Part 4 of my love/hate relationship with technology series "Rage Against The Machine" is about the motherboard of my home theatre computer, a.k.a. HTPC. The computer started acting funny. It would lock up and not start up. I even got a few BSoDs and a WSoD, which I didn't know existed. I did some research and determined it was a hardware issue. I've successfully diagnosed and fixed software issues, but this was my first foray into hardware errors. I know it's hard to believe but I've never had a computer crash on me before. Knock on wood. I probably could have fixed it myself, but this is our entertainment system and I didn't want to screw it up permanently. I took it to my local computer repair shop and got the motherboard replaced. Total repair cost was $360. I'm embarrassed by that price. I could have saved myself some money by doing it myself. There's always next time.
The computer repair dude said that he's seen a lot of the small profile computers have heat related issues. The motherboard just burned out. I decided to run the computer without a case a.k.a. "hotrod style". Only time will tell how that works out. The HTPC is almost year and a half old and I've had more problems with it than I've had with any other computer. The build quality is just poor. But because consumers demand cheaper computers then we get what we get. You just buy the product, take care of it and hope for the best.
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