Military Class Components, Military Class I II III IIII ?

Tony
Tony
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Topic 197473

Ladies and gentlemen of advanced computer component comprehension, I propose the following talking point. Is the trend in classifying computer components as "Military Grade", simply a marketing tool or is equipment marked as military grade representative of higher longevity, stability etc.

This is not a question of whether or not something marked military grade is a good performance to investment question or if you personally think it's worth the money. It's more a question of whether they are marketing a premium product because it's actually premium as described in the marketing.

I can't actually find this military I,II,III,IIII classification system they speak of. I would love to actually see a standard for the so called Military Class 4 as put forward by MSI in one of their flag ship motherboard listed at the link below.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=138_1491&products_id=23810

archae86
archae86
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Military Class Components, Military Class I II III IIII ?

I don't know about Mil I, II, III, IIII.

But when I was a lad many semiconductor components were marketed in commercial and military guaranteed operating range variants. In those days the usual commercial temperature range guaranteed was 0 to 70 C, while Mil was -55 to +125. Also, in those days of mostly 5V power supplies, the usual commercial power supply range spec was +/- 5%, with the Mil at +/- 10%. Also in that time, more often than not commercial parts were sold in plastic (commonly epoxy, but sometimes other) packages, while mil parts were generally shipped in ceramic packages.

None of which meant, by itself, that the military graded parts met any actual military specification. Sometimes the military wanted gobs of extra measurements, or paperwork, depending on the part.

As to whether this really meant better parts, the answer was: sometimes yes, sometimes no. For some components the combination of design and process meant that much of the distribution out of the factory would not meet the temperature/voltage range for military, so testing had to be used to select the compliant parts. So those were "better" in that way. Whether you, in your application, cared was another matter. Sometimes yes, often no.

Eventually the (real) military figured out that they were paying a lot more for parts which were in many cases not more fit for the particular purpose than commercial, and generally started making people justify why their design required "mil-spec" parts rather than the other way around.

So this is all ancient history, of roughly 1965 through 1985 vintage.

My main employer, Intel, shut down their mil-spec operation years ago--yet there are plenty of Intel parts in lots of military applications, even some "kinetic" ones.

I won't try to guess what MSI is saying here.

mikey
mikey
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RE: Ladies and gentlemen of

Quote:

Ladies and gentlemen of advanced computer component comprehension, I propose the following talking point. Is the trend in classifying computer components as "Military Grade", simply a marketing tool or is equipment marked as military grade representative of higher longevity, stability etc.

This is not a question of whether or not something marked military grade is a good performance to investment question or if you personally think it's worth the money. It's more a question of whether they are marketing a premium product because it's actually premium as described in the marketing.

I can't actually find this military I,II,III,IIII classification system they speak of. I would love to actually see a standard for the so called Military Class 4 as put forward by MSI in one of their flag ship motherboard listed at the link below.

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=138_1491&products_id=23810

'Mil Spec' refers to Military Specifications, no I don't know where they are written but I do know they are HUGE, referring to a range of specs the parts must operate within. 'Mil spec' can refer to anything from a toilet seat to a nut or bolt to an airplane wing, just about anything the Military can use is 'specified' so they don't get what they consider to be inferior parts. It is also why they pay the BIG BUCKS for some things as companies often charge more for 'mil spec' parts then the same part that is not 'mil spec'd'.

Richard Haselgrove
Richard Haselgrove
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According to Wikipedia, Class

According to Wikipedia, Class IV applies to...

... "Construction materials, including installed equipment and all fortification and barrier materials."

So if you want to build a bomb-proof wall round your motherboard, maybe?

Maybe they couldn't count to Class IX

ExtraTerrestrial Apes
ExtraTerrestria...
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For a mainboard or GPU they

For a mainboard or GPU they can't changfe the actual chips, just the surrounding: capacitors, inductors, the PCB itself etc. Here I find it completely sufficient if they used regular quality parts, i.e. not the quickly-popping capacitors from "the early 00's". Unless some huge mistake is being done in design all these regular components should last at least a few years, often more - at which point they won't be power efficient enough for BOINC anymore anyway and should hence be passed on to light-duty work. At this point there won't be much additional stress for these components and it doesn't really matter if they "only" last another 10 years, 20 or 50.

So my answer to your question is: they could be using higher quality parts, but they very likely won't make any difference for you.

MrS

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