GE refrigerator clicking sound

Refrigerator & Freezer Repair
,
1

GE double door: GSH25KGREBB S. NO AH223952

Problem: Clicking sound from the main board. I can hear the compressor also clicking(subtle sound) when the relay clicks. The compressor does not start. This started about 5 days ago. At first, the fridge would start intermittently and work fine for several hours. Then, two days ago, it stopped. It remained stopped for about 8 hours. Then, I unplugged/replugged the fridge and it started and ran for about 14 hours. Then it stopped again. When the problem started, I could see the small fan behind the ice maker would spin half a revolution and stop.
I opened the base board on the back and cleaned the cooling fins. It was pretty dirty and clogged. It has been 3 hours since I cleaned it and the fridge did not start when I plugged it in a few minutes ago.

A technician suggested replacing the main board. If the main board was bad, why would the fridge start after the technician diagnosed it as a bad board. The board itself is probably $110 to $135 but I don’t know the root cause.

Anyone has any ideas about how to get to the root cause?

Thanks in advance.

3

If the fans stop running, I would replace the motherboard in the back and use a 1000 joule surge protector to prevent the new board from blowing out.

4

I replaced the main circuit board and the problem was resolved. The problem was a relay on the board was likely malfunctioning. Has anyone ever replaced the relay? The rest of the board seems to be salvageable. Why throw it away?

5

Relays never fail in this way, they can blow out, contacts get contaminated, but never click off and on, that is electronics going bad.