Self-hosters:
Facts.
Thermal cycling is one of the biggest stressors electrical components can be subjected to. Leaving your processor on and at a consistent load massively improves the lifetime of the chip. So take THAT, mom!
Heat cycling is a huge stressor on any material. That’s part of why diesel freight trucks tend to last well past a million miles while it’s newsworthy if a passenger car makes it that long. How many times a week is your Toyota Corolla driving 10+ hours at a time? Most commonly, when you hear of a million mile vehicle, it was making long haul deliveries daily and was maintained at the correct intervals.
I think there are a lot of other factors in that case.
The biggest reason why it’s rare to see regular cars get to a million miles is because they don’t get driven as much. At the average of 14k miles per year it would take 71 years for someone to drive 1 million miles. Since it takes so long to get there, many non engine related issues start taking hold like rust and obsoletion.
I’m over here just over 30k miles after 6 years
I had to scroll way too far to find this. Especially considering that I have a desktop with full disk encryption, I don’t worry about it. If anyone ever did break into my house and take my computer, they would have to unplug it first; at that point, the disk would encrypt, and they’d have some really nice hardware which sucks for me, but that’s all they’d get.
If anyone ever did break into my house and take my computer, they would have to unplug it first; at that point, the disk would encrypt
The disk is always encrypted. When data is accessed, it is stored decrypted in RAM. The drive doesn’t decrypt when unlocking it and doesn’t encrypt when turning it off.
I feel that. All the information stored on my PC isnt worth a fraction of what my graphics graphics card cost…
I run prime95 24/7 on my AMD FX-9590 to keep it at a nice stable temp. Plus it means I also don’t need to heat my house in the winter. Gotta love a tdp of 220W.
Just be sure to clear the lint off your coils every five years or so. Otherwise you’re making the poor guy suck air through a shag carpet.
suck air through a shag carpet.
Welp, that’s a new euphemism.
Old fridges never die. Modern fridges are more efficient but more break-y, can’t have both.
Actually modern fridges are usually less efficient. But that’s because they use refrigerants that are literally thousands of times less harmful to the environment.
Old appliances frequently used R-12 which is an damn nice refrigerant except it depleted ozone and has a GWP (global warming potential) of 10,900. That means 1lb of R12 released into the air causes the same amount of global warming as releasing 10,900 lbs of CO2.
Newer appliances use refrigerants like R134a which still works pretty well, doesn’t deplete ozone, and only has a GWP of 1,430.
The newest appliances are more frequently using R-600a which is hard on compressors because it has a high head pressure and it doesn’t cool quite as well. But it also doesn’t deplete ozone and it has a GWP of just 3. The bigest downside of that one is that it’s very flamable (it’s isobutane) so the legal limit on how much residential appliances can us is very low.
Survivorship bias
I’ve read somewhere it is because compressor nozzle has to be made thinner/fragiler for the better efficiency. Other comments say it’s because old refrigerants were better but more “dangerous”. Maybe both.
Old stuff that broke got thrown out and forgotten
My refrigerator was never the same after everything that happened in Yugoslavia.
Say what you will about Serbian nationalist fridges but unlike Yugoslavia, they were built to last!
The fridge is a big pump, it needs to circulate… It’s when it sits idle for too long that it risks death!
Glances over at my 1954 GE Combination that has NEVER been serviced outside of cleaning and replacing the light bulbs.
Fridges actually do rest. They cycle on and off as needed to maintain their desired temperature and on average only spend about 30% to 40% of their time “on”.
I only found this out the other night because my fridge went dead silent for a long time. I thought it was borked, so I was peering deep into the freezer when I saw The Gates of Hell through the grate.
(Okay, so full disclosure, I had smoked some pot, but it totally looked like when Dana opened the fridge to Zuul before she was The Gatekeeper.) 😱😱😱
Anyways, turns out it was in defrost mode (which happens twice a day), and that involves some elements going orange or something. I know that’s vague-- I looked it up, but as I mentioned, I was high, so I only kinda remember, lol.
Edit:
The refrigerator activates a heating element located near the evaporator coil. This element warms the coils, causing any ice buildup to melt.
Tbf computers also have a sleep mode.
Mine must be narcoleptic. I put it in sleep mode. Come back the next day and it’s shut itself down. (inb4 - I know)
Those young machine spirits need their rest
By the Emperors grace and the Mechanicus perseverance your toaster shall live again.
Except those walkers capable of perpetual movement, we never let them rest cause we aren’t sure if we can make them move again
My wife and I are on our third fridge in 35 years. But the furnace in her mom’s house when we sold it 5 years ago had been running since the late 1970s.
Except furnaces functionally shut off when not actively making heat. A fridge potentially is only off for power outages or a cleaning
Don’t fridges do the same thing? Once it gets the interior to the set temperature, the compressor turns off until the sensors say it needs more cold.
You are right, I totally forgot about that haha
30 years is a long life for a furnace. This thing was 45-50 and still running fine. The last maintenance note on the sheet on the inside was in the 80s lol.
Me with computers that have operating hours comparable to the number of hours it’s been since I got them:
heh. my 15 year old frigid started making random groans the last couple weeks. far enough apart that i couldnt figure out where it came from. got lucky one day it moaned while i was close enough to yank open the freezer and see where the lever for the icemaker had accidentally got flipped to the on position. since i hadnt hooked up the water line to it, the groan was the pump sucking vacuum
Except LG and Samsung fridges or the ones that use the linear compressors.
We have a chest freeze from 1943 still running in my parents basement…
Gotta catch em all!
But how did THEY get chest freezer in 1943?
Jokingly.
My grandfather has a fridge that has been in operation since the late 70’s. (It’s a leopard brand fridge, the company no longer exists)
