Some Core I7 5960X + X99 Motherboards Mysteriously Burning Up

An anonymous reader writes "Intel's Haswell-E Eight-Core CPU and X99 motherboards just debuted but it looks like there may be some early adoption troubles leading to the new, ultra-expensive X99 motherboards and processors burning up. Phoronix first ran a story about their X99 motherboard having a small flame and smoke when powering up for the first time and then Legit Reviews also ran an article about their motherboard going up in smoke for reasons unknown. The RAM, X99 motherboards, and power supplies were different in these two cases. Manufacturers are now investigating and in at least the case of LR their Core i7-5960X also fried in the process."

Comments

Same thing happened to me with AM2

[oic0]

I bought one of the first AM boards and they said it was rated for high watts. I made the power regulator shoot flames 10 minutes after I had it together. They lowered the rated power handling and refunded me but lame Newegg made me pay return shipping...

Re:Not just one mobo

[Forever Wondering]

Does Intel have a reference design board for this? Also, how close are the VRMs to the chips they're regulating?

I once worked at a company that had a reference board with 3 FPGAs with 3 VRMs near the FPGAs. When designing their own board, the company reduced this to one VRM for all 3 FPGAs and put the VRM on the opposite side of the board. It took nine months to realize that this caused the FPGAs to reset during heavy logic switching because the single VRM + the greater length of the traces meant that the VRM couldn't keep up with the demand.