Here at Level Up Technology we strive to help users with their day to day tech trouble. This is a summarised list of hardware that is most prone to failure in my experience.
1. Mechanical Hard Disk Drive – The Mechanical Hard Disk Drive is the component on a Desktop-PC/Laptop that is most prone to failure because of the fact that it has mechanical moving parts. Mechanical Parts are subjected to wear and tear over time thus all HDD’s failures are timely but imminent. The average lifespan of a hard disk drive is around 3 – 5 years. Easy to spot signs of a hard disk drive that nears the end of its life would be the lack of performance.
2. Power Supply Unit – The PSU(Power Supply Unit) is second most prone to failure because of the fact that the components on the circuit board are subject to wear and tear. Components like Capacitors and MOSFET Transistors are among the components most likely to fail on a PSU. A sign of a failing PSU would definitely be the lack of performance under high load. The Average Lifetime of a PSU is 4 – 5 Years.
3. Random Access Memory – RAM (Random Access Memory) is the third most prone to failure on Laptops/Desktop-PC’s. RAM is a high-speed volatile memory. RAM Usually fails because of power surges or heat, the failure is fatal. The warning signs are a PC that fails to boot intermittently and eventually does not boot at all. The lifespan of the RAM usually depends on the number of Power Surges (Under and Overvoltage) that occur in the lifetime of the PC. As a result of overclocking, RAM will also fail either because of heat generated in direct correlation to the overclock intensity or because of the overclocking to the RAM itself. The Average Lifetime of RAM is 5 – 8 Years.
4. Motherboard – The PC or Notebook Hard Disk Drive is 4th most prone to failure. As a result of the fact that a motherboard would function for a long time under ideal conditions. There are however a few conditions that would cause the motherboards to fail. The conditions that cause such failures are a power surge, lightning strike, large amounts of heat and overclocking. These conditions cause the Capacitors as well as the mosfet transitors to fail. The Average Lifespan of a motherboard is 5 – 10 Years.
5. Central Processing Unit – A Desktop-PC or Notebook CPU (Central Processing Unit) is 5th on the list and is the least prone to failure. The CPU is a robust piece of hardware and is not easily subject to failure because of wear and tear. Under ideal conditions, the average CPU lasts about 20 – 30 years. Power surges, Overclocking and Heat might cause the transistors on the CPU to fail a lot earlier than intended!
The above list is not law but rather one compiled out of my experience working in the IT environment for more than 5 years.
Please tell me what you think by leaving a comment below. Thank you for reading!