Components failure sensitive to temperature?

Question

Some hardware of mine fails and then works, in a strange way.

I have to switch it on several times, (number of times looks like depending on room temperature).

Question is: what components (or (cold) joints) could be the cause, or in other words, what components would fail or work depending on a difference of plus/minus 10°C to room temperature?

My favorite culprits are cold joints and electrolytic capacitors, but the hardware worked for many years without that problem.

I guess I can exclude any silicon problems, with single transistors or integrated chips. (?)

If this question is not appropriate on this site, please tell me and don't downvote without a comment.

This question is much too broad. In general most circuits will work with temperature changes of 10C or more. It depends on the specifications of each component used and how sensitive the circuit is to component variations. — Barry
– Barry, Commented Sep 26 at 12:42
@Barry Could you give me a hint how to focus the question? Is there a tag about ageing components? — Gyro Gearloose
– Gyro Gearloose, Commented Sep 26 at 12:45
@Kartman My theoretical and practical experience is about 30y old, when TTL-gates were on the top of technology. Do you have a link? — Gyro Gearloose
– Gyro Gearloose, Commented Sep 26 at 13:09
I've had completely worn out electrolytic capacitors in a monitor that only worked when it got warm, it had absolutely bizarre issues when it was cold. The caps were were completely bulged and dried out, so I replaced them and it was good as new. — Oskar Skog
– Oskar Skog, Commented Sep 26 at 15:36

Spehro 'speff' Pefhany · Accepted Answer · 2025-09-26 17:01:33Z

I don't think you can definitively exclude any of the items you've mentioned, however some things are much more likely than others.

Cold (or fractured) solder joints tend to get worse with time because of corrosion. This is frequently seen in some BGA packages that are driven hard so experience a lot of thermal expansion and contraction, for example in some high-end computer monitors.

Electrolytic capacitors age and increase in ESR with time.

Semiconductors have internal joints that can become intermittent and that often is related to temperature (LEDs that are driven hard in cheap consumer products in particular exhibit this regularly, but it can happen in ICs).

Semiconductors that are pushed to internal current densities that are excessive can fail over time, especially if exposed to sustained high ambient temperatures.

Even stressed resistors such as relatively high value types exposed to hundreds of volts can drift upward in value over time and cause starting issues for off-line SMPS circuits.

Optocouplers age and are temperature sensitive, so they would tend to fail at certain temperatures well before they are really most sincerely dead.

MOVs wear out after repeated transients and eventually tend to fail shorted.

Semiconductors are affected by radiation (other parts are too) and tend to degrade with exposure.

Environmental conditions can cause failures due to corrosion, water leakage causing tracking etc.

There's a common theme in what I've written above-

Things age. Some things age much faster than others.
Designs that 'push' the parts (deliberately as in the above-mentioned LEDs or because of bad design) may age much faster.
Stressed parts (electrically, thermally or mechanically) may tend to fail over time (or instantly, but that's not what we're talking about).
Environment can be a huge factor.

For useful failure analysis you really need to get to the bottom of what exactly has changed enough to cause the intermittent starting issue.

There's a hint that the device temperature cycles, increasing the risk of stressing solder joints. I had this with the control board for my old boiler (central heating), and had to do a lot of resoldering — Chris H
– Chris H, Commented Sep 27 at 10:41

qrk · Accepted Answer · 2025-09-26 16:25:39Z

Many things in electronic devices can be, or are, temperature sensitive. Here's a few of them.

Aluminum electrolytic capacitors are at the top of the list for consumer electronics, especially around switching power supplies. You can expect consumer electronic failures to occur around 5 to 10 years if poor quality aluminum electrolytic capacitors are used. Manufacturers save a dollar and guarantee that the product dies so you need to replace the product. Even products like uninterruptible power supplies meant for servers, which are supposed to be reliable, use crappy capacitors.
Bad capacitors sometimes bulge or leak. For those that fail and look OK, you need to use a capacitor checker that shows capacitance and ESR (equivalent series resistance).

Semiconductors (transistors, diodes, integrated circuits) are temperature sensitive. Static damage to semiconductors can show up instantly to years. Bonding wires can break and work under certain temperature conditions (famous one being the horizontal IC in the Tektronix 465 oscilloscope).

Mechanical: fasteners, connectors, solder joints, etc can become temperature and vibration sensitive. My TV uses the retaining screws on the circuit boards as ground return. That became temperature sensitive. Fix was tightening the screws.

Bad design. Consumer electronics tend to use poorly designed power-on reset circuitry, my cable modem being one of them. Timing margins could be tight which can change with temperature causing failures.

I can't point you to any literature on the above, but I have experienced all of the above categories, some self inflicted.

Thanks for your answer. I have another thing that's not really worth a question on its own: how do aluminum capacitors degrade? My guess is that the oxide layer grows and blocks the electric field? — Gyro Gearloose
– Gyro Gearloose, Commented Sep 26 at 20:00
As to mechanical problems, consider also that printed wiring boards can crack; tapping the circuitry with a wooden stick is a valuable diagnostic procedure, and also can find bad solder joints. — Whit3rd
– Whit3rd, Commented Sep 26 at 23:20
@GyroGearloose I suggest you research how Al electrolytic capacitors go bad. The junky capacitors have bad chemistry, poor seals, underrated, etc. The oxide layer on unused Al caps will degenerate necessitating rejuvenation of the oxide layer (charge the capacitor slowly). Heat reduces the lifetime of an AL capacitor (there is an equation for that). You can spend days reading about capacitor failure modes. — qrk
– qrk, Commented Sep 27 at 0:17

Stack Exchange Network

Components failure sensitive to temperature?

2 Answers 2

Hot Network Questions

Components failure sensitive to temperature?

2 Answers 2

Related

Hot Network Questions