How long do motherboards last for?

Phil2008

Phil2008

Phil2008

Soldato
Joined
17 Dec 2004
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Or is that like saying how long is a bit of string? My board will be 3yrs old at xmas and its still going strong with my fx55 clawhammer cpu, thats also the same age as the motherboard.
 
speedy2004 said:
Or is that like saying how long is a bit of string?
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Absolutely, I had an old Supermicro dual PIII board that I bought probably 8-9 years ago (which a friend has been running 24/7 for the last 6 yrs) that only died the other month. The 1.2GHz Athlon that replaced it is still running strong.

We used to use a stack, and I mean 10 piled one on top of another, of IBM PS/2 30s as LAN bridges in the office and they were at least 12 years old and still going strong when we finally ditched them.
 
they tend to last longer the less you change settings in bios i find. if you changed things everyday and reset cmos everyday i reckon it would die a lot quicker than an identical board just being changed once.

you should get a few years out of it tho, make sure no dust gets in your computer too.
 
clocka said:
they tend to last longer the less you change settings in bios i find. if you changed things everyday and reset cmos everyday i reckon it would die a lot quicker than an identical board just being changed once.

you should get a few years out of it tho, make sure no dust gets in your computer too.
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I give it a good blow out every 3 months or so, and the bois reset its self when power fails. Think it needs a new batt, but its always done it
 
I bought an Abit NF7-S mobo, when they first came out around 2001~ish. My nephew has it at the moment and that is going strong.

I have had my DFI Lany Party mobo now for 3 years and that is going strong, will be upgrading in a couple of months, no doubt my nephew will be getting it as usual. it will last him for another 3 years as well ;)
 
ive got a gigabyte ga6bxc slot 1 motherboard with a p3 450 @ 600 and it still works totally fine. Thats from before 1999 I think. At college we have 486s that still work totally fine and lots of original Pentiums. I remember I had to solder a battery retainer onto a 386 motherboard running an SX25 processor just a few weeks ago and the board still functioned.
 
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ghgh said:
ive got a gigabyte ga6bxc slot 1 motherboard with a p3 450 @ 600 and it still works totally fine. Thats from before 1999 I think. At college we have 486s that still work totally fine and lots of original Pentiums.
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I can go one older than that. (your P3 anyway)
I have a QDI P2 board (one of the first AGP boards) that still works.

I do wonder that modern day stuff gets so hot that it gets brittle.
Yes I know we use bigger coolers / case fans etc, but modern boards do run warmer than the older ones.

My kds get my hand downs, and so far 2 have died..Soyo P3 board..ASUS A7M266.
Both had a hard life tho.

This is what changed though. The ASUS board above was one of the first Socket A DDR boards, and when it died I was able to replace it with an ABIT NF7.
So in a period of 5 years, I was stlll able to use the CPU and memory on a brand new board.

Let think...how long did Socket 939 last..
 
ive had a few boards die namely:

Abit NF7-S rev 2.0 - unknown - didnt post
Asus A7A266-E - unknown, kept crashing
PC Chips M810LMR 7.1a - caps went
PC Chips M848ALU - unknown, just didnt post
Epox 8rda - caps went
Epox 8k7a - capt went
 
I've noticed a trend, not only in mobos but almost all electronics, things from days past could take a beating but lately stuff seems very fragile. Of all the mobo deaths i've had most have been in the last 8 or so years, the older stuff seems bulletproof and i've got rusted (literally) 286 boards that'll boot up on first fire. Still got a few socket 370, SS7, Slot 1 etc.. boards that'll work in a heartbeat if i ever use em again. Even had a resurgence a few years ago with some Slot 1 boards i thought would never post again when they brought out Tualatin cpus and some old dogs that once housed PIIs and early slot 1 Celerons actually ran again at 1.4, 1.6GHz etc.. (o'ced of course ;) )
 
clients asus a7n8x board is dying, its got leaking capacitors so looks like that system may not have long to last.

iv noticed that too, old stuff used to be built solid, new stuff breaks too easily.

but that gigabyte board that uses solid capacitors should be be interesting to see how its long term reliability is.
 
The Dell XPS P133 I bought in 1996 still boots Win98 fine :) May seem a bit creaky but essential for properly playing all those old 3dfx games that can't hack XP.
 
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