Should I just get a new motherboard ?


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I am in Toronto where we have been experiencing a blackout because of freezing rain - 400000 people without power.

I had power the whole time but it seems like a temporary outage caused my MB to be ruined.. my computer won't turn on. Took it to a repair guy who figured out the power supply is working fine but the motherboard took the hit..he said it's a garbage MB - asrock and I should change it. But I am stll under warranty

 

ASRock B85M Pro4 LGA 1150 Intel B85 HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 Micro ATX Intel Motherboard

 

 

That's the motherboard - I can send it in and get a new one or should I just buy a new one ? I paid $99 for it

 

The repair man also didn't like my power supply which is a CORSAIR CX series CX500 500W ATX12V v2.3 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

 

 

I paid $60 for it..

I have this case http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811139008 


 

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Replace the MB since it's still under warranty and find a new repair guy\gal, there's nothing wrong with your choices of hardware and it's not their place to claim you bought junk unless it's really bad, like bargain bin hardware, then I might say something but not trash their choices 

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Replace the MB since it's still under warranty and find a new repair guy\gal, there's nothing wrong with your choices of hardware and it's not their place to claim you bought junk unless it's really bad, like bargain bin hardware, then I might say something but not trash their choices 

Well put sir +1

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Yeah Corsair PSUs are great, And while I never used Asrock myself, they seem to be used by quite a few people. Not like you have an ECS motherboard....

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Yeah Corsair PSUs are great, And while I never used Asrock myself, they seem to be used by quite a few people. Not like you have an ECS motherboard....

 

Asrock is an Asus offshoot. They should be pretty decent.

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Also if you live in Toronto or the general area your first place you should be looking at is Canada Computers instead of newegg. But no, there's nothing wrong with those pieces of hardware.

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You guys can't fault the repairman, he's like most people when it comes to computers, he had a bad ASRock board and now hates ever product they've ever made. Sound perfectly rational to me :laugh:

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A few years ago asrock had a comical reputation. Are they better these days?

I've built a few asrock mobo machines so far, one I gave to my son, it's about 4 or 5 years old now, still running fine

the others, well at least 1 of them I can report as still working fine as it belongs to a friend, whom I see regularly, so from where I'm standing, I would say yes

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I have a few thing to say.

 

Firstly, your Corsair CX-500 is manufactured by Channel Well (CWT). While the CX series is the entry level power supply from Corsair, it is really able to deliver its nominal voltage.

 

This is really good because while your Corsair CX-500 is really able to supply 500W, many cheap PSU cannot.  For example, a while back, I bought Thermaltake Purepower W0100RU (500W), but it is really only able to deliver 405W!

 

I don't think you repair man is knowledgeable enough to give you advise.

 

 

Secondly, unless you have specific problems with the motherboard before it died, there's no reason spent money to replace it with a different model since it's under warranty.

 

Here's the rule I have: unless the product is worth less than the shipping cost, sent it in for repair/replacement under warranty.

 

 

Thirdly, get a new repair man.

 

Even if he is right and ASRock produce a lot of bad motherboard (I am am not saying that this is the case), he is not in the business of criticizing you and your choice.

 

Some of my college friends have me repair their computers and a lot of them have Foxconn motherboard, and while I don't like Foxconn motherboards, I don't go tell them how horrible they are.

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Yeah Corsair PSUs are great, And while I never used Asrock myself, they seem to be used by quite a few people. Not like you have an ECS motherboard....

 

I have two ECS motherboards for years: they both still work perfectly fine today.

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Although it may slip by the mobo maker it probably isn't a warranty related failure...

 

Did you have the computer behind a surge protector? As this sounds like you possibly experienced a power surge and this killed the board. In the best case scenario your PSU would have picked up the spike and killed itself cutting off the power or managed to safely shutdown in time to prevent it from making it up stream to your equipment. Were you able to test everything else in the machine? As more than just the board could have died.

 

Although the board itself may or may not be a crap brand I don't think it was the board at fault here...

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Although it may slip by the mobo maker it probably isn't a warranty related failure...

 

Did you have the computer behind a surge protector? As this sounds like you possibly experienced a power surge and this killed the board. In the best case scenario your PSU would have picked up the spike and killed itself cutting off the power or managed to safely shutdown in time to prevent it from making it up stream to your equipment. Were you able to test everything else in the machine? As more than just the board could have died.

 

Although the board itself may or may not be a crap brand I don't think it was the board at fault here...

 

I generally wouldn't be telling the manufacturer that there was a speculative surge if my board stopped working. I'd just tell them that the board stopped working otherwise you are giving them excuses to deny you warranty even though neither they or the OP know if there was a surge or if the motherboard was just faulty and died because the power was cut abruptly.

 

A number of years ago, when I needed my touchpad replaced under warranty, Dell tech support inquired how I got a copy of Windows from on my pre-installed Ubuntu Laptop (msdnaa at the time) even though that information wasn't relevant to the issue at hand. I had already literally told them I tested it in Linux, Windows, and the GUI BIOS; and that the right mouse button wasn't working in anything. They then went abruptly to the line of questioning of the origin of the OS and it just appeared to me that they were looking for reasons to try to deny me replacement/repair. I was imagining that had they wanted to tell me some crap about how pirated windows voids the warranty on the laptop. I imagine they got that quite a lot with those Ubuntu pre-installed laptops. It was approximately 50 dollars cheaper than pre-installed Windows version iirc.

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I generally wouldn't be telling the manufacturer that there was a speculative surge if my board stopped working. I'd just tell them that the board stopped working otherwise you are giving them excuses to deny you warranty even though neither they or the OP know if there was a surge or if the motherboard was just faulty and died because the power was cut abruptly.

 

A number of years ago, when I needed my touchpad replaced under warranty, Dell tech support inquired how I got a copy of Windows from on my pre-installed Ubuntu Laptop (msdnaa at the time) even though that information wasn't relevant to the issue at hand. I had already literally told them I tested it in Linux, Windows, and the GUI BIOS; and that the right mouse button wasn't working in anything. They then went abruptly to the line of questioning of the origin of the OS and it just appeared to me that they were looking for reasons to try to deny me replacement/repair. I was imagining that had they wanted to tell me some crap about how pirated windows voids the warranty on the laptop. I imagine they got that quite a lot with those Ubuntu pre-installed laptops. It was approximately 50 dollars cheaper than pre-installed Windows version iirc.

I wasn't giving the OP any guidelines or definitive answers so much as giving him what I see as a very likely cause. That being said, I too would be very cautious about giving this information to the manufacturer for the reasons you already mentioned.

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I have two ECS motherboards for years: they both still work perfectly fine today.

 

I didn't say all ECS motherboards blow up within weeks, they are only lower quality than let's say Asus...

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If you can get the motherboard replaced under warranty, then of course you should get it replaced and not just get another one out of pocket.

 

If you really insist on not using that motherboard anymore, then sell the replacement, and put that money towards another one.

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