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I had built a PC with PowerX motherboard, WD blue HDD, 2 DDR3 RAM sticks and Intel processor.

It worked for around 9 months. While working on it one fine day, it turned off all of a sudden without any prior notice or symptoms. When I tried to turn it on, only the power LED and the CPU fan turned on, no other response was there, not even the logo or BIOS screen showed up.

It was under a 12 months warranty, so I went to the store for getting it repaired/replaced. They said it will take a few days for repair.

Now on the components side, I was checking the HDD by plugging it to another old motherboard. For your information, this motherboard's model is D945GCCR which was released in the year 2007. The HDD didn't get detected. I tried tweaking settings in the MB's configuration, but it didn't get detected at all. A SATA CD drive was working though. It maybe the case that the MB didn't support this HDD, but I suspect that the HDD somehow got damaged.

The store repair person checked the RAM sticks by attaching it to another motherboard, but one of the sticks didn't work. I also asked them to check the HDD, but they were too reluctant to do that.

The only cause of this sudden failure of the 2 components must be attributed to the faulty motherboard. So my questions are, who will take the responsibility for these damaged components? Is there anything I can do about this? Or anything else that I should know about?

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    There's pretty much no way your motherboard damaged the hard drive, as it does not deliver power to the hard drive. More likely is there was damage to your system through the power supply unit. Warranty depends on how warranty laws in your country work.
    – Silbee
    Commented Aug 20 at 8:41
  • @Silbee but I have tested the SMPS after that disaster and found it to be working fine. I know that a motherboard doesn't power the HDD. By your assurance maybe it's still fine.
    – Puspam
    Commented Aug 20 at 9:40

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Sorry to hear about the problems you've experienced.

The 4 most likely reasons for the problems:

  1. Power surge/spike
  2. Bad power supply
  3. Bad motherboard
  4. Coincidence that multiple parts failed simultaneously

The unfortunate reality is that you likely will not be able to prove which caused the failures. And even if you could, getting any company to take any responsibility for anything (if one is responsible) is typically time consuming and expensive. Companies know this, and regularly abuse this fact. (As an example on a larger-ticket item, just look up the plethora of Toyota owners with engine problems and no recourse.)

The sad reality, as things are right now, is that you'll have to accept this loss and buy new parts yourself. You can leave bad reviews for the brands/parts you feel are responsible, if you think that is warranted. You can also pledge to never buy parts from that manufacturer again, and advise others to do the same. Outside of that, I'm afraid there's not much you can do. Sorry, and I hope you remembered to make backups.

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