. . . Wow. . . I hope I never lose a CPU. Don't really plan on it either.

Looks like its BS, at least according to the folks over at XS: www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=95530

it takes a hella lot more than 96c to make those pins burn

Asus has turned out some pretty crappy Mobos in the past two years starting with SLI and everything there after, so anything is possible. I'd take the "expertise" in the xtreme forum with a large grain of salt. The problem could be the CPU, mobo, both or some other factor for all we know. One thing we do know is Asus customer support sucks as does most of the support from all Asian mobo makers based on personal experience of many consumers.

Whilst I am surprised an estemeed manufacturer such as ASUS would have this problem with their motherboards, I am not surprised that it happened to the Pentium 4 series on a high end motherboard. The P4 series are paid far less respect than the Athlon 64's by enthusiasts, so if you ask me I'd say it makes sense that less effort is put into intel board design.

And just for the record, ASUS are probably the most consistenly good motherboard manufacturer out there...

v-zeroWhilst I am surprised an estemeed manufacturer such as ASUS would have this problem with their motherboards, I am not surprised that it happened to the Pentium 4 series on a high end motherboard. The P4 series are paid far less respect than the Athlon 64's by enthusiasts, so if you ask me I'd say it makes sense that less effort is put into intel board design.

And just for the record, ASUS are probably the most consistenly good motherboard manufacturer out there...

Agreed, I have never had a problem with ASUS and in my experience do produce some of the most consistant results I have seen. Just like any manufacuter their boards are not perfect, but they are consistanly good.

Also 96C might cause that type of damage, I don't know, and I doubt most people here do since I doubt many have had a CPU get up to 96C. Also I doubt that the darkened areas are actually burnt pins. Is seems more likely to me that the plastic the socket is made out of melted, causing the dark areas.

I don't know if this is ASUS' fault, or Intels, or a combination of both. Seeing as how we don't see this problem often I am inclined to think that it is neither, and just a freak occurance.

i've had a pump fail before, and yeah 96C how the hell long did it take him to notice? an hour? when the pump failed on my kingwin unit I shut it down after 5 minutes after noticing the temp was rather high on my 3500 newcastle it got to 50C in 5 minutes and which is rather slowly climbing considering the cpu was overclocked to 2.6GHZ on 1.75V and thats on 1/4 inch tubing, he'd had longer wih the 3/8 inch or 1/2inch which aremore popular. the surrounding water still should give enough thermal transfer to allow you enough time to notice the high temped cpu even if auto shutoff's not working.

i mean shoot on my current rig I'd notice immediatly if the pump failed as i monitor flow via the resevoir.

and as it is I'd say it's a definite moisture issue, not an overheating issue, as they said on the xtremesystems forums the cpu die would be melted before any corrosion on the pins would occur.

Na the "burns" arent distributed well so it wasnt any overheating or shit like that

i agree, 96c doesn't cause that...

I've never had any probs with my asus p5wd2-p and my 640, taken it to 80c once before i got a good cooler.

It looks like water has leaked into the socket