Is it worth having a backup?

[aisle9]

I can't say this for sure, but I have a hunch my Gigabyte X570 SI motherboard is dying. It got to a point where it would boot past the POST screen about half the time, and when it did, it was slow. This was on a WD SN750 1TB M.2. I've since swapped the SN750 into a different system and proven that it definitely has issues. It takes up to a couple of minutes to boot. But the thing is that the Crucial 1TB NVMe that's replaced it in my main rig, while I know it's not as fast as the SN750, takes its sweet time loading too. I think that whatever hit the board also damaged the main M.2 slot, and that makes me think the board as a whole is living on borrowed time. I just have no idea how much.

 

I ordered an MSI B550M-VC board off of Amazon because it was sub-$100 and has a lot of the same features the Gigabyte board does (although it's mATX and I'll need a new case), but now I'm kind of questioning if I really need a backup B550 board lying around. I've read that the price of AM4 motherboards is going upwards because of the RAM shortage pushing people back onto DDR4, I just haven't seen it happening yet. Am I overthinking (and overspending) this by picking up an extra board?

[Needfuldoer]

I'd prioritize having a backup copy of your data (documents, photos, etc) over having a whole backup computer. A random computer is a lot easier to replace.

 

But still, having an extra computer can't hurt.

[aisle9]

57 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

I'd prioritize having a backup copy of your data (documents, photos, etc) over having a whole backup computer. A random computer is a lot easier to replace.

 

But still, having an extra computer can't hurt.

Those are 100% backed up already. It's just the motherboard I'm grabbing a backup of. Everything else seems fine, just something really off about the main M.2 slot.

[Dedayog]

16 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

Those are 100% backed up already. It's just the motherboard I'm grabbing a backup of. Everything else seems fine, just something really off about the main M.2 slot.

I'd at least get a replacement motherboard to test things 

 

Not a boxed backup mobo, but replacemebt.

[aisle9]

15 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

I'd at least get a replacement motherboard to test things 

 

Not a boxed backup mobo, but replacemebt.

Yeah, that's kind of what scares me. I have a backup AM4 motherboard, and the replacement M.2 came out of a Beelink mini PC that it's been working fine on for a few years now. The more I think about this, the more likely I think it is that the board M.2 slot had something happen to it, power surge or static maybe (Colorado's been dry as a bone almost all winter), it damaged the old WD SN750 M.2, and now the board itself is just dying a slow death.

 

Not sure how I just pieced this together for the first time, but once in a while when I go to load something off of one of my auxiliary SATA SSDs (usually a game or my iTunes library), I realize that it isn't reading one or the other.

 

I don't want that X570 SI to die. I love that board and the SFF cases it's let me use, but I'm starting to feel like something zapped it and now it's like the Cleveland Browns. Playing out the string with a QB no one wants.

[aisle9]

@Needfuldoer @Dedayog

 

My computer sat on the POST screen for ten minutes this morning before I went into BIOS and restarted it. It then did the same thing, but only for a few minutes this time before I restarted it. Then it did the same thing for a couple minutes, got to the spinning wheel of Windows, then did a "Please Wait" after loading off of that, and about six minutes later I was at the login screen. Zero doubt this motherboard is on the way out...and so's the NVMe that got moved into my HTPC.

 

Good thing I ordered that MSI B550 board. Guess I need to find a case now, too. 

[Dedayog]

17 minutes ago, aisle9 said:

@Needfuldoer @Dedayog

 

My computer sat on the POST screen for ten minutes this morning before I went into BIOS and restarted it. It then did the same thing, but only for a few minutes this time before I restarted it. Then it did the same thing for a couple minutes, got to the spinning wheel of Windows, then did a "Please Wait" after loading off of that, and about six minutes later I was at the login screen. Zero doubt this motherboard is on the way out...and so's the NVMe that got moved into my HTPC.

 

Good thing I ordered that MSI B550 board. Guess I need to find a case now, too. 

Go caseless!

 

I'm curious if the nvme drive works fine in the new motherboard. Are you going to test that?

 

[aisle9]

18 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Go caseless!

 

I'm curious if the nvme drive works fine in the new motherboard. Are you going to test that?

 

The new NVMe, yes, I'm planning on using that as the boot drive in the new PC. I have to make an adulting run to Home Depot pretty soon here, and I'll be dumping the contents of the new NVMe onto an old SATA drive to avoid nuking anything else that's critically important to me.

 

The original NVMe from this board is screwed. It still loads Windows in the HTPC it's found a home in, but it takes close to 5 minutes to boot. All I can figure is either a power surge or a Colorado-sized static shock. I've only had one power surge here, along with one brownout, but the static gets really bad here when it's dry. Best guess is that's what caused it, and the guess is corroborated by the zaps not happening after I ran an ESD wire from the keyboard tray to ground.