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Comment by adrianmonk | Hacker News Reader

> If you run computing hardware at its thermal capacity for long periods of time, this will cause more wear on the parts than if they are run well inside their limits.

So I have a moderately increased likelihood of, at some indefinite point in the future, having to spend a whole $35 to replace the Raspberry Pi. I can prevent this by spending extra money (and time) up front.

In some cases, it might be worth it. Maybe I'm using this Pi to control something, so downtime is bad. (But even then, fans have moving parts and a high failure rate, so plan to monitor the fan's condition and be prepared to replace it.)

In other cases, if the performance isn't important to you, it may make more sense to just accept a shorter lifespan. By the time it breaks, the next generation Pi may be out anyway. I don't love thinking of hardware as disposable, but at this price point, it may be smarter economically.

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I think if you focus too much on "$35" you will be very disappointed with the rpi. You need a power supply, that's $10. You need an SD card, that's $10. You need a case, that's $10. You need a micro HDMI to HDMI cable or two, that's $10. You need a fan, that's $10.

If you mentally decide "the Raspberry Pi is a $100 computer all-in" you will be much happier. You won't buy one to sit in a drawer (as many on HN have complained about), and you won't try to use a USB charger from your phone from 1992 and that SD card you got with your sandwich at IKEA and be disappointed that it's not very reliable.

I have one in a drawr, like many. At my a few relatives I have PiHole running and they love it just had to walk my grandma through occasionally turning the pi off and on (pull the power, reconnect).

But I have the current Raspbian distro in a VM for messing around with as I don't need the hardware up. Once I have a use for the pi in my drawer it's going to be useful

but when the chip fails from heat stress, you only need to replace that. The case, cables, and power supply will all presumably be fine.

$100 upfront, $35 to replace

Despite the fact that doesn't add up, it depends what you are doing whether you need all that. I've had great value from my £34 Pi 4 since I don't need HDMI cables, cases or fans. I did also already have the other stuff too but I take your point there's no avoiding an SD card (yet).

It's a bit of a shame that what started out as an educational computer is about $100 to get started properly. Nowadays I recommend Micro:Bit for tinkering (our daughter has one, she likes it very much). It's about 20 Euro and you have everything needed (including a battery pack if you want to use it portably).

If you want a machine that fore serious work (NAS, media center, low-end desktop), before spending $100 one should at least consider spending a bit more and get a NUC. You can buy a NUC for around 120 Euro, then you have to add memory and storage. But at least, you get a machine with fast I/O, faster CPU, and is more expandable. It also does supports 4K and h.265 decoding like the Pi 4.

I would accept the shorter lifespan just because of the fan noise. Small and cheap fans are very noticeable in otherwise quiet rooms. I'd hate it.

I hate fan noise too. Sometimes it's necessary, though. But yeah, noise is another trade-off to consider.

Regarding Raspberry Pi specifically, larger, slow-moving fans tend to be quieter than smaller, fast-moving fans. The Pi is compact, so a small fan would be the natural choice.

Big passive heatsink is not an option?

I went with a small heatsink for my Pi 3’s.

> If you run computing hardware at its thermal capacity for long periods of time, this will cause more wear on the parts than if they are run well inside their limits.

How true is this actually? Personal anecdote is an I5-2500K overclocked to 4.6ghz with budget aftermarket cooler (its at 4.6ghz constantly regardless of load). It's been running 24/7 in my desktop since 2011.

When will it fail? I see these disclaimers all the time and they sound logical, but does anyone have some numbers on these fail rates under these 'prolonged extreme loads'?

I've been running a I7-6700K on a 120mm AIO radiator for three years. It gets loud, but it also smashes my OC results.

Personally, my biggest worry is the pump failing, and not the fans.

I used AIO for many computers, but every single system failed. It was the pump every time.

I switched to a Noctua passive cooler that I've used throughout motherboard generations (Noctua always releases a cheap kit to attach it to the latest socket type) and it has never been a problem. Thermals aren't a lot worse; I used it on 200W TDP 10 core SKUs, and on normal consumer chips. It has never let me down. AIO seems like a total waste to me; lots of moving parts to die on Saturday morning and make your computer unusable all weekend.

My AIO has been running fine- but I'm seriously considering a beefy heatsink next go-around.

Generally the time under load is the factor that kills parts, not just time on in general. For example: components that are constantly used for test benches to run benchmarks that pin them to 100% performance constantly will burn out much faster than your case.

Also, CPUs can get "binned" where you get the best CPUs in a batch which usually result in increased longevity and higher ceilings on overclocking. People usually call this the "Silicon Lottery". You may have just gotten lucky in your case and won the Silicon Lottery. That's honestly an impressive overclock for that CPU.

I've personally never had a component burn out before I want to upgrade it either, so I'd take that common "disclaimer" with a grain of salt. I think it really comes down to if you got a good bin or a bad bin part with any component.

Last time I checked, a consumer grade CPU has expected lifespan of 20-30 years, so your CPU is still in its young adult years

The rough date you checked will be relevant - as CPUs move to smaller process nodes, they become more susceptible to this type of failure.

And in my experience, it's usually not the CPU itself that has an issue, but some flaky solder joint, or the BGA under a chip, just like in the Xbox 360 'red ring of death' era. With mass-manufactured products, if you got a device from a batch that was a few percentage points out of tolerance, the thermal stress can cause issues more quickly than if you didn't introduce the thermal stress.

> How true is this actually?

There's a nice write-up here[1]. To summarize, using the Arrhenius equation as an approximation, one roughly gets that a 10C increase in operating temperature leads to cutting the expected lifetime in half.

However this is a rough approximation and does not consider various other failure modes, such as those associated with thermal cycling.

It also does not really matter much when significantly below the rated max temps: 2000 years cut in half is still plenty...

The take-away seems to be that operating continuously near the max rated temperature can have a significant effect on expected lifetime. Also extreme thermal cycling is probably not a good idea either.

[1]: https://www.electronics-cooling.com/2017/08/10c-increase-tem...

Probably in 20 years. The rasperry pi will probably fail in 100 years. Checkmate fan.

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