I've recently started to regain my interest in fixing random 'stuff' after a fair few years where I rarely bothered.
Now, back in the past I had no problem with using general purpose electrolytics in unstressed applications; places like the low-value decoupling caps which inevitably dry out over time but don't get hammered in-circuit like PSU caps tend to.
Back then you could buy cheap caps, and they'd be relatively decent Korean or Taiwanese efforts which would still last a good long while if not put in abusive situations.
Fast-forward 15 years or so and the market has become a total minefield, as witnessed by this site. Nowadays everything has become polarised; you either buy expensive Japanese capacitors from Farnell (which are surely far more expensive than they need to be for some applications), or the only alternatives are the extremely cheap stuff coming out of China (I've seen typical low-capacity off-brand Chinese stuff for a couple of cents each in bags of 100 from AliExpress, and the stuff you get elsewhere is the same stuff just more expensive).
So, the question is, just how bad are these extremely cheap caps in non-stressed situations? Are they still likely to last for 10-20 years or do they crap out after a year or 18 months even when not doing very much?
Now, back in the past I had no problem with using general purpose electrolytics in unstressed applications; places like the low-value decoupling caps which inevitably dry out over time but don't get hammered in-circuit like PSU caps tend to.
Back then you could buy cheap caps, and they'd be relatively decent Korean or Taiwanese efforts which would still last a good long while if not put in abusive situations.
Fast-forward 15 years or so and the market has become a total minefield, as witnessed by this site. Nowadays everything has become polarised; you either buy expensive Japanese capacitors from Farnell (which are surely far more expensive than they need to be for some applications), or the only alternatives are the extremely cheap stuff coming out of China (I've seen typical low-capacity off-brand Chinese stuff for a couple of cents each in bags of 100 from AliExpress, and the stuff you get elsewhere is the same stuff just more expensive).
So, the question is, just how bad are these extremely cheap caps in non-stressed situations? Are they still likely to last for 10-20 years or do they crap out after a year or 18 months even when not doing very much?