Vent: My old bench power supply finally gave out after 4,217 hours

I was running a long test on a G1000 nav unit and the voltage just dropped to zero. Checked the log on the unit, and it had exactly 4,217 hours of runtime. I bought that thing used from a guy in Phoenix like eight years ago and never thought to track the hours. Kinda wild to see a piece of gear hit a hard stop like that. What's a solid, not crazy expensive replacement you guys would go for?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_andrew1mo agoMost Upvoted

Saw a teardown of a similar unit that pointed to capacitor aging as the main failure point after that many hours. Might be worth a look if you're up for a repair.

lopez.karen1mo ago

Yeah, @the_andrew is probably onto something with the capacitor thing. Read a forum post a while back where someone said the heat from running non-stop just cooks those little components over the years. Makes you wonder why they don't use better parts from the start, right? If the unit's already dead, popping it open to check for bulging caps is a pretty easy first step. Not everyone wants to mess with a soldering iron though, which is totally fair.

grantadams1mo ago

But what if the heat itself is the real design flaw? I've seen units where the caps are fine but they're crammed right next to a heat sink with no airflow... so even good parts get roasted. Sometimes the fix isn't better caps, it's just a dumb layout that traps all the heat in one spot.