Do motherboards die slowly?

Hardware Motherboards
1

Has anyone heard of a motherboard that died slowly? I just had my second SSD die in 3 years and while doing some troubleshooting it occurred to me that my MOBO could be killing my SSD's

Specs:
https://pcpartpicker.com/list/VJnftJ

Story Time:
So I had my SSD die on me a few days ago (second Samsung 850 EVO 250gb). It was slowing down with use and my computer appeared to have shut down while in sleep mode several times during its last week or so.

I pulled the SSD and ran some tests. I tried using different ports on my rig, it wouldn't recognize it. I hooked up the SSD to a old motherboard and it recognized it, but it wouldn't boot. I figured that was that and the SSD was just dead.

FF>> to today when I got a new SSD (Sandisk SDSSDA-24OG-G25) and a fresh retail version of windows. Well I go to hook it up in the same spot as the old one, same power and SATA port and nothing happens. The MOBO doesn't recognize it, just like the dead one.

I check the BIOS, update it accordingly and check again... nothing changes. I then put the New SSD in the hot swap bay. The MOBO sees it and I go ahead and install windows.

I then proceed to update all my drivers that belong to the MOBO. I then turn everything off. Move the SSD to the old SATA connection and then boot it up. Well guess what, the BIOS recognizes it.

I wasn't expecting this to do anything, but it seems like it did? I still don't believe that's what fixed it. I think I just got "lucky".
(End Story Time)

So anyway I have a feeling my MOBO is dying slowly, starting with the SATA port.

Other possibilities why my SSD's keep dying:

  • PIA was writing too many logs to my SSD. I believe this is what happened with my original Samsung SSD and I thought I fixed it by adding a "nolog" file to it, as recommended by their support team when I bought my second SSD. This would explain the rapid death of the SSD, but not explain why my SATA port wasn't recognizing a new SSD. (I have since stopped using PIA)

  • I was having a similar issue with a upgraded business version of windows 10, as described by Wendell on a episode of the WAN show (at the 21:50 mark). This would explain the degradation of speed and might explain the death of the SSD, but that's all)

  • It could be a combination of things. Hardware is a pain to diagnose.

I just want to know if anyone has had a MOBO die on them slowly.

Am I playing with fire by continuing to use a MOBO that might be dying? I'm still baffled by the SATA port coming back to life as if there was never a problem at all.

I am no longer using that port BTW.

2

Of course certain parts on a board could fail over time due bad solder or what not..
Electronics allways degrade over time, but there is no thumb rule for how long a said board would last.
Your issue could also have something to do with a bad psu, or a bad sata power connector or cable.

3

Maybe a bad sata port / chipset.

4

I have heard of lower end Intel motherboards with poor quality southbridge chipsets slowly dying. If the sata port you're trying is piped through a third party chipset it seems at least possible that a degrading chipset would cause spotty connectivity and strange errors. I assume with error correction during read/write cycles if the chipset is giving bad data due to degradation then it would cause excessive writes to the disk completely unknown to the OS too. But that's just my guess and i'm not a computer science major.

5

Are you using a 6 series chipset?
because i remember this:
http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2589

6

everything is dying slowly, even stars burn out.

1 Like
7

Is it slowly dying or living fastly?

8
9

motherboards degrade over time like any other component, but if it's killing things, it's likely that something on the motherboard has kicked the bucket a bit. assuming nothing goes wrong before its time, there's no reason a decent motherboard can't last decades without major issues.

10

Are you sure its not bad power? Are you running a UPS?

I had an old 775 board fail to post unless it was from a cold boot until i finally just quit posting all together. It would fail at the ram test. No matter what combination of parts I tried it didnt like anything. I tried the components it had in another system and they all seemed fine otherwise so I just gave up on the board and bought another box from craigslist to put the other parts in which is currently running fine. So I would have to agree that sometimes they can fail slowly.