/diy/ - Do It Yourself

>>1432318
This is a trap for young players.

Just because a load is rated for 10Watts doesn't mean you can just dump 10W through it. You need to read the datasheet and calculate how much the temperature will rise based on the power dissipation.

If you look at pic related for example this 10W resistor will rise 200C at 100% load, it just so happens to be rated for maximum 225C which is that 200C + 25C ambient. So you can dump the max through it, but it will be hot as fuck.

In this case you are OK but you might run into shit in the future where the load is rated for 100W+ but they don't explicitly tell you that you must have a near perfect thermal interface to a near perfect heatsink or the part will smoke.