Comment by imoverclocked

Avoiding electrolytic caps is a good start for sure. There are plenty of boards out there without them.

Running CPUs and boards at lower power settings can also help. Thermal cycling is the enemy of longevity. Being able to control CPU frequency will be helpful.

Many power supplies have electrolytic caps in them as well. If you can stick to a standard that’s easy to find then there is a good chance you can just salvage an existing power supply that has managed to survive.

Some cheaper examples to consider would be raspberrypi boards with usb-c power. Don’t run them at full speed to reduce long-term thermal effects. About a decade ago I would have suggested Intel Atom based systems for similar reasons.

Server hardware is often made to a better spec for longevity. I miss old sparc hardware; I feel like those machines could last forever.

Today, arm based systems are probably a good bet since you can find lots of software for them and they run cooler than (say) x86 variants of similar caliber.

Storage is the next Achilles heel to consider. Cheap flash will die sooner rather than later. I’m not up on the best tech in this space anymore though so somebody else might chime in here.

Finally, displays can be pretty fragile. Phone displays actually come to mind as a decently ruggedized technology. Bigger displays are probably more prone to damage long-term so, small and durable is probably valuable here.

I’ll probably catch flak for this but… a smartphone is actually a pretty decent computer that can last a very long time. If you can run arbitrary software on it and keep it in one place instead of in your pocket, it could be a good get. The issue I know of here is the battery; if it gets too weak then some phones may not be able to power up completely even with a power supply attached.