How long does a motherboard last? A computer motherboard can last from several days to decades; it mainly depends on how you use it and partially on the accidents and poor quality. View more information about motherboard from Author Helen’s articles on MiniTool partition editor website.
How Long Should a Motherboard Last?
How long do motherboards last? It mostly depends on how long will a motherboard fail due to various reasons and mainly because of hardware failures. Hardware failure refers to the motherboard components damage as a result of power supply problems, extreme temperatures, the humidity of the air, physical damage, etc.
Power supply issues are usually caused by water spilled on the desktop tower, unstable power supply (power surge, unexpected power off, too high or too low voltage). If you take care of your machine and avoid those matters, your motherboard will last as long as it can, say decades.
Extreme temps mean that you put your computer working in an environment with a temperature that is not good for the machine. For example, you launch many processes on your PC and keep it working over 24 hours; the temp of in the host case is very high (e.g. 70 °C) but you don’t have a cooling system within it. In such situations, some equipment on your motherboard will be “heat down”.
The air humidity can also influence the lifespan of a motherboard. Been placed into an environment of very high humidity, the water in the air will corrode the metal parts of the board. The longer the time, the much corrosion is. Finally, someday, you will find your computer can’t work due one of the motherboard components failed to operate due to corrosion damage.
Finally, your motherboard may crash down due to physical damage. Any irreplaceable part on the motherboard gets damaged physically during the movement or a check process will cause motherboard failure. Such irreplaceable items are CPU socket, GPU slots/RAM slots and slots for other usage, USB ports, northbridge or southbridge, BIOS (basic input/output system), CMOS battery, PSU and so on.
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Generally, good quality of motherboard components can reduce the chance of damages above. To ensure the reliability of mobo, you are recommended to buy motherboards come from big brands like MSI, Gigabyte, ASRock and Asus.
How Long Does a Motherboard Last?
For how long will a motherboard last, it also depends on its owner’s preferences. If you are a computer enthusiastic (especially game enthusiastic) and always want to keep up with the newest technologies, you may find your motherboard cannot last longer than several years, 3 to 5 years for instance.
When a motherboard is designed, it is based on software technology then. After several years, the related software has upgraded many times. Your old motherboard can hardly operate the very latest software versions. Even if it can, you may probably get slow performance.
Especially, as a game player, you have to add or replace GPU, RAM, hard disk, etc. on to your motherboard. Therefore, it requires your motherboard has enough slots to contain the additional components. Once you run out of your slots, or the existing slots can’t carry your new components, you may consider upgrading your motherboard.
Wrap Things Up
All in all, for the question of how long does a PC motherboard last, there is no fixed answer. It depends on how you make use of it, treating carefully or abuse. Also, the unavoidable accidents can affect the lifespan of a motherboard. In general, a typical PC motherboard can last vary from several months to decades. Most often, it will work for 10 – 20 years.
About The Author
Position: Columnist
Like many of you, Helen was once annoyed by computer problems such as “could not reconnect all network drives in Windows”, “CPU does not have POPCNT”, and “Is SSD good for long-term storage”. Later, such issues haven’t bothered her since she became a tech writer. Helen has even managed to help lots of readers solve their problems.