Industrial PC: Worthy or not??

[drk]

Hey Guys (and Gals if there are any over here),

I ve been using my cnc machines to do work since almost 3 years now and am proud of all 5 of them since they all are working. Now, during this periond of 3 years I have had to replace at least 6 PCs cause the motherboards of the processors or the SMPSs keep konking off. Just wanted to get a feedback from you guys if Im the only one being unlucky with PCs.

SO, I decided to find out more about industrial PCs and I came across two kinds of them:
1. Rack mounted 19"......... ones costing in the tune of $2,000 and more.
2. Single card PCs which look more like plug in cards which we used with the older PCs as modems or graphics cards etc..

What is the difference between these and how does on use them???

Also, for people like us who are using PC based CNC controllers, is the use of industrial PCs a necessity, is it even required, should one expect a better performance or a more reliable working from them????

Feel free the share your thoughts

Cheers

Dev

[ironDigit]

as far as i've encountered any industrial pc the difference with a normal pc is dustfilters no sound ,graphicscards dvdburners and the use of older/debugged chipsets/hardware with tested and reliable drivers and manufacturing processes guaranteeing less failures then when using latest/untried technologies and absolutely no mediacrap in "industrial" systems.

[Al_The_Man]

I have been using PC based systems for many years in industrial aplications, and have never found the need to pay the premium prices for 'Industrial' systems, which for the most part, are not much more mechanically rugged or filtered any better than non-industrial types.
What I do however is use higher end boards like Asus etc and ensure that the installation conforms to good grounding practices and use RLC filters etc on the supplies etc.
The only industrial type I have used is Advantech slot mount PC boards, if I come across them cheap, and install them in my own enclosure, the main reason being, they often have LCD drivers built in, which allows the use of a simple LCD panel direct.
Al.