Buttons and click wheel are not responding

Hi, my Ipod classic (160gb thin) recently underwent some extensive water exposure which resulted in my hard drive dying. I ordered a replacement one and made the switch without a problem and everything went back to working fine. However, when I opened up the ipod, I noticed some corrosion on both the click wheel and hold/jack connectors. I wiped it off and cleaned them with isopropyl alcohol. Everything worked perfectly fine until about a month after the repair when the click wheel AND the buttons would just stop working for a few minutes and then function again. The music would still play and the hold button would also work. Then all issues just stopped and I had no problems for 5-6 weeks. Then out of a sudden, the click wheel and buttons stopped working altogether for good. I thought it might just be the click wheel failing so I ordered a new one and changed it, but to no avail. When replacing the wheel, it's then that i realized that the click buttons were not at all related to the wheel but directly to the board.

So now I'm guessing that my options are changing the whole board, unless there is another fix that you guys can think of. I looked around at boards online, and the 6th gen boards are cheaper than the 7th gen boards. However, they seem to have the exact same connectors on both boards and 6th gen had 160gb drives also so I would assume it could support my 160gb HDD also. So my subsequent question it, can i use the 6th gen board in my 7th gen ipod without any trouble?