Is my motherboard dying?

[Dunkan77]

Hello guys,

I have a Maximus IV Extreme mobo and I think it might be dying... can you tell form just info I can give you? I can give you almost any piece of intel about my system I've had it since new and I know everything about it (almost)

 

So the mobo and CPU combo are the only thing in my PC that hasnt changed since day one on the 17 december 2012 (or 2013 cant quite remember). but the point is, almost everything hardware-wise has. I swapped OS drive to a now 3 month old SSD, changed GPU, put some more RAM (oh yeah maybe the old dimms since day one are killing my system but in depth testing havent revealed any errors so...) and changed the PSU. Yet, I'm getting strange hardlocks with no BSOD because the system hung up so badly and then sometimes it tells me there is no OS on any drive. A complete power off fixes the last issue. Then there are the abnormally hard driver crashes. Normally you get a black screen then the game crashes and a pop up tells you your driver crashed then recovered successfully but not in my case. I get a frozen screen but other PC vitals are good, then screens go black then finally the same hardlock which doesnt even get me a BSOD ( I have to turn off PSU to get it out of that state not even power/reset switches work). These crashes are more rare but piss the hell out of me when they happen. Finally there are what I can only assume are random errors that can happen to anyone but way too often to me so I'm suspecting something else it dying on me somewehre in this godforsaken system.

 

I'm glad to give you any more info just ask me guys it's in my benefit anyway, why wouldn't I? My pc may crash more than once in 24h too.

 

Thanks for your answers, cheers

[Bananasplit_00]

sooooo, specs?

[Dunkan77]

1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

sooooo, specs?

Core i7-2600 @4.2
2x4GB Kingmax RAM + 2x4GB Corsair Vengenace LP (these are the new DIMMs)

Asus Maximus IV Extreme

EVGA GTX 970 SC acx 2.0

Corsair RM650 80+ gold

2x 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (one of them is old OS drive)

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB (new OS drive)

Toshiba Q300 120GB SSD

[Windows7ge]

So you've swamped out

HDD

RAM

GPU

PSU

OS is out of the question

That only leaves Motherboard, CPU and peripherals, did you try unplugging every single peripherals except for the essentials? (keyboard & mouse) On rare occasions a peripheral can go bad and reak havoc on your computer. CPU's are not common points of failure but can't rule it out either, any chance your have a second LGA1155 CPU around? If none of those do anything for your problem it might very well be the motherboard.

[Bananasplit_00]

ok things i can think of here, might be CPU overclock, also might be if the RAM is mismatched clocks and speeds

[pedro69]

Have you checked the health of the two Seagate drives?

 

You can use CrystalDiskInfo see the general status: http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

[Dunkan77]

2 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

So you've swamped out

HDD

RAM

GPU

PSU

OS is out of the question

That only leaves Motherboard, CPU and peripherals, did you try unplugging every single peripherals except for the essentials? (keyboard & mouse) On rare occasions a peripheral can go bad and reak havoc on your computer. CPU's are not common points of failure but can't rule it out either, any chance your have a second LGA1155 CPU around? If none of those do anything for your problem it might very well be the motherboard.

Dont have a CPU on my hands  I thought of that I know no one with that old tech

yes the crashes have been happening with a K70 and M65 mouse and printers hooked up. Havent tried that, I will unplug everything one day but the problem is it wont crash unless you're using it. I forgot it on last weekend and it was still running when I got back, 2 days later

CPU's dying would not let me in the BIOS even a priori but who knows right?

[Dunkan77]

4 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

ok things i can think of here, might be CPU overclock, also might be if the RAM is mismatched clocks and speeds

I tried running stock clocks on everything and still crashes. Yes the 4 DIMM's aren't same speed or timings but I'm obviously running them at the same speed. However if it was the RAM, I'd have gotten crashes very soon after putting them in but it was almost a year later that they started happening...

[Dunkan77]

4 minutes ago, pedro69 said:

Have you checked the health of the two Seagate drives?

