Meat Plow wrote:

I see/read a lot about SMPS failures and my educated opinion is that they
are just very hard on components. Electrolytic caps are more susceptible
to problems with heat which they seem to endure in an SMPS because of
their physical placement next to heat sources. It also depends on the
quality of the caps. Vendors sometimes use less than desirable quality
caps that swell and blow for seemingly no detectable reason.

I had a video card blow 3 out of 6 electrolytics (unknown brand) in
less than one year of use:

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2350/...2c511a5a_o.jpg

OTOH the power running this computer is nine years old and doing fine
(Japanese caps).