Mike was correct of being on guard with the
capacitors. Heat is the biggest killer of electronic
components.
While it's true that electrolytics and heat don't mix all too well, I'd stay
away from such broad "heat is the killer" statements. Reading some Bob Pease
and trying things out convinced me that in most cases making things run cool
often does zilch for performance. In the end you have to measure worse
performance to claim that heat is the enemy. There are some well known things
such as leakage currents that scale bad with temperature, but those are
either designed-in or other precautions are taken. While I admit that
excessive operating temperature in power supplies is typically a sign of a
novice or misunderstanding designer, this doesn't equally carry on to other
parts of the circuitry. Disclaimer: Modern high integration CPUs are a
different story and I won't go into that.
Cheers, Kuba
