Whoever you spoke to at Intel was not entirely correct regarding memory controllers, and ram speeds.
The speed advertised on a ram package is the maximum clock the manufacturer achieved during testing.
Your ram will automatically adjust itself and run at the speed the memory controller needs. (half of 1066 on i7-950) There will be no excess load on any component based on clock speed...
HOWEVER, ram voltage is an issue with the i7 and this mobo. It only supports ram up to 1.65V.
You must make sure that the bios does not up the voltage to your 1600 ram. The mobo only supports up to 1.65 V ram, and the QPI/uncore voltage must be within .5 V of your ram voltage.
I'm not 100% sure if the bios adjusts the voltage in auto mode, but I've run 3x2gb corsair DDR3-1333 in this mobo for about 3 years at 1.5v, default timings, fully stable.
In most motherboard failure cases it is more likely an issue with your power supply, or simply a defective mobo, which although rare happens occasionally.
The memory theoretically could have caused the failure, but is not the most likely cause