SATA/Motherboard issue? (in Off-topic)

So all was fine and dandy with my computer till a few hours ago when it started blue screening and freezing up on me like crazy completely out of no where. I tried a whole bunch of different things and I've come to realize that its no longer detecting anything attached to my SATA slots. Every so often if I jiggle the connections around a little bit I can get into windows but eventually it just ends up freezing, doesnt even blue screen anymore.

My question to you guys is, does this seem like my sata connectors are just crapping out? Possibly due to how much heat my gfx card has been putting out lately and the sata connectors sit right behind it.

I'm pretty sure the drives themselves are fine or else my DVD drive would be picked up by the bios, because it is also on my sata controller. I also thought it might be a PSU issue but considering everything boots up just fine with the exception of anything that is SATA related I've ruled that possibility out.

So are my suspicions correct? And also as a cheap dirty workaround for the time, if this is what is happening, would I be able to get a PCI-E SATA controller and use that as my default to boot from for the time being? Or am I going to have to replace the whole MoBo on this one.

I'm telling you I'm pissed off right now since this happened because I was enjoying skyrim so much and now I cant even get my computer to boot. Also mad at the fact that this is my first (and last) MSI board and I no longer have my backup Asus Mobo.

Shouldn't your graphics card suck air from the front towards the back of the pc? That way your SATA connectors will not get heated much.

i can recommend a great mobo for cheap if you tell me your ecxact processor type ram type and graphics cards

Yes it should Shade, but considering the fact that only my SATA connectors aren't showing up in the BIOS I'm figuring there is something wrong with them. I've tried pulling out the HDDs just to see if the DVD drive would register, but it wouldn't.

As far as MoBo's are concerned I already know what I'm going with if that ends up being the issue. What I'm mainly wondering is whether or not that is indeed the issue, or maybe the PSU is finally going, or perhaps the drives are indeed failing. What I'm looking for is basically the best guess at what I should attempt to fix first.

Also if I can indeed use a pci-e sata controller as a quick work around then that's by far the cheapest route to go till I have the money to upgrade all the problems I think it might be anyway.

CM sickone, point him out to this thread, wait for his response. That's what I would do :)

it sure sounds to me like your sata controller has gone out but i would also get sickone's input as well before doing anything.

whats your excact make? (like what brand and number is each component) it does 100% sound like sata but you cant be 100% sure, if you tell me the components i can look it over on my parts list and see if anything else could cause that problem

Alright well thanks for all the replies everyone, I actually took it to my neighbor who does IT work for a living and he confirmed my suspicions and more. My MoBo is basically dying, we tried an IDE drive with no luck, and we took out my drives to test to make sure they weren't the problem and his machine was able to read and access them fine.

If you would like to know my board is a MSI NF980-G65. First and last MSI board I will ever own. This is past warranty by just a few months and that's just not acceptable to me. My last Asus board I had for well over 4-5 years and its still running strong, unfortunately I just dont own it anymore I gave it to my friend.

I might not work in the IT field but I've been building and troubleshooting computers on my own now for almost half my life so I'd say I have a fairly good grasp of figuring things out, what I really needed here was a second opinion or a confirmation. Thankfully I got that from my neighbor, though no doubt I would have gotten just as much help from here. But if anyone still has any thoughts/opinions, please go ahead I'm all ears.

For now I'm just sitting on my laptop, extremely sad I can't play skyrim till I can figure out how to get my hands on a new MoBo ASAP (IE: afford one within the week)

Well as you say if you have a PCI EX sata controleur you could bypass the mobo SATA, but in my experience in any computer is the electrique part that fail at 90% of the time. All electric comp have a reduce life as heat increase. At this point changing to a new cheap mobo -75 USD might be your best option as even if its last only 2 or 3 year. You would need to replace your systemes by then.

Yeah I've already decided to buy a new MoBo, this one is dead now it wont boot at all. It wont even recognize IDE drives anymore so trying to bypass the SATA issue with a PCI-e controller seems completely useless at this point (I don't own one anyway, I would've had to buy one)

I'm not going with a Cheap one though, going with the Asus Crosshair V since that's what I had my eye on upgrading to next anyway. That gives me a few years of future proofing and all my current parts will just pop right in there until I finally decide to upgrade my CPU to an 8 core once AMD has a few generations of them out.

Also I'm RMAing the board cause I just realized that MSI has a 3 year warranty on them, and even though I wont be using the one I get back I believe I'm entitled to having it. I'll keep it as a spare just incase, never hurts to have an extra board laying around.

Actually I want some opinions.. should I just settle for something cheaper and better off for my single vid card setup (which I'll be at for some time after I upgrade to the gtx580) or should I be patient and shoot for the board that will hold me well into the future and allow me to go all out if I so desire.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131754

or

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131735

I'm leaning towards the EVO just because I really want my rig back up and running, but I know I'm sacrificing a fair amount of future potential if I decide to run Sli later on.