Re: need motherboard recommendation
tv.debian@googlemail.com put forth on 12/27/2010 3:24 AM:
> Frankly, I am not sure those technos are worth it on mother/gfx boards
> unless you're a keeper, it will probably be replaced long before it
> bursts a capacitor, much cheaper boards with whatever capacitors can
> last for a couple of years should be good enough for most use.
FWIW, I have a manufactured in 1999 Abit BP6 PPGA 370 mobo with _dual_
Mendocino Celeron 366s o'clocked to 550. Currently it's in my headless
home office Lenny smtpd/imapd/smbd/httpd/ftpd/webmail Swiss Army Knife
server. I bought the board in used condition off Ebay in 2002, so the
original owner ran it for at least a couple of years before I acquired it.
>From 2002'ish to 2006 all it did was crunch 4 processes of the Linux
Seti@Home client 24x7x365. It's been running 24x7 for 8 years now, 4 of
those at constant full CPU load. It has the old industry standard
cheapo caps. It still runs fine, although a little slow at times by
today's standards, mainly when manipulating photos and videos
(imagemagick and ffmpeg) and running curator against dirs with thousands
of jpgs.
AFAIK the caps haven't burst, though last I looked at the board, a year
or so ago when I added a new SATA controller and drive, a few caps
around the ZIF sockets were bulging a slight bit. This board has seen
more current load on its caps than most boards ever will due to the
constant Seti@Home for 4 years.
My point is that tantalum caps might be nice and on average give longer
life, but, they aren't absolutely necessary for long life. If you
consider 10 years of pretty harsh duty a "long life". Who knows how
many years my BP6 has left in it. Hopefully at least a few, as I still
love this board, and it works great in its current role.
--
Stan
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