Technical question heat/electronic equipment

Frizzo

Distinguished
Sep 17, 2010
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ok everyone knows that video cards/cpu's/audio equipment electronic components in general, will die if run at any duration in extreme temperatures. i didn't know which section to post this. (sorry if a mod wants to move it).

but anyway. ok lets say said electronic equipment has no current running through it (it's not turned on). what temperature approximately would it generally sustain damage at in these conditions? ie. you take a video card out, put the bare video card on the balcony, and let the sun beat it to death while there is no current running through it. 150C ? 250C ? i know it's an odd question, but i actually have a reason for asking it.
 

Kari

Splendid
well the boards have gone through the soldering process at the factory so they can tolerate temps around 250-260c for couple of minutes with no lasting ill effects. At those temps the board itself is quite soft and the solder is molten but after it's cooled down it'll be fine. In the worst case scenario it would take 3 such cycles to fully 'populate' the board (2 reflows and 1 wave soldering pass).

But the longer the device is kept in high temperature the lower the required temperature is to damage the device. So if you kept the card in say 125c for a week you might have already damaged the electrolytic capasitors...