Quote Originally Posted by wongnog View Post
yes to my exact surprise that is what is happening! I have a picture of the CPU1 4 pin connector from my PSU, you can clearly see where it's fried the mobo. So I used the other CPU2 4 pin connector and plugged it in to the 4 pin part of the mobo that was covered. Needless to say once I get my new psu and mobo I will plug BOTH 4 pin connectors in!!!


I honestly didn't know that's what I was supposed to do, because my old board only had a 4 pin cpu connector on it. I thought that 4 of the 8 pins were closed for a reason, and I thought my PSU's 2x4-pin CPU plugs were meant for 2 physical CPUs. I should have known better since I have a quad core but I guess I didn't do enough research/reading before building my new system.
Never mind mate, now you know, glad your board is still working, hopefully with a bit of luck all you have blown is the rail on the PSU and not damaged the board, do you have another PSU you can try on it to see if that burnt 4 pin plug on the board is still working ?, im a bit worried for you that whoever you brought it from wont RMA it for you, the 2 reasons behing this is: 1 dont you have a beta bios on it, beats void the warranty and 2: the board damage wasnt caused by the board itself, it was caused by a 3rd party device, and this is clearly visible from the burn marks, but you can but ask.

I think 600w PSU maybe a little bit to low also for your system, especially with this board and a Quad, along with your memory etc dont forget that the Q6600 draws 95w from you PSU, before any overclocking, and with overclocking can draw as much as 175w alone, plus what the board, board features like onboard sound, RAID etc, Mem, Harddrives, GFX card, CD/DVD drives etc are pulling out of it, if you are constantly exceeding this 600w that your PSU supplies this could lead to the death of the PSU and as it dies it gives one last massive surge of power, KBOOM, burn marks appear.

There is a PSU calculator here, which will give you a rough idea of the wattage of PSU you should look into getting, to be safe I would recommend getting something slightly higher than what it recommends, just to compensate as it a little out of date, especially with higher drawing GFX cards now-a-days:

http://www.thermaltake.outervision.com/

you have suprised alot of guys in this forum, by showing us that you can just use the covered 4 pins on there own, I dont think any of us was aware of this, I know I wasnt, and probably wouldnt of tried or tested it either.