Cleaning out case after system was locking up - found strange marks on the inside? - Hardware & Software

Long story short, starting a game in Just Cause 2 at 1920x1080 resolution, for what ever reason, causes my system to generate a WHEA_UNCORRECTABLE_ERROR bugcheck. I tried many things, ranging from updating my graphics drivers (running the latest NVIDIA drivers as of several days ago), booting in diagnostics mode, and checking my temperatures (all were within reasonable levels). The BSOD/system crash never occurred in any other games, besides TF2 once crashing my graphics card driver the other day. All of that aside, as I was unwiring a few things, I found this inside of my case: [thumb]https://www.dropbox.com/s/ndwcdbnmzio8foj/case1.png[/thumb] Which was directly under (and even on?) this set of wires, a 6 pin power connector for my graphics card. [thumb]https://www.dropbox.com/s/7e4i3hbghvugmjm/case2.jpg[/thumb] Looking at those marks on the case again, does it even look like something could have caused that shorting out? I mean, I see no reason for these wires to be shorting on my case, since I was able to rub off what ever that was on the wires with my fingers. I can't remember if I somehow caused those marks knocking around in my case, but I think I would have remembered it, judging by the size. Specs: Asus P5QL PRO Motherboard Intel Core 2 Duo processor (E6550 I think), at stock 2.33 GHz 6GB of memory - two AmpX/Wintec 1GB modules + two 2GB mystery modules (??) 1 Patriot Pyro 128GB SSD 1 250GB HDD 1 1TB HDD 1 2TB HDD 1 Sony IDE CD/DVD burner 1 CD burner NVIDIA 9600 GT w/ 1GB memory, with an Arctic Accelero L2 PRO aftermarket air cooling system Orion HP585D powersupply (I actually made a thread here on FP wondering why my mobo died, turned out the power supply had failed. A friend lent me this one (coincidentally, the exact same model)) Temperature: Both cores on my CPU averaged 60 degrees C when under full load, the graphics card never exceeded 50 degrees C, and my system board stays around the low 40's. Despite that, the north bridge heat sink is incredibly warm (didn't burn my fingers, but felt very hot), even after my cleaning session, and the system had been sitting at the BIOS for awhile. I hope I didn't miss anything...

broken images.

I'm not sure what the deal is, I thought I thumb'd them correctly. I can still click on them and see them, can you?

Odd, looks like burn marks on the wires. What are your specs and temperatures?

[QUOTE=digigamer17;40149257]Odd, looks like burn marks on the wires. What are your specs and temperatures?[/QUOTE] Sorry, I should have posted those in the first place. Updated OP (and forgot to add average temps - will do that right away).

They're burn marks.

Any ideas as to how they got there? I mean, the wires seemed completely insulated (at least at the point of the burn marks) to me.

If your PSU had power wires that grounded to the case, the computer would shut down. If it kept power to those wires, it would bite holes through the case, the insulation on the wires would melt and the PSU would catch on fire.

So the marks are likely not due to the wires then?

As bohb said, you REALLY should not cheap out on power supplies to prevent this, any crappy power supply which does not have any overload protection or whatever else, would burn your house down.