I’ll spare you the background as there’s ample horror stories of Samsung appliances (especially refrigerators). I would never have bought this one, but it came with the house. To its credit, it’s been working flawlessly the last 5 years, but I knew it was only a matter of time before its Samsung-iness reared its ugly head.
I’m not sure which control board is glitching out, but the symptoms are all in the front panel where the ice/water dispenser is. The fridge still cools, but the front panel is haunted on a good day (cycles through the settings by itself, but you can still use it if you fight it) and just doesn’t work at all on other days. So I guess the fridge still works as long as I don’t wanna do anything crazy like adjust the temperature, select between water and ice, or turn the ice maker on/off. Hurrah?
Ordered a replacement front panel board from ebay and hoping that’s the board that’s at fault. If it’s the “main” control board, I’m probably going to get rid of the fridge.
I have a theory on all these fridge deaths. I suspect the boards inside are being destroyed over time by minor power surges. Get a small surge protector and plug the fridge in to that. Maybe I’m wrong, but its a cheap possible prevention method.
I’ve had it on a UPS for several months because of exactly that. My power’s pretty stable, but when it’s about to go out in a storm/winds, it goes full poltergeist for 2-3 seconds, flashes rapidly, and then either goes out completely or back to normal.
Granted, it raw-dogged power for its whole life until then, so it could have had accumulated damage.
(cycles through the settings by itself, but you can still use it if you fight it)
Could be a button getting glitched on intermittently.
That was my first thought since it matched the behavior.
I took the panel off, extracted the control board, and none of the buttons appeared to be stuck. This was bypassing the button “covers” and just using the PCB buttons on the board itself (basically just hooked the bare board back to the wiring harness to test.
What makes me feel like I wasted $80 is the control board looks pristine. No visual evidence of failure, no apparent moisture damage/corrosion, etc. Still hoping that’s where the problem is because I can’t return the replacement board (unless it’s defective itself) and I haven’t the foggiest idea of how to replace the main control board (assuming I can find one). Even then, that may not be the issue (could be a dodgy wire between the panel and the main board, for example).
From what I’ve read, even Samsung repair techs basically just throw parts at it until it’s fixed or they replace it under warranty or tell you you’re out of luck. (Mine’s out of warranty)
