Motherboard on its way out?

[Bonebreaker777]

Hi

So recently (up to 6 months) I started to have odd issue with the main home NAS / server, which is running pretty much 24/7. It started with the PC not booting properly when turned off (only turned off for a couple of hours to clean it) then when attempting to start, an endless cycle of boot attempts appears - literally just HDDs spinning up, no boot screen but before anything can happen, it shuts down then restarts (I think the restarts are due to a setting in BIOS forcing the PC to power up if an unexpected power loss appears). This can go on for hours without a change. If one would like to remedy the situation, one must disturb some elements (can it be simply the SATA data or power connections, RAM modules, etc). My initial suspicion was the PSU but after 2 x different PSUs yielded the same results as my own, I think it is the motherboard.

PSU test: One PSU was new, one borrowed, one my current. With all 3 x the server behaved the same. Tried to even unplug everything but the unnecessary - no change in results (meaning it went as dorma.

Also started to see odd I/O errors randomly (so far happened 2x in the last 4 months) on one of the HDDs. Oddly onlyb one HDD out of 3x had these errors - hence my suspicion about the motherboard )as I ruled the PSU out, the HDDs or the RAM. The CPU can't be so only the motherboard remains.

The problem is that it's a 1155 socket, which is increasingly hard to find not to mention the horrendous prices.

Am I on the right path or you have a different idea? Thanks

[Dashers]

Sounds reasonable. I've had I/O controllers go belly up before. Also worth changing your drive cables, cheap and can also cause problems.

When I've had similar issues with old hardware, I've often had to replace the motherboard and CPU, but generally an entry level cheapo system tends to be better than whatever obsolete kit it's replacing.

[Bonebreaker777]

Well, I changed the cabling so hopefully will have tangible results or better to say the lack off (no I/O errors).

Can't really agree with the entry level cheap options. My current system (Ivy Bridge Pentium) is more power efficient, faster (least the CPU part) and less limited toward future expansion that the system I had in mind to replace it with (AM1).

Not sure what to do - replace my PSU to make more space in the case for a 4th 3.5" HDD and add the 4th HDD to the RAID or just save the money for a replacement MoBo and CPU?

Just for comparison an AM1 system would cost £65(ish), a Haswell system would cost £95(ish) and a Skylake system with DDR3 capability would cost around £110(ish). Hmm, which way to go???

[Dashers]

You could go the other way and go big. Go Skylake DDR4. It'll cost you more now, but you won't get any more use out of that DDR3 memory within a couple of years.

I guess I still consider Ivy Bridge cutting edge

[Csikasz]

I always use few years old PCs for NAS, smaller is the form factor, better for me. They are coming about free and I can just throw them away when it's game over as I won't use them for anything else, only for files. Usually I use a notebook hdd or tiny SSD for system and all the rest just data drives. I stopped using RAID at home, however all those PCs are capable for RAID.