SSD disks seem to accelerate motherboard failure on computers

[Berni]

Tin wiskers was a real problem when lead free first started. Does not take much to short out a chip in many cases, reflowing most likely melted a wisker long before the rest of the solder. Some people recomended uping the voltage to blow the wiskers away.

won't reflowing the wiskers, introduce oxides into the joint?

Still way better to have a slightly crusty looking joint compared to two pins being shorted together.

I think the modern alloys are better in terms of tin wiskers so it is pretty rare. Tho it doesn't necessarily need to come from the joint itself. I heard of a server room that suddenly started having the servers die at a abnormally high rate and they had no idea why, but after a while they found out that the tin plated air ducting in the server room has started growing a tin wisker fuzz on it. The airflow would eventually pick up some of these tiny tin needles and carry it into a server where it would kill it.

[Monkeh]

Tin wiskers was a real problem when lead free first started. Does not take much to short out a chip in many cases, reflowing most likely melted a wisker long before the rest of the solder. Some people recomended uping the voltage to blow the wiskers away.

won't reflowing the wiskers, introduce oxides into the joint?

Still way better to have a slightly crusty looking joint compared to two pins being shorted together.

I think the modern alloys are better in terms of tin wiskers so it is pretty rare. Tho it doesn't necessarily need to come from the joint itself. I heard of a server room that suddenly started having the servers die at a abnormally high rate and they had no idea why, but after a while they found out that the tin plated air ducting in the server room has started growing a tin wisker fuzz on it. The airflow would eventually pick up some of these tiny tin needles and carry it into a server where it would kill it.

Tin plated air duct seems rather unlikely. However, zinc whiskers from raised flooring is a well known problem.

[Cerebus]

Tin plated air duct seems rather unlikely. However, zinc whiskers from raised flooring is a well known problem.

Sheet metal steel air ducting will be galvanized, it'd only last 10 minutes if it wasn't, but tin galvanization would be pretty rare nowadays instead of zinc galvanization.

Who knows, perhaps the HVAC boys who installed it were tinkers rather then the usual bunch of cowboys? 

[peteru]

The explanation could be as simple as poor repair technique. For example, over tightening screws and causing stress damage to the PCB. If you do this consistently, then you will see a pattern that others do not see because they don't introduce that particular variable.