Can you test a motherboard to find out if it is defective/dead?

[Michelle Beth]

Hi Tom's Community,

I've looked into breadboarding, and like this technique of testing each component in a system first before putting the entire thing together.

But, I had a question. If you need the motherboard to at least be non-defective to test any other component, what do you do if you happen to have a dead motherboard?

How would you deduce that it was the MB that was the problem?

I assume that you'd come to this conclusion by discovering that no other components appear to be working, and then assume that the problem has a large possibility of being the motherboard itself.

But, is there anyway to test the motherboard itself to find out if it's defective or dead? I'd like to be able to have a definitive answer if the motherboard I purchase does end up being defective, so that when I go to return it, I can tell them for certain that I know it's defective.

Also.. what are the chances of the motherboard having some problem or problems, but still functioning? What I mean I guess is what happens if you get a MB that has some issues, but they appear to be glitches in your system and hard to pinpoint..

Thanks so much for all the help everyone has given me so far.

 

[getochkn]

You're overthinking and assuming your going to get something that's defective, probably because you read horror stories and questions and problems on here.

1. People don't post on here when everything is fine. It's when they have a problem. So even though you may see 10 problems a day about a dead motherboard, that is a very small drop in say 1 million motherboards sold a day around the world.

2. Out of those 10 people with a "dead" motherboard, I would bet at least 4 screwed something up during the install and broke it themselves. Another 2-4 have stupid mistakes like buying a video card and plugging in to their motherboard video and then postings "HEELLLLPPPPZZZZ PLLLLLZZZ NOWWWWWW" So maybe 2/10 of the 10 posts are real DOA motherboards. I have built hundreds of PC's in my company, if not in the thousands over the years, and have had 1, maybe 2, DOA motherboards.


As for diagnosing these problems, the best thing is to have working parts to test with. RAM and video card being the best two. I don't think I have ever bought a CPU and had it dead. CPU's are rareeeeeeely DOA.

First steps usually are install the CPU, don't muck up any pins (common user error), and a RAM chip. Use onboard video if possible, which most boards have nowadays. If that boots, add in the rest of the RAM, GPU, etc.

 

[Michelle Beth]

Thanks a bunch for the help! I think I just become over paranoid.