Well for those that don’t know my media PC has been down for a few months because the video card went out. I was reusing an old laptop that was no longer “beefy” enough to handle my games but was more than enough machine for streaming HD content to the main TV in the living room. One day the I turned it on the stream some Stargate and noticed a slight pixelization that got worse and worse over a couple of weeks and eventually resulted in lockups and then total display failure. As expect the laptop is out of warranty and but unexpectedly they want $400 for a new video card for it. My answer to that is hell no. So as I contemplated what to use for the media PC now I discovered an older system at my parents house they had used up until my Dad retired a couple of years back which would work well. I got back to the house, cleaned it up only to find out while playing with it that the motherboard had apparently gone south (single board/component system) and I needed a new one.

Fast forward to Yesterday. I had ordered a new motherboard and installed it. It worked for a whole 5mins before burning itself out. It was Gigabyte branded so they used the Intel reference board and made a few tweaks which usually results in a little better board but this time it seems to have back fired. Submitted the RMA for a refund and ordered the Intel reference board. Maybe I’ll have better luck with the original design.