New motherboard for a 4-yr-old Spectre 13 -- or not?

[Mike_B3]

HP Spectre x360 - 13-w053nr. The motherboard was replaced by HP a year ago, while under extended warranty. I'm trying to figure out, of course, if it's worth replacing again on my own dime. The machine is otherwise great, perfectly adequate for the work I do, but I'm reluctant to sink several hundred $ into it. Thoughts?

[erico]

Why are you considering replacing it? 

As far as I can tell, haven't mentioned any issues.

[Mike_B3]

Many thanks for your reply. Problems with charging. The battery will charge to 100%. However, if the level drops below 70-80%, and you plug back in, charging stalls out. The screen blinks bright-dim repeatedly, the orange LED at the side blinks on-off, the %-of-charge readout  bounces up and down. So far I've managed with a couple of undependable workarounds: plugging in an external HD sometimes stabilizes the charging (?); charging indirectly via an HP hub sometimes works. Symptoms have gotten to just about the unusable point.

Should be the battery, right? But the battery and charger pass HP diagnostics fine. More definitively, I took it to a computer shop today and their diagnostics indicated a motherboard issue. (They would not replace the motherboard there; no conflict of interest.) The current motherboard was just replaced a year ago -- don't know if I mentioned that.

Thanks for any further thoughts.

[erico]

I am surprised that their diagnostics indicated the system board instead of the battery.

I take it that HP did not change the battery when they changed out the system board. Is that accurate?

Have you run the HP Hardware Diagnostics utility to check the system board status there?

[Mike_B3]

HP didn't replace the battery as part of the repair. 

I ran the HP diagnostics several times yesterday, in response to your prompt. 5-6 times, because results kept changing. I ran both the Fast tests and the Extensive tests. The failures were: "Disk Read Verify" on about 1/2 of the passes; "Video Memory Fast Check" failed on 3/4 (and stopped the test dead). "Video Extended Memory Check" failed on 1/2. However, a couple times everything passed!

Thanks again for your help.

[erico]

If your notebook has the most recent BIOS update, there may be a change present, called the Battery Care Function, to set the charge limit to choices of 50%, 80% and100% in the BIOS.

I own an HP Spectre x360-13t-ap0xxx notebook and that option does exist, and in fact, HP recommends that charging be limited to 80%. I have ignored it and left mine set to 100%, but it bugs me about it every other time I start up the notebook. It doesn't bother me because I can replace the battery on my own.

I do not expect this to be the cause of the issues you are experiencing, given the instability of your system board during the Diagnostic tests.

Understanding that a 100% "full charge" today is not the same as when you first started using your notebook is important. 

That full charge value changes as time passes.

A battery with more than a few years use could indeed cause problems, but a system board that has components which are succumbing to age is more likely.

Unless you can source a new system board at a  really good price, along with a new battery and operating system license activation key, it is probably a better idea to source another notebook.

Replacing a system board out of warranty, unless you can do it yourself and happen to posses a  spare Windows 10 license activation key, is liable to cost more than the current value of your notebook.