Obamot wrote:Look for example at what happened to the flat screen panels, with the Samsung-Sony + LG consortium (S-LCD launched in 2003-2004 from memory) making almost 40% of all screens in the world.
On the photo side Sony manufactures more than 56% of CCD sensors and more than 33% of CMOS which are found in your photo or video cameras up to mobile phones:
To make panels, camera sensors, memory chips or large processors, you need a factory at 10 billion. So it concentrates, it's normal.
Various techniques are implemented to achieve this, e.g. on flat screens the power supply capacitors would be, (from what I learned from an amateur repairman who takes advantage of this bias to "resuscitate "screens thrown in recycling center; can someone confirm?) specially configured for this purpose.
The capacitor manufacturer gives all the information in its technical documentation. For example, you can put a specified capacitor to hold 1000h at 85 ° C, 10.000h at 85 ° C, or 1000h at 105 ° C, etcetera. It's transparent.
Well, there may be some shady series (MSI sad memory motherboards) where the specification is not met at all because the manufacturer has crashed, but it is rare.
On the other hand, the brand is really important: we can be sure that a Panasonic, Nichicon or other component will meet its specifications ... if it's Chong Bang, it's more the lottery ...
The capacitors are next to the heatsinks because otherwise it doesn't work. So they heat up. The puppet that says "just put them at the other end" is a puppet. We could put them on the other side of the PCB, but it's more expensive. We could cool better, have better air circulation, but it's bigger, and therefore more expensive, and the trend is miniaturization, so it's not sales. We could increase the performance of the power supply so that it heats less, but it is more expensive.
10 ° C less doubles the service life. For example a "2000h 105 ° C" at 45 ° C, or 60 ° C less, will last 2 ^ 6 times longer, or 15 years in continuous service. If it's a 63V used at 30V, you'll be dead before it slams.
But quality costs. Basically, for the power of your PC screen to last 5 more years, it would cost 1 or 2 euros more to make, so 10 € more on the sale price. On a screen at 100-150 €, that's a lot. Most buyers would choose the competitor's model, and the boss of the box would be fired by the American pension funds that bought it to make money.
> "Is sustainable manufacturing incompatible with growth"
I would say, it depends.
Take a fridge from the sixties, built like a tank, that lasts 60 years. A modern fridge will last 40 years? But it will consume much less electricity ... so, if "sustainable" = "green", it depends. In any case, we have to recycle the old shit ...