Picking long life capacitor replacements?

[slybunda]

to pick some good quality capacitors for long lifetime do i just go to mouser, rs etc and select the capacitance and voltage then sort by the highest number of hours and pick the caps that have the highest number of lifetime hours?

[stj]

almost.
you need to know the difference between regular, low and ultra-low esr and when to use each type
in most cases you can just throw ultra-low esr caps in, but there are some situations where that wont work.

[slybunda]

Ok cool, noticed that wurth brand caps seem to be rated way higher than other caps for lifetime

[Uranium-235]

Picking one that is a good amount above requirement voltage (say 25v for 12v instead of 16v) increases life too, but there is more information involved to really determine if this works, and it's not just voltage, probably ripple too, but I'm not sure about uF

[slybunda]

From what i read if selecting a higher voltage cap and the cap never reaches its rated voltage then something happens to it where it cant be reformed and looses capacitance?

[lti]

You don't want the cap to actually hit its rated voltage. There should be some margin.

I've heard that caps will fail faster if you run them too far below their rated voltage, but I haven't ever found any official documentation to confirm or deny that.