Heat is bad for electronics, as virtually every engineer and electronic components seller will tell you. But are there some components that are more susceptible to it than others? Does cold impact as heavily as heat? What we know is there are temperature ranges for most components and these may give insight into the impact of temperatures on electronic parts.

“The expected life of any component, and of any final product built from those components, is affected by the temperature at which they operate,” CTM Magnetics notes.

The materials used in manufacturing printed circuit boards are made to withstand set temperatures, when these temperatures are exceeded the performance of the PCB will deteriorate. If you use heat-tolerant boards then the containment can be managed. Given heat can come from many places, and has different impacts on the component and the settings.

It has proven by data that in semiconductor and electronic parts, failure rate hugely increases depending upon heat and life shortens. constantly high temperature decreases the expected lifetime of computer parts even if they are not overheating per se.

When designing an electronic product, people should be aware of the power needs of their new product versus the limits set into the component by the original manufacturer. Many manufacturers are now “uprating” their components - creating components that meet all commercial, industrial or even military temperature ranges. This allows manufacturers the ability to not have to retool for each of the different classifications and create a component usable in all scenarios.

Reliability has to be built into the system by design, choice of suitable components, packaging and cooling techniques. “There is typically a margin between the operating temperature specification of a part and the temperature range over which the part can actually operate reliably. Manufacturers usually provide a margin for this. Margins exist between the specified operating temperature limits and the actual operating capability of the parts. These help to maximize part yield, reduce or eliminate outgoing tests and optimize sample testing and statistical process control,” the Electronics Cooling website states.

The impact of high temperatures for some components can be seen in the Table below.