How to Spot a PC Motherboard Failure

PC Computer Hardware, like PC motherboards can be stable one second and unstable the next second. This is sadly the way of electronic devices. Here are a few tips to help you spot whether you PC motherboard has failed or encountered an error.


If your desktop computer motherboard or laptop motherboard has a sudden failure, it is quite difficult to miss. In cases like these, your computer usually stops functioning. Before the drastic death, however, you can encounter some weird color displays. Your unit’s led lights may blink on and off and change into a deeper orange or red color. Your computer screen may also flash out a warning to you and churn out different color displays.


Next comes silence. Your computer will simply black out and refuse to boot. In some instances, the death of a PC motherboard will also lead to a premature death of your power supply unit. When it fails, the motherboard can give off quite a strong power surge that can disable your power supply. The power supply usually dies while handling this surge, but in doing so it has protected your other internal computer components from the harmful current. That is at least a bit of good news to hear.


Because the motherboard can take out the power supply along with itself, some people may think that the system failure was caused by the power supply.


Partial motherboard failures are less noticeable than sudden failures. They also come with less theatrics. Partial PC motherboard failures will usually only involve non-functioning ports or sockets. You can end up with a dead USB printer or SATA optical drive if the USB ports and SATA connections of your PC motherboard are affected. This can be silent problem if you do not use the non-functional ports and sockets on your failing PC motherboard.



The moment you realize that your computer motherboard is failing one port at a time, you need to look into a motherboard upgrade. The sooner, the better. Your motherboard may be able to last for a couple of months or years, but it will eventually stop functioning over time.