[SOLVED] Mobo lights went out

[TopHatterCT]

I have an old Asus Rampage III Gene X58 motherboard, and strangely its NB and "Start" and "Reset" lights went out a couple of minutes after fully booting. Fortunately the pc is still running just fine. Is it alright to ignore it for now or is it a sign of something bad is imminent?

 

[Darkbreeze]

When ANYTHING that normally works, stops working, on a motherboard, it is ALWAYS a sign of impending failure. When is anybody's guess, because it could be tomorrow, or next week, or a year from now. But when things stop working especially on a board that old, it generally means the writing is on the wall.

And even if the board actually continues to work for another two or three years, it would be VERY prudent of you to start thinking very seriously about plan B. And at this point in that motherboard's life being about 13 years old (Average motherboard life for daily driver type systems is usually around 5-7 years), plan B probably should not include finding another compatible motherboard. Obviously that MIGHT be an option, but anything else you find is going to be similarly aged and probably not terribly better than what you already have. A waste of money most probably.

So, plan B probably means, at minimum, a new board, CPU and memory. Which could be done relatively cheaply all things considered, and would offer you probably triple the performance of your current system regardless of what CPU you are running in that board.

Even with something like this, the gains would be significant. Again, probably around triple or more considering you'd also gain the ability to use MUCH faster storage devices with it as well.

PCPartPicker Part List

CPU: Intel Core i3-12100F 3.3 GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock Z690 PG Riptide ATX LGA1700 Motherboard ($209.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Trident Z RGB 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 CL18 Memory ($144.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $354.98
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2022-02-05 21:32 EST-0500