Did I fry my PC?

[The111]

I did something decidedly stupid the other night. I was dusting my room and using one of those compressed air cans to get certain hard to reach places. I got to my PC and decided against spraying any air into the case while it was running, for the obvious reason that the air condenses often into water vapor. Well, I have an Antec Sonata II case where the front intake fan brings air in from the sides before pulling it into the case, sort of a T channel. So not thinking too clearly I blew air just THROUGH the pass through part of the T, i.e. basically perpendicular to the direction the fan was blowing. As luck would have it, the air did condense, and just as my brain connected the dots and realized the intake fan woud suck the water vapor into the case, I heard a LOUD pop (sounded like it came from in case but also could have come from speakers, I guess), and the computer shut down. I then smelled the unmistakable smell of BURNING. I panicked and unplugges everything from the wall, waited a few seconds, and opened case and inspected. Everything look fine. There was a small amount of black dust mixed in with the other dust caked against the side case wall next to the HSF, which maybe had something to do with the burning smell, but I'm still stumped.

I powered the machine back up and received a BIOS message about some sort of overvoltage failure or something... it prompted me to reset BIOS to default, so I did. Then manually re-configured my BIOS to how I had it before, and did a memory check, and booted into Windows. All seems fine. I had to change my windows sound settings to give my PCI sound card priority over the onboard sound (guess that reset with BIOS somehow), and the weirdest part is that for a while I could not get one of my 3 USB HDD's to be recognized, but eventually that problem went away.

I've been using the PC fine for a week since then, temps are normal and it performs all tasks fine (haven't gamed since then though). Any idea if I damaged anything? My mobo is ASUS P5W-DH Deluxe, if that matters at all.

 

[MegaVovaN]

If it works, nothing is damaged...
<<IMHO

 

[The111]

Originally posted by: MegaVovaN
If it works, nothing is damaged...
<<IMHO

That is the assumption I'm operating under too. Just wondered if anybody knew something I didn't.

 

[lxskllr]

If it works it works. I'd just go with it. There's nothing you can do now anyway, so there's no point in worrying.

 

[lobbyone]

What you smelled was probably dust being burned up, since everything is still working. My guess is, what you actually fried was dust.

 

[VirtualLarry]

My guess is that one of the voltage regulators on the board went, and you're limping along with VRMs-1 right now. But if it works, it works, hey.

 

[The111]

Originally posted by: VirtualLarry
My guess is that one of the voltage regulators on the board went, and you're limping along with VRMs-1 right now. But if it works, it works, hey.

Would that affect performance in any way? Any way to verify with hardware monitors whether or not all VRM's are operational?

Thanks everybody else for your input... I agree: I am very glad it still works. When it first happened I had visions of replacing my mobo, and the $200 didn't even bother me much, but the time and effort required was not something I was looking forward to (plus the down time... I'm smack in the middle of a big video editing project).