Just a quick heads up guys i got hit with the atx burn out running gtx285s as my sig states
I will post some pictures later but luckily only cable damage

-panic-------[285's sli only-stock] then spots your  third card in sig.
-goes gets beer.

pics
 
i recon i got away with it, having 2 atx extension leads saved my mobo
 
you can see on one of the atx connectors in the pics has hardly any burn marks the first 2 took the melt down

Interesting.

Doing anything particular that you recall when it happened?

EVGA need to give these things away for free for those owning boards they claimed could run Tri SLi plus physX if they cant even handle 2 200 series cards in SLI with a 3rd card for PhysX.

we did receive a huge power bill last week, i put it down to the pool but now i know why

What is the quality and AWG of the extension cable would be my concern. The longer the run from PSU to 24 pin mobo connector the lower the amperage delivered add to that small gauge wire and the problem is compounded. This too is a reason I'm not a fan of multiple rail PSU's yours has 6 rails and just 30 amps on the 24 pin rail is border line. Of course this is just my opinion so take it for hat it's worth. For sure Nvidia has been pushing the limits with High TDP and you should be aware that current motherboards are engineered to deliver 300 watts TDP to the PCIe slots max in there I think you can see the limitation. This is why the enthusiast boards get upgraded VRM PWM even heavier weight copper PCB's but all that increases the cost as you are well aware. Considering your motherboard is why I have to point the finger elsewhere  it is built for the task you are throwing at it and I suspect the weakness is elsewhere.

fanboy

Is this limited to a model board or is it all x58 evga boards?

the sr2 the 4 way and the new classy all have supplemental power connectors to the pcie lanes all the others dont

i'm glad i bought the 4 way after reading this O.O

this sucks and all, but i dont see any damage to the actual motherboard, the extensions and such are mauled but the board seems fine?

Yeah guys, a year ago ppls were pointing to 5850s and 5870s causing this, and saying don't get one because. This prob was first spotted with 5870s as far as I could tell. So now I find it slightly humorous that we are all 'in the same boat' so-to-speak.

About the plug failures, I do this sort of repair for industrial machinery (decade of experience), and I can tell you this doesn't usually happen just overnight. Most likely the failure started while he was playing his 3D game a lot, and was on the verge of failure when he went away. You see what happens is usually there is just a little loose spring tension on a socket, and not much actual (microscopic) contact area. That causes heat, when it gets hot enough the spring tension relaxes due to metal becoming annealed (more?), and the heat also causes a reverse bending (heat on the inside of the socket is more than on the outside of the socket, expanding it). That causes less contact area, which causes more heat, and the process snowballs. Once the arcs begin, it's too late in seconds, the plating melts off and it's all over. Like I say, it can be a process that takes place in minutes, hours, days, or even weeks. Perhaps we should all check our plugs now? The trouble with that is just doing so could loosen the socket just enough to start a heat problem. One can temporarily fix the problem by re-tensioning the socket if it is not too burnt. Do this only at your own risk, don't blame me if you wreck it. If you smash the socket too much, just do your best to re-shape it. The seam in the metal should be almost touching the other side, or even touching, if it looks like the seam is starting to come apart, in a "V" shape, like this:



then the socket is loose and will develop problems if it is passing a lot of amperage. (If it looks anywhere near that bad you have a big problem.)
 
These plugs were not designed to carry as much current as they are now. They were OK before vid cards started drawing so much power. The mobo manufacturers should adopt a new standard for power connections for the newer vid cards, or the vid cards themselves should stop drawing so much power from the mobo, via alternate plugs like they tried - it's not working properly.
 
 
EDIT: OK during my shower just now I just came up with a hypothesis explaining why this only happens to some of us, and what we might do to mitigate the problem (other than the fixes we have heard)! Unfortunately, such a long explanation (I don't type fast) will take me at least a couple of hours, and I won't have the time to do so until Monday or Tuesday, maybe even later if my work picks up. When I do, I will post this on "General Hardware" as it is not exclusive to X58 boards.

your buying into the hysteria, the 285's dont draw anywhere near as much power as a 480, let alone an OC'ed 480. your board is not damaged, its just the extensions. if your board was damaged it would be a completely diff story, but the GTX 285 has been out for almost two years ago and this is the first incident with melting stuff that ive seen. TBH, yes there is a problem but it only applied to SLI and above for the 4xx and 5xx series 

ok i took another picture to show my layout, i understand that some of you guys dont believe my rig can draw that much current to melt the atx connectors and i thought that to!!!
 
2010-12-19_21-27-27_288.jpg
 
but as you can see its not isolated at 1 pin, if it was you could say bad pin, loose connection or the like's,
but its at 2 lead connection points and on pins 10 and 11 on all connectors
if it was 1 bad pin the damage would be at that pin only because as you say my rig isn't capable of drawing that much power, but its at 2 connection points and on 2 tracks witch suggest to me that it was pulling way higher than expected,
in bfbc2 i usually see both my 285 running @97% load so they are thirsty girls

I'm pretty sure that there are others who had the melting pin problem using 480/580's and their mobo survived.  Sure there is the possiblity that this one scenario could be unrelated, but it at least merits a closer look.  With all the reports of this happening now, this could have HUGE reprecussions for the EVGA community when you think about how many people have 280+ cards in SLI. 

Yet i know that i should not have this issue but im still a little nervous while gaming
I have replaced the case lead and back running sli and no phisx card
But i have the rear side panel off so i can keep an eye on that connector and it does get hot