When to retire a functioning board?

[freshfeesh]

I built my first PC in 2005, using a DFI Lanparty NF4 Ultra-D and a socket 939 AMD 4800. After some initial suffering with some RAM settings in BIOS, it has been running like a champ ever since. Needless to say, it wasn't a gaming rig, but it has faithfully performed everything else that I've asked of it ever since, including loads of Photoshop and circa 2006 3D modelling software, a couple OS upgrades and a move to a bigger,better case. I have grown to respect it.

The writing has been on the wall for a couple years however, as more and more tech comes online that it can't support, and because I strongly wanted to move my workflow to a machine with lots ECC ram. I just retired it from primary duties last weekend, and it's now sitting dark and bare on the counter. It sill looks like the day I put it together. None on the caps are bulging. I have no reason to suspect an impending hardware failure.

I'm going to repurpose it for something. My question is, should I assume it's going to die any minute, or can I reasonably trust important files to it as a home server? I know not to trust hard drives in the least after 5 years, but are motherboards or processors known to go bad after a certain amount of time? I can either repurpose it as a server, a useful function that I care about, or a media client in my garage, where if it takes a 2x4 to the head I won't care too much.

 

[Spazturtle]

It should last, I'd re-use it.

 

[The Lurker]

Solid caps or electrolytic?

 

[jojo69]

DFI NF2 ultras in 462 are still $$ on ebay, those were nice boards

whatever you do don't scrap it, some retro freak on here will recap it if need be

 

[Pitbully]

I still have a DFI Lanparty P45 board running my s775 Q9550@4Ghz. Its been folding 24/7 running the cpu @100% across all 4 cores for nearly its entire life. It only nets me like 10k per day now, but DFI made some great shit IMO. Wish DFI never went under.

 

[freshfeesh]

The Lurker - there are definitely electrolytics on the board, although I don't know if it's 100%.

Awesome feedback! Now I love the board even more. I'll give it a dignified second life.

 

[KingerXI]

I took the exact same mobo + FX60 CPU and built a server for a small not-for-profit in town. Granted there are only 4 people on the server, and all they are doing is moving MS Word documents, pictures, etc., but it has been a great server... much better than the last one they had. Although I did install a nice Intel NIC which made a big difference on the speed.