How exactly does a PCIe slot break?

[Lean L]

I recently came home to a non-booting PC. It would not post and did not even attempt to boot into anything.

I reset my bios settings as the first step before replacing the video card and pulling most of the memory and hard drives.

Long story short, it turned out the pcie slot that I was using was dead. I put my system back together using the other pcie slot and everything is okay again.

What could cause this? Everything is alive except for the slot? It is dusty sure, but the card was always plugged in so the contact points are immaculate.

I don't feel like RMAing this motherboard since it is out of warranty. I just want to know what would cause such a trivial piece of equipment to break.

Thanks

 

[tcsenter]

I don't feel like RMAing this motherboard since it is out of warranty. I just want to know what would cause such a trivial piece of equipment to break.

Well since it's out of warranty, whether you feel like RMA or not is irrelevant because they aren't going to take it.

 

[Deders]

Try cleaning it out with compressed air anyway

 

[stahlhart]

Could also try applying some Caig D5 on the GPU's edge connector, in case there's oxidation built up.

 

[Ampersand38]

Does it look like this

 

[PhIlLy ChEeSe]

On the PCI-E "FINGERS" of the video card, use an eraser to clean an finger oil off. Dust will cause all sorts of havock in a computer, doesn't matter the socket was clean. Dust will cause all sorts of problems, its a computer enemy!

 

[MongGrel]

I done the eraser thing on cards in CNC machines at work before and had it work, if you haven't verified it's the slot and not the GPU it's worth a try.

Sometimes the contacts can gum up a bit, but that is in a industrial environment, still worth a shot.