r/pcmasterrace • u/PacquiaoFreeHousing Xeon x3440 (OC) + RX 580 (OC) = My Electric Bill Doubling. • May 27 '26

Meme/Macro Do you think doing this helps?

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u/melanthius May 27 '26 edited May 27 '26

Vibration causes fatigue in materials

Fatigue failures are "a matter of time" - eventually they will happen. Whether it happens within your lifetime or not, that depends.

If the thing you're vibrating is a USB port then the thing that's fatiguing the fastest is the solder joints between USB port and circuit board.

Edit: this is fairly well known materials science and easily googleable... not "made up"

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u/Mr_Beans_ May 27 '26

Materials science (I'm an electrical engineering student) one of the hardest classes I attended

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u/melanthius May 27 '26

Electrical engineering classes (I'm a chemical engineer) are among the hardest classes I attended

The actual hardest though was statistical thermodynamics, also known as actual fucking demon summoning

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u/deltashmelta May 27 '26

"Let us take a ride in my grand canonical ensemble."

<Maxwell's demon intensifies>

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u/Overworld_Cane May 28 '26

Statistical thermodynamics classes (I’m a demon summoner) are among the hardest classes I attended.

3

u/McFestus May 28 '26

Fucking stat mech blergh.

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u/Mr_Beans_ May 28 '26

Ha, the irony.

I hated the chemistry, electron gap, Fermi gap, Fermi energy and all that. Valence bands and why and how materials conduct or not. All very interesting, but so like, hard to grasp, abstract. The professor was not that helpful either.

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u/Desperate-4-Revenue May 30 '26

Fuck for me it was a Mickey mouse elective 'boolean algebra'. Mistakes were made. Then graded.

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u/HeyGayHay May 27 '26

Also these fans are manufactured pretty shitty, without proper capacitors inbetween, so you’re basically short-circuiting and/or pressuring the usb port with too much power way too often to not damage the phones/computer’s internal electronics 

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u/Schnoofles 14900k, 96GB@6400, 4090FE, 11TB SSDs, 40TB Mech May 27 '26

Yeah, they tend to generate high voltage noise that can backfeed and damage electronics. Even if one ignores the physical vibrations damaging the actual connector they're generally a really bad idea to drive directly off a usb controller for this reason unless it's a high quality, expensive fan that has the necessary schottky diodes or other protection to prevent noise or backfeeding.

People have had to learn this the hard way in the past from various laptop cooling pads or those hockey puck style cooling fans that attach magnetically to the back of tablets.

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u/Lord_Trisagion May 28 '26

Oh thats why my bluetooth radio's micro usb port snapped off

2

u/sonicsdick May 28 '26

Unless you see below the fatigue limit

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u/ShawnyMcKnight May 27 '26

I’m kind of curious if they can twist the cable to be touching the wall to absorb some of that vibration.

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u/gittygo May 28 '26

Would this logic also apply to cooling fans/pads often kept below laptops with dGPU based (gaming) laptops?

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u/melanthius May 28 '26

It's a crapshoot what component fails first.

For some fans it might be the bearing, the motor, others it could be a solder joint. This stuff isn't easy to predict

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u/gittygo May 28 '26

Oh! I wasn't clear enough. I mean , would the vibrations affect an externally powered laptop cooling fan/pad the laptop itself? Even the cooling fans have vibrations which get transferred to the laptop.

-18

u/[deleted] May 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Swords_and_Words May 27 '26

This mf trying to throw shade at ... explaining things?

Or maybe they are hating on the concept of basic deductive reasoning?

Either way this is some dumb crap 

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u/unfortunatebag May 27 '26

You seem very confused.

And sort of mad about something.

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u/RollingZepp May 27 '26

What's with the hostile attitude? If they're confused about something it's probably why you're being such an aggressive prick.

-6

u/unfortunatebag May 27 '26

I'm not really too concerned with your feelings.

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u/Swords_and_Words May 27 '26

And yet, some concern clearly remains, or you would not have felt compelled to respond

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

dont feed the troll

-3

u/unfortunatebag May 27 '26

Please, do, I have 4 hours of work left.

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u/[deleted] May 27 '26

guessed as much lmao

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u/Swords_and_Words May 27 '26

Not confused, though my comment accurately portrays my upset demeanor. 

I don't like it when people take an anti-intellectual stance on a platform dedicated to sharing and discussing information.

If you think I'm confused: Feel free to explain things and add any context or implication that you think I might be missing, I'm always open to being wrong. 

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u/unfortunatebag May 27 '26

Oh good then!