Hi all - I'm dealing with a nasty problem here. I built my computer some five years ago, with an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe motherbboard. A couple of years after that, the chipset fan started making horrible noises and died, so I replaced it with a third-party one (the Asus folks never got back to my warranty request). However, that one didn't perform as well, and I had instability issues if the ambient temp in the room the computer is in rose above 80 degrees or so (random restarts would result). This happened again a few days ago when the temperature was between 85 and 90, and I plowed through the random restarts. Finally, I got fed up and investigated, and discovered that the replacement fan had *also died*. The chipset temperatures were getting to just over 40*C, I'm surprised that was causing such problems but I guess the heat tolerance is low.
The A/C came on and the problems appeared to subside, but then I started getting random bluescreens every 45 minutes or so. After each bluescreen, more files (probably ones that I had open at point of bluescreen, mostly application exes/config files) got corrupted, and after a few rounds of that, it hit my OS files and Windows is now corrupted and refuses to boot. The BIOS refuses to recognize non-PS/2 keyboards on top of that, as well.
So, my question is - I'm almost certain I need a new motherboard (the other parts of my PC are less outdated and I'd prefer not to buy a whole new one), but what are the chances that something else, like my hard drive and/or memory, is also shot? Is it worth getting a replacement motherboard to test the hypothesis (and is my diagnosis correct?) My hope is that the chipset went haywire and the motherboard's HDD controllers started freaking out and corrupting data, but that's a best-case scenario.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I'd really appreciate quick responses, since my work laptop can only do so much and I need my main PC healthy again or replaced pretty quickly.
The A/C came on and the problems appeared to subside, but then I started getting random bluescreens every 45 minutes or so. After each bluescreen, more files (probably ones that I had open at point of bluescreen, mostly application exes/config files) got corrupted, and after a few rounds of that, it hit my OS files and Windows is now corrupted and refuses to boot. The BIOS refuses to recognize non-PS/2 keyboards on top of that, as well.
So, my question is - I'm almost certain I need a new motherboard (the other parts of my PC are less outdated and I'd prefer not to buy a whole new one), but what are the chances that something else, like my hard drive and/or memory, is also shot? Is it worth getting a replacement motherboard to test the hypothesis (and is my diagnosis correct?) My hope is that the chipset went haywire and the motherboard's HDD controllers started freaking out and corrupting data, but that's a best-case scenario.
Thanks for reading, everyone. I'd really appreciate quick responses, since my work laptop can only do so much and I need my main PC healthy again or replaced pretty quickly.
