Three dead GA-B85M-HD3 boards

[Kangerm00se]

Hi

I've got a mysterious problem that has killed three GA-B85M-HD3 boards within one month. Having good experiences with Gigabyte otherwise I'm pretty sure this isn't a coincidence.

Three years ago I built this setup:

Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-B85M-HD3
CPU: i5-4440
Ram: Geil 8 GB DDR3-1333 Kit
PSU: Sharkoon SHA450-12EUP
HDD: Deskstar 7K1000.C, 500 GB
The case and an internal card reader were already 6 years old at the time. There is also an old Linksys WiFi card and a standard DVD drive in the computer.

About two months ago the system died. All components worked well on another computer except the motherboard. As it had been on nearly full-time I didn't to much of it and just ordered a new motherboard; GA-B85M-HD3 R4 this time.

This works well for two months. After that, again the motherboard was dead. The most likely suspect was the power supply being corrupt, so I swapped the motherboard for a new one (also GA-B85M-HD3 R4), and changed the PSU for a brand new Corsair CX430.

Only two days this time ... and motherboard number three died. You can imagine that I won't be running to the shop for a new board anymore until I really figure out what is going on. I already changed the PSU with the last motherboard replacement, so I can exclude that. However I can't really think of another component which is capable to destroy motherboards but keeps working fine itself.

We did look into the power in the house. The voltage is within 220-230 range (Belgium; that is normal voltage here), but of course we don't know exactly at the time the motherboard died. Also no other electronic devices show strange behaviour.

Just to explain, with "dead" I mean (in each of the three cases): using absolute minimum setup (CPU, one stick of RAM, PSU) nothing happens when I try to power it up (connecting Power-on on motherboard). There is no strange smell and nothing visually wrong.

So, my questions for you:
- Any idea what could cause the motherboards to fail? Number one could have just died from age (even thouh three years isn't old); but numbers 2 and 3 certainly aren't a coincidene. Please note that the system has worked each time for at least two days, so I don't think I did something wrong with the installation.
- Is there anything I could measure on the board using a multimeter that could better diagnose the problem?


Thank you very much in advance!

 

[clifford64]

If the boards are new, there should be a warranty on them. I would check to see if you can get a warranty. The PSU should cause any bad power coming in to regulate to good power, but you could always put in a surge protector or a decent battery backup which would help regulate the voltage coming in before it hits the PSU. I have never heard of SHARKOON PSU so I would try to swap that out with a better known brand with a silver or gold rating to give better efficiency. I know you said you swapped it out to the corsair one, but you still have the other listed.