I think this is a slightly odd story - certainly outside any experience I've ever had, and I've been around on the planet for quite some time. Ok, last night I had some kind of near-miss in a thunderstorm. Fortunately phone and power cables are underground in my town. However, this morning I discovered that my ethernet ports had blown on my router. Internet and wireless still worked, oddly. But smart TV and PC found nothing. As far as the PC is concerned I don't even have an ethernet adapter. Setting up my old router turned my TV back into a smart one. But it did nothing for the PC. Device manager says of the Atheros controller that "Currently this hardware device is not connected to the computer". I'm guessing the ethernet controller is blown? I entertain some faint hope it might be the cable but (equally faint) memory says the PC would report it as "disconnected" not completely absent. The PC is a long way from the router and I don't have a replacement cable long enough to try. Grabbed an old usb wifi key, so at least I'm online. If part of my mobo is blown, I'm not happy with its future well-being in general. But since I was at least a year/18mths away from my next planned upgrade, I've let my knowledge of motherboards slide. So I feel at a complete loss. The model I currently have (Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H) no longer appears to be available. There is a D3SH, but it only has 2 USB3 on the back panel and I need 3, even 4, these days. So I'm seeking advice on a new motherboard. As mentioned, I need 4 xUSB3 on the back panel plus 2 x SATA3 for my SSDs. CPU is an -5-3570K 8gb RAM (4 x 2gb) GPU nVidia 760 2 x SATA3 SSDs 2 x 1tb HD Nanoxia Deep Silence 1 case Happy for a motherboard which would take some future cpu upgrade if there's backward compatibility (one of the things I no longer know). But that's not vital. I'd prefer not to pay more than £80 - £100 too. I overclock a very little (I'm a coward) so it doesn't need to be the world's best overclocker. Oh, and I do have a preference for Gigabyte (good experiences) but that's not set in stone. I'd be very, very grateful for some advice. Normally I show up in the months running up to a PC upgrade and try to help others, as well as get advice. This time, I'm sorry I'm just wanting to 'take' and I beg your advice. Thank you for reading.
Honestly, unless you are experiencing some other issues, I don't see a reason to replace your motherboard at all. If it was me, I'd just grab a PCI ethernet adaptor for a fiver and carry on. If you do find in future that your motherboard has been effected, then at most, its cost you a fiver, whereas buying a new motherboard will definitely cost you £70 or so!
Thanks. I'll give it a week or so to settle my neurotic fear that it's all going to die, then get a cheap internal card. ...and a new router.
