burnt southbridge

[mlek]

Hi, I've just been given a 5 year-old socket-A based pc by a friend who says it's just stopped working.
After I powered it up, I noticed a burning smell, so I shut it off and checked the board. Turns out that the burning smell came from the southbridge chip, and it now has scorch marks on the top. Has anybody else had this problem? What causes this chip to start burning??
The board is an MSI MS-6570 (K7N2G-ILSR)

Thanks

 

[The-Darkening]

I had an MSI board that had the same problem. Only it killed the NorthBridge. Later I found out that there were some bad Voltage regulators. Maybe it's the same for you?