HP & Dell Face Lawsuits From Exploding Hardware

An anonymous reader writes "Dell and Hewlett-Packard are both facing lawsuits over catastrophic equipment failures that lead to fires and injuries last year. 'In one case, a North Dakota auto lube shop owner claims that a Dell monitor he purchased caught fire and burned down his business ... meanwhile, an Arkansas man has sued HP, claiming that an HP Compaq Presario PC he purchased from Wal-Mart burst into flames, causing a blaze that destroyed his house and seriously injured his daughter.'"

Comments

Low price, low quality?

[KublaiKhan]

It's my understanding that walmart habitually insists on lower prices from its suppliers than they provide to others--inducing a corresponding reduction in quality of the product at times, e.g. using plastic rather than metal gears in power tools and the like. I'd not be surprised if HP cut corners for the 'Walmart edition' of its computers.

That "made specially for walmart" logo on the box is more a warning than an endorsement in my mind.

Re:Doesn't suprise me.

[qortra]

these cases are so small and lacking airflow it doesn't really suprise me. The article isn't very clear on what exactly caused the fire in the presario, though it does use "electrical system to malfunction" in the case of the monitor that burned down the business. Suffice it to say, this might not be an issue of ventilation. More likely, they were severe electrical problems in all cases. I would bet money that the cause of the Compaq Presario "bursting into flames" was the power supply, and not a poorly ventilated processor. When they overheat, things just tend to melt. No low-voltage IC should ever "burst into flames", even in a poorly ventilated case. In fact, the poorer the ventilation, the fewer the flames.

Coming soon to a cheap piece of hardware near you!

[Whuffo]

I've seen a desktop PC or two ignite - not just smoke, but a nice flamey burnout. The source of the problem in every one I've inspected was an electrolytic capacitor failure. Those components are under a lot of stress when they're used in switch-mode power circuits - such as the main power supply or the CPU voltage regulator.

Fortunately, these fires self-extinguish very quickly when you disconnect the power - if your PC (or whatever random piece of tech) starts smoking / burning, pull the plug. These failures are only really dangerous in unattended machines - then this failure can and does result in a fire.

Those little capacitors are relatively expensive, and manufacturers who are doing everything they can to shave costs discover they can replace the low-ESR computer grade electrolytics with cheap aluminum electrolytics - and then take it another step by sourcing the cheapest cheap caps they can buy. They manufactures know that this choice will result in a much shorter life for the equipment but those failures will occur after the warranty has expired so it's OK with them.

Remember this next time you buy yet another power supply for your computer. It could have lasted 10 or more years, but the manufacturer saved a couple of bucks on the components so it died after a year or two. A fire caused by these cheap parts is actually fairly rare - less than one in a thousand machines (probably much less).

The way to eliminate the majority of these fires? The manufacturers should spend the money it takes to use the right components - capacitors designed and rated for high temperature / switch-mode operation. That would also make power supplies last the life of the machine, slightly reduce power consumption, etc. But as long as consumers insist on the lowest price for products the manufactures will continue to give them what they are asking for.

Imagine a shelf at the computer parts store: there's two different 400 watt PC power supplies for sale. One sells for $40 and the one next to it speaks of high quality parts and long lifetime and sells for $60. Which one do you think most consumers would buy?