Wires from the power supply to motherboard (CPU) burned up. Why would this happen and how to fix?

Corsair, Antec, SeaSonic, PC Power & Cooling, and Silverstone are all good PSU brands. I personally like to stick to Corsair PSU's.
 
As a fyi, what happened was your board and cpu drew to much power from the power supply for the connector to handle.

OCZ isn't bad, I wouldn't push one to its limits, but i wouldn't expect problems either.
 
As a fyi, what happened was your board and cpu drew to much power from the power supply for the connector to handle.

OCZ isn't bad, I wouldn't push one to its limits, but i wouldn't expect problems either.

When the board and CPU draw too much power like this, does it typically damage them? I sure don't see any damage and will be upgrading to the OCZ PSU 650W instead of the cheap ARK 500W.
 
When the board and CPU draw too much power like this, does it typically damage them? I sure don't see any damage and will be upgrading to the OCZ PSU 650W instead of the cheap ARK 500W.

Anything can happen, but as its the connections that overheat if the two wires contact you could have issues. BTW its too much power for the psu, not the board or cpu.

EVGA was having a huge issue with this on their high end stuff running 3 sli.. Don't remember any other damage though, than just the power supply and plug melting.

Only way is to try and reboot it.

Look for burnt cap's and ressistors if youre worried. They go in alot of power issues.
 
I feel silly now that I didn't realize that the power supply was causing all of my blue screen errors. I figured it was drivers, or BIOS or faulty hardware. It had been doing so for months which is very apparent when I finally noticed the burned wires. They were black and almost gone (completely gone in the case of one or two of them).

A little background: I use the PC as a TV, running two Pinnacle TV tuners in through the USB. I'm assuming it was my graphics card working really hard that drew so much power from the PSU. I'm hoping that upgrading to 650W from 500 will solve the problem, although I'm almost considering a 750.
 
It's not so much the wattage, but the amps that it can handle, and getting a reputable brand. Don't ever skimp on a PSU brand: get a good, reliable brand.
 
These are the specs I have for the new PSU:
Input Voltage: 100 - 240 V
Input Frequency Range: 50/60 Hz
Input Current: 10A
Output: +3.3V@22A, +5V@22A, +12V@46A, -12V@0.3A, +5VSB@3.0A

Not sure exactly what all that means.
 
Hopefully that is a 600/650W psu.

Basically the important thing in those numbers is the 46A on 12V1. Basically the psu give out 46A on the 12V lines, which are the ones that go to all your stuff.
 
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