Is My Epox M1697 Motherboard Failing? Or is it My PSU?

[AzureNightmareX1]

Recently the USB ports on my motherboard have been malfunctioning and working sporadically. In addition to that my dvd burner has been malfunctioning, giving me a power calibration error when i try to erase rewriteables. In addition to all of this I have noticed other malfunctions and failures across my computer. Windows can no longer detect my internet connection, giving me a server execution failed error, even though I have actually connected to the internet, and games have a tendency to be be unstable, causing my system to lockup from time to time, and my chipset's fan is beginning to fail. I also did some software readings on the bios to see if it was the PSU and the voltages seem to be very stable(I know I need to take readings with a multimeter). So please, good citizens of Legit Reviews Forums, please tell me what is going on here. I really need to know what to replace.

[Darkstar]

you could try another power supply, but alot of the older budget boards have had problems with the caps (as i mentioned for a ECS board elsewhere, so you might want to take a close look at the board. How old is the system? and what else is in there? brand of ram, video? etc.

[AzureNightmareX1]

the FSP Epsilon psu I have is just 7 months old, with the Corsair RAM and the Radeon 3850 going on 1 year old next month. My socket 939 Epox M1697 Motherboard however is over 2 years old.

[AzureNightmareX1]

Where is Nate when you need him?

[DMB2000uk]

What do you need nate for?

Do you have access to any spares to test things with?

Does the event viewer have any errors or warnings prior to things stopping entirely?
( control panel -> administrative tools -> event viewer )

Dan

[AzureNightmareX1]

He usually knows about these things. And no, I dont have spare parts, such is the downside of being on the lower end of the income spectrum.

[DMB2000uk]

Do you know anyone that has the same type of hardware that would be willing to help you?

With so many things going wrong, it does point to the motherboard, but you should really get hold of a multimeter first to test your PSU properly.

I would normally suggest testing the components individually (Like prime95 on the CPU, memtest86+ on the memory, UBCD's hard drive tests etc), but if the motherboard is indeed at fault, then it could make them all appear to be faulty.

Dan