Computer crashes during network intensive tasks - is the motherboard slowly dying?

[fwtong]

A while ago, I repurposed my ancient machine to be my HTPC. The CPU is an Athlon 64 X2 5200+ running Windows 10 on an Asus MV2 MX SE motherboard. I wouldn't be surprised if this rig is 10+ years old. Even though it's pretty old, it worked well as a HTPC because I only watched files that were encoded in x264 so that the video card did most of the work. Within the last year or two, the computer has been crashing a lot when I've been doing network intensive tasks, like downloading a torrent or watching youtube. Within the last week or two, it's been crashing more frequently when I watch something on youtube - once again, a task that's pretty network intensive. Then tonight, it crashed again, while I was watching something on youtube. However, when I restarted it after the crash, the HTPC connects to the network, but won't connect to the internet. I know that it's not an issue with the cable modem or the router, because everything else on the network, laptop, ipad, phone, etc... connects to the internet just fine - I'm able to write this post on a different computer. I disconnected the internet cable from the HTPC and tried using a USB wireless adapter to see if there was something wrong with the cable or the ethernet port, same issue. I can connect to the network via wifi, but it still says that the network itself is not connected to the internet. I ran chkdsk, and it says the hard drive is fine. Last year, when this started happening, I put it through memtest, and the memory came through fine. Since the common thread seems to network intensive activities, I'm wondering if the networking hardware on the motherboard is dead, or if it's something else going on. But, before I went out and spent a couple hundred dollars building a new machine, I wanted to see if anyone knows what's going on.

 

[mikeymikec]

Does a BSOD occur or does it just spontaneously reboot? If it BSOD's, knowing what the BSOD code is would be useful to troubleshoot the problem.

Unless you're playing YouTube in full HD the bandwidth usage should be pretty minimal. Considering you've already tried a wifi adapter, it can't be just the network hardware that's died.

Admittedly it could be a sign of board failure but that would be last on a long list of other possibilities.

 

[fwtong]

Neither... it just freezes. Maybe I'll just build a new system. I already was planning on replacing the GPU, which is the single most expensive part. Throwing in a new motherboard, cpu and RAM won't be too much more. Especially since I can probably skimp on the CPU and motherboard, since the GPU handles the video decoding.

Thanks for the input.