1970’s; some 20 years later.
You’d sure think modern PC’s, with IC chips and memory chips and LCD screens would last longer than the vacuum tube pre-mainframes of the 1950’s!
I’m posting from a Compaq Presario 4714 which I purchased in 1996. It has rarely been turn off in those 10 years. I had the hard drive replaced, under warranty, in late '99 or early '00.
It has it’s limitations, but I use it every day.
After working for years as a computer repair tech I can tell you one of the biggest causes of failure are cooling fans. Next would be hard drives.
It is rare on a system running well (IE; all cooling working and clean power to the unit) to have a CPU or memory puke out.
I always figure if it moves, it will wear out.
Just like a car and oil changes, if you stay on top of items with moving parts, the things should last a very long time. Well past its shelf life.
Maybe I do need a new computer company. For the most part, I made my computers out of components bought at Fry’s Electronics. I would buy whatever was on sale and throw it together. They usually ran fine for a while and then maybe 18 months down the road blue screens would pop up or a fan would start squeaking and need to be replaced.
Compounding the problem, most of them were gaming rigs, so they ran hot while I used them. I’m a freelance programmer by trade so I work at home and am on a computer about ten hours a day. Until recently, I lived in Los Angeles without air conditioning. Maybe it was the combined heat that caused the motherboards to act so squirrely.
The clarification of the OP is very revealing now.
It is like someone asking why all cars are such crap and you find out later that they weld their own together from pieces in the junk yard and then drag race them every Friday night.
Typical home computer stuff is designed to last about 7 years on average. Some stuff will die before then, some stuff will live a lot longer. YMMV and all that.
There are a lot of things that go into the reliability of a system. Probably the most important in your case is heat. A rough “quick and dirty” rule of thumb is that every 10 deg C above room temperature cuts the expected life of the device in half. If you want to get 7 years or so out of your system, you need to keep every component (CPU, graphics chips, motherboard chipset, etc) under 45 deg C. Many of the cheaper computer manufacturers save a few cents on cooling (in their quest to squeeze every cent out of the cost of their PC), and end up with a system that runs at maybe 50 or 55 deg C. They figure that most people will upgrade before they run into reliability problems, which is probably true.
There are other things that go into the reliability of your system as well. Friction from moving parts like disk drives will eventually cause the parts to fail. Different materials expand and contract at different rates, so as parts heat up and cool down they are subject to a lot of mechanical stress. Joints that aren’t soldered very well can break under the strain. The itty bitty wires inside of chips that connect the silicon bits to the outside world can break free and lift up off of their pads, causing the chip to fail. Thermal stresses are reduced by leaving your computer on so that it runs at a constant temperature all the time, but in this case, while you are reducing the potential for problems due to thermal stresses, you are increasing the potential for problems due to heat, friction, and power line problems like brownouts or spikes.
Looking at all of these things though, it’s pretty clear that your main problem is heat.
My recommendation would be:
I’m not sure whether you’re implying that 3D gaming burns out components, that computers made from individual components are junk, or that I’m completely clueless and should have bought a Dell. I suspect it was the latter from the way you gestured to the crowd. Oooh zing, I burn.
I wasn’t making fun of you especially. It was just that you asked about why computers suck (I assumed it was manufactured computers) and then revealed that it was simply computers you built yourself from discount parts.
I work in IT and I have done exactly the same thing myself a few times. In fact, my computer right now I built using some of that philosophy with a mix of good and cheap components. I lost a very cheapy motherboard (on sale at Fry’s bought via E-Bay because we don’t have those stores on the East Coast) right off the bat and it caused all kinds of hell. Go figure. There are some other suspect parts that might set off the smoke detectors tonight but I know that.
I was laughing at myself as much as you. Most people assume that when you criticize the quality of something in general that you weren’t the one that put your sample cases together yourself with discount parts.
What a fantastically informative post! Thanks for sharing your knowledge, engineer_comp_geek. Right now, my computer is running at 52 deg C while on the web. I wonder how hot it gets when I’m compiling something. I think I need to do something about this before I end up being forced into an early upgrade.
Okay, we’re good. 
My Apple IIe from 1980 still operates today. Of course, heat escapes off the old motherboards better on these dinosaur machines
Not really a fair comment. Eniac and Univac would I believe have lasted decades in the same sense as George Washington’s axe. And a modern computer would last just as long if measured on the same basis.
Or in other words, Eniac and Univac were Thesean.
There was a large peanut vacuum tube computer where I worked. It ran 24/7 with operators and maintenane techs. Tubes were constantly being replaced.
Give your PC that kind of TLC and who knows??
Cooling fans are most likely to fail due to bearings. Dust & lint cause over heating.
My case fan growled on start up last week andI got a replacement next day.
Out of curiousity - how are you getting that figure? Is there a way to “query” some onboard temperature sensor? Or are you just using a thermal probe?