 

You can use CrystalDiskInfo see the general status: http://crystalmark.info/software/CrystalDiskInfo/index-e.html

OS isn't running off them and they're healthy according to SMART in SpeedFan I thought it was them because Seagate but turns out no, they are among the healthiest components in the system ironically.

[Windows7ge]

1 minute ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

ok things i can think of here, might be CPU overclock, also might be if the RAM is mismatched clocks and speeds

Overclocking could be a potential culprit, also overheating, mixing RAM can be a culprit too. Everything is a variable.

 

If the CPU is the culprit the CPU doesn't have to be necessarily dead yet for the system to still turn on and function (to an extent). If disabling the overclock reduces the frequency of the issues but they still happen it could still be the CPU and it might be on it's way out.

[Dunkan77]

But I have a question: How can the motherboard be at fault anyway??? What goes wrong in a mobo that causes all this shit??

I've just realized that. I was thinkng "oh bad mobo..." but now I've give it thought... wth can go wrong in an LN2 Grade mobo in 4 years or normal use?

[Bananasplit_00]

3 minutes ago, Dunkan77 said:

I tried running stock clocks on everything and still crashes. Yes the 4 DIMM's aren't same speed or timings but I'm obviously running them at the same speed. However if it was the RAM, I'd have gotten crashes very soon after putting them in but it was almost a year later that they started happening...

ok did you swap anything just before you got the problems? i also think a fresh install of windows might help

[Dunkan77]

3 minutes ago, Bananasplit_00 said:

ok did you swap anything just before you got the problems? i also think a fresh install of windows might help

Nope, apart from the yearly TIM change half a year ago no. And I'v done 3 fresh windows installs on the new SSD in 3 months, at least 10 on the HDD when I didn't have the 850 EVO yet. Same results...

[Windows7ge]

Just now, Dunkan77 said:

But I have a question: How can the motherboard be at fault anyway??? What goes wrong in a mobo that causes all this shit??

I've just realized that. I was thinkng "oh bad mobo..." but now I've give it thought... wth can go wrong in an LN2 Grade mobo in 4 years or normal use?

Well do understand that a motherboard is made up of 100's of individual components, resistors, VRM's, mosfets, different kinds of processors, south bridge (in charge of SATA bus, PCH, and other slower control system, North Bridge processor controls all the PCI-e lanes (not always true but usually), power delivery for the CPU, etc, etc, any of these 100's of little components can stop working and if it's a mission critical piece the whole system can stop functioning.

[Dunkan77]

1 hour ago, Windows7ge said:

Well do understand that a motherboard is made up of 100's of individual components, resistors, VRM's, mosfets, different kinds of processors, south bridge (in charge of SATA bus, PCH, and other slower control system, North Bridge processor controls all the PCI-e lanes (not always true but usually), power delivery for the CPU, etc, etc, any of these 100's of little components can stop working and if it's a mission critical piece the whole system can stop functioning.

Yeah but what would most likely have died? Because this motherboard has had one of the most boring lives for a mobo: an LN2 mobo gets a non K CPU that's UNDERvolted I have to mention to 1.13V @ 4,2GHz. And no the voltage isn't too low I checked I did some long benches to get a stable voltage on the cores.

[Windows7ge]

6 hours ago, Dunkan77 said:

Yeah but what would most likely have died? Because this motherboard has had one of the most boring lives for a mobo: an LN2 mobo gets a non K CPU that's UNDERvolted I have to mention to 1.13V @ 4,2GHz. And no the voltage isn't too low I checked I did some long benches to get a stable voltage on the cores.

Unfortunately that's beyond my knowledge, my best guess would be the South Bridge controller. If it runs hot over long periods of time (couple years) it'll die an early death. The South Bridge also commonly considered the PCH (Platform Controller Hub) controller is a chip that doesn't like being hot. If it's too hot for too long (degree of heat varies but lets say it's roasting at 85°C 100% of the time) it'll die early and this is in charge of all your SATA ports and some other motherboard functions. If this goes your motherboard will be dead. If you're having serious issues while in OS it could also be it. You mentioned that sometimes the system would refuse to register that a OS was on any drive. The South Bridge would be in charge of that.