Brand: GE cafe
Model Number: CFSP5RKBDSS
Main Symptom: Refrigerator completely dead, no lights, power, anything.
Two nights ago, my refrigerator went completely dead: no power, no lights. When testing the main board, I found it had AC input, but the low-voltage DC side had zero voltage. I replaced the main board, but the problem persisted.
After pulling the J14 connector, the refrigerator sprang back to life. The only thing on this jumper is the negative return for the nine Fresh Food (FF) LED lights. Apparently, one of them failed in a way that shorted the low-voltage side of the main board, causing the board to shut down in a self-protection mode.
TO TEST: Unplug the refrigerator, unplug J14 from the control board, and then plug the refrigerator back in. If this resolves your issue, you have a bad LED light. There are nine of them wired in parallel, and just one bad puck will drag the whole system down.
I hope others find this and it saves them from tossing their refrigerator. This took hours to diagnose, and I could not find anything online regarding this specific failure pattern. I did find posts with similar symptoms where replacing the control board didn’t resolve the issue. I don’t know how common this failure pattern is, but hopefully, anyone dealing with a completely dead fridge can try this quick test.