if a system needs to reboot several times when start up, is it the MB or PSU?

[Legendary Gamer]

How long did your X470 last? And how long is the other Gigabyte and Asus last?

The Gigabyte X470 Ultra Gaming lasted a total of two weeks. The X570 ASUS was DOA out of the box. My Gigabyte Z370's have been going strong for about 2 years (the one with the 8600 and the 9600 is probably only a year and a helf). I have had an Asrock board last me 5 years before. My MSI B350 is still going strong and I purchased a 1700 for it right when the Ryzen processors were introduced. I have an X300 (unknown chipset for a midget system) ASROCK A300 with an AMD 3400G in it right now as well. That's 6 months to a year old and I have changed the processor on it 3 times. So, I have been flexing the hell out of the motherboard.

I suppose it really comes down to how much love the motherboards got at the factory. Sounds kind of odd, however, almost any piece of hardware can fail.

 

[SmokeRngs]

No hardware is going to live forever. Even the best made motherboard will fail and if you stop to think about the number of components on a motherboard and everything the motherboard must do correctly at all times just to keep a system running it's almost amazing they will last as long as they do.

I just had an Abit IP35 die on me a couple of months ago. Yes, you read that right an Abit board was still up and running. It had been running for over ten years and had a mix of normal and solid state capacitors. What caused the death of the motherboard? Not the capacitors as every single one of them looks just fine. However, there are a number of discolored areas around the VRMs. What that motherboard was doing was almost exactly what you originally described except that it finally gave up the ghost and wouldn't power on anymore.

I'm also a big fan of Gigabye motherboards, at least from around the time of socket 775. I still have a Gigabyte GA-965p-DS3 motherboard still up and running. The board is 12 years old or thereabout. It started with an E6400 which about a year later was replaced with a Q6600 and has had the Q6600 in it the whole time and most of the time overclocked and at the moment running 3.2Ghz. They were wonderful boards but I'm pretty sure I won the lottery on this one.

The only reason I'm running an Asus board right now is due to price. At the time of purchase I needed to go quite cheap. I would have preferred a new Gigabyte motherboard but a decent one in my price range was about $10 more and did not have the CPU/motherboard combo discount for $30 so it was a no go. The reason I didn't want an Asus board is because literally every Asus board I ever owned has died and had to be RMA'd. A couple of people I built systems for back in the day had the exact same issue with multiple Asus motherboards.

The fact of the matter is no component is going to last forever. While the lifetime of the board is a little odd at 3.5 years that doesn't mean something simply didn't get fried. My Abit board ran just fine with a 3.6Ghz overclock on a Q6600 for years but finally the VRMs gave out. That board could have given out at basically any point in time over the years it was running. It simply just happens. Not all parts of the board are perfect and it's very possible a single component of your motherboard just reached its end of life. Hell, the issue may not even be the fault of the motherboard. A power surge, dirty power or even a lightning strike in the vicinity may have weakened components of the motherboard and it "wore out" prematurely.