Blew up my DS4 :D Help me choose a new board

[themisfit610]

Well folks here's the sad story of the day.

I was doing a little project on my housemate's PowerMac G4 800 MHz. A good trusty machine, to be sure!

I needed to copy some files from my PC to the Mac, so I figured I would set up a little firewire network - as I've done dozens of time. Very simple, connect the computers with the firewire cable, configure TCP IP for static IP through that interface yada yada yada...

Anyway this time things were a little different!

When I connected my roomate's mac to the PC - BAM they both powered off.

Strange.

So, I figured maybe a bad connection. I made sure the cable was tight, and powered on my PC.

KA-POW - a loud popping sound, a blue electrical flash visible through the top of my P180, and a puff of smoke wafed out of the case.

Shit.

So I tore the whole thing apart, and found the culprit: A cooked capacitor right next to the backplate. Sweeeet...

Pics coming.

So I'm in the market for a new board!

I was happy with the DS4. I'm big on silence, so I need all passive cooling, preferably with lots of copper.

Any real combination of PCIe is fine.. no major requirements. At least one electrical 4x slot so I can install a RAID card later if I need to (coming soon along with 6+TB of external storage).

I don't care about the audio I/O options, as I have an Emu 0202 for my audio needs. I do want at least 6 SATA connectors, more are better. One IDE is definitely mandatory as well.

I want something very stable, with at least some overclocking potential. I had my Q6600 at 3 GHz with no troubles, so that would be ideal to keep.

Firewire is also needed, though perhaps I will be a little more careful with what I connect to it!!!!

P35 would be fine, I'm not really set on the latest and greatest X38 or whatever. DDR2 FTW though.

Suggestions guys?

Thanks!!
~MiSfit

 

[bigsnyder]

If you are handy with a soldering iron, you could probably replace the cap.

 

[Fallen Kell]

Ouch... I was going to say that it is not recommended to hotplug firewire devices...But a little too late for you. Just do a google search, and it will be full of posts about similar issues with firewire devices, ports, and even boards being fried when hotplugged.

 

[themisfit610]

Well, I got a good deal on an Asus P5K-E at Fry's today, so I got it installed and everything is working.

Windows is a little borken, so I'm going to take the opportunity to jump on the Vista bandwagon (yikes). Hopefully things have improved a bit!

~MiSfit