Realistically, what's the expected lifespan of a cheap motherboard these days?

[GagHalfrunt]

I don't do much gaming and don't need a lot of power. My needs are more of the web surfing, general neffing, programming, email, video watching, music playing etc. Current box is getting slow to boot and some programs acting funky, no doubt the result of a million installs/uninstalls leaving remnants behind and clogging things up. Decided to do a format and clean O/S install to get back to pristine state and put the O/S on an SSD as it's currently on an old school 7200rpm HD. Then I got to thinking, this machine is old. Almost 4 years now of heavy use and no trouble. While I don't need more power, it seems silly to go through the trouble of full backup and O/S reinstall if the hardware is on its last legs anyway and I'll need to buy a new MB/CPU combo soon which will force another format/reinstall.

It's an almost 4 year old Biostar A75MG socket FM1 and A6 Llano CPU, never a moments trouble with the hardware and no visible signs of impending failure like bulging/leaking caps, graphics errors, overheats, etc. Runs like a clock. But for how much longer? New CPU/MB now or is it reasonable to expect to get another 2 years out of it?

 

[UsandThem]

It's like throwing a dart at the wall. Some will last under a year, and some could last possibly 10 years without issue.

If it is running well, and you don't see any caps beginning to bulge or leak, I would think it has a good shot of making it another 2+ years easily. Some of the real heavy overclockers here are still using Sandy Bridge motherboards since from 2011, and I still see some people in the 'general hardware' sub-forum asking about adding a new video card to their Bloomfield systems (2008-2010) and using them as a kid's gaming PC.

 

[VirtualLarry]

It's like throwing a dart at the wall. Some will last under a year, and some could last possibly 10 years without issue.

If it is running well, and you don't see any caps beginning to bulge or leak, I would think it has a good shot of making it another 2+ years easily. Some of the real heavy overclockers here are still using Sandy Bridge motherboards since from 2011, and I still see some people in the 'general hardware' sub-forum asking about adding a new video card to their Bloomfield systems (2008-2010) and using them as a kid's gaming PC.

That's a good way to put it. My personal observations, back when we had the "capacitor plague", some boards would only last a year. For boards with only electrolytic caps, that weren't "plague" caps, I would say they could probably last 3-5 years, maybe longer if they were temp + humidity-controlled, and dust-free.

For a board with all solid caps, well, my GA-P35-DS3R Gigabyte P35 boards are still kicking, despite being overclocked for pretty-much all their lives. I did have to reduce the OC on one of them, though. (That could be a PSU issue, the PSUs on them are a few years old too.) They're from around the 2007 era.

So I would say, all solid caps, probably last a good 10 years, who knows, maybe even 20. I have yet to have a board with solid caps fail, but those P35 boards are about the oldest boards I have.

For some boards, they have solid caps in the VRM section (for CPU and DRAM), and electrolytics elsewhere (audio, PCI slot power buffer caps, etc.). Those seem to last a good long time too. A friend of mine has an AM2+ board from 2007-2008-ish era, with a (non-overclocked) Athlon II X4 (rating, 95-100W TDP, board is rated for 140W TDP), and it's still kicking too.

I would say, generally, if your board isn't giving you trouble, and you don't have performance issues with your current usage and tasks, then you don't need to replace it pre-emptively. It may last 5 more years.

Usually, if a board is going, you'll see signs. I've seen this on cheaply-made OEM branded AMD rigs, mostly, due to cost-cutting.

Blue-screens, reboots, general random issues. Or ethernet / sound failures.

Edit: To add, I know someone with a P4 rig that is still dear to them, and as far as I know, that's still running fine, although I replaced the HDD probably 3 years ago. I don't remember if that board had solid caps. It was an HP though, I think.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://techreport.com/news/30892/gigabyte-builds-brix-on-apollo-lake-socs

Get one of these... I plan on trying one out for a while. I'm curious how much of a boost Goldmont cores give over the Bay Trail / Silvermont Atoms.

(Currently typing this on a J1900 Brix unit, works pretty well in Linux Mint with the newest somewhat multi-threaded version of Firefox.)

 

[Torn Mind]

Motherboards can last a long, long time if the suppliers aren't messing things up. Dell got screwed over by Nichicon during their period of capacitor issues, and Nichicon is a beloved "Japanese" maker of caps.

 

[RLGL]

Since the mid 90's my average board life has been about 2.5 years. This sample is with 2 builds various mfgr's.
Intel and AMD based, all mid-priced.

 

[severus]

I had an Abit IP35-E, which in essence was a cheap P35 motherboard, and it lasted the entire time I owned it which was from sometime in 2007 to 2011. It may still be running in whoever's PC I sold it to. I've had a Biostar TZ68A+, which was the least expensive Z68 board back in 2011 and it's still running well. I know these aren't exactly $40 motherboards, but they are in the $80 range and that is considered cheap to many.

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Got some cheap AM2 boards still kicking it after 10 years.

 

[evident]

i have gigabyte Z68-MA-D2H-B3 since whenever sandy bridge came out and it's still kicking along fine.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you get one with good caps and take care of it*, they'll probably either fail within the warranty period, or they'll last longer than you can stand to keep using the computer.

* By which I mean regular dusting, don't short it on the case, don't swap it into a new case every weekend, don't run it in one of those open-top "bench" cases where your cat can lick it, don't run it too hot or too cold, don't overclock or overvolt or otherwise stress the VRMs, make sure your PSU is providing proper voltage, make sure you have it on a surge protector and/or power filter, and keep your greasy booger hooks off of the thing. Just set it up and leave it the heck alone!

 

[Hi-Fi Man]

All the boards I have owned that haven't had plague caps have lasted for a very long time. I used to have an ASUS P5WD2 Premium (socket LGA 775 955X chipset; netburst chips only) that I ended up giving to a friend and he gave it to his sister and I know this board still works fine. This board ran a G0 65nm Pentium D oced up to 5GHz. Another board I still have that works perfectly is my MSI K8N Neo2 Platinum (socket 939, AGP 8x, nForce 3 Ultra).

So good boards can last much longer than ten years.