It's hard to tell, because aside from the third-world solder job on the card connects, the cards appear intact. However, with that poor of a job, it is entirely possible the GPU started pulling more current than that joint could handle and you arced over. That's a complex electrical scenario and hard to analyze, but an uncontrolled 10-11A current flashover that close to your GPU isn't welcome. I doubt that occured for the sole reason the riser itself looks again, intact.
The photo of the slot side, notch down - the connections here look especially suspect, but without a photo of the card and fry site in question it is hard to tell.
Yeah, other than the soldering itself, the risers themselves didn't fail. Only the GPU. What I want to know is if the bad soldering and faulty/intermittent connections can cause the gpu to fry?
If so, then I will certainly be more selective about the risers I use in the future. And will personally inspect each of them in detail prior to use.
All 3 gpu's failed in the exact same way. There is no visible damage on the front side of the board, only on the back. The actual component that blew up is one of the resistors connected to the vrm, not the vrm itself.
Two have already been shipped for warranty, here's a pic of the one I still have:
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fkklpkg.bay.livefilestore.com%2Fy2pFkIY5BxG_1OMIePbDiGAXKYuRNexpsDwiR8wjRJJ1A2GTgbjh2LfJ_quGe6ssxAXPfqAvDY1tTn67gVmSG6JWEbKcmmp6T3WjmL013sxgvg%2FIMG_20130831_150052.jpg&t=665&c=4OV7a-w-wKX2Qg)
To reiterate, the failure occured like this:
1. I would find the entire pc unexpectedly powered off.
2. I switch the pc off/on at the power supply.
3. I turn on the pc at the motherboard.
4. Resistor on back of gpu instantly blows with a big spark.
It seems to me like something internal failed on the vrm. Which caused an uncontrolled or abnormally high current draw through one of the vrm's. The resistor just happened to be the weakest link in the chain, so it blew first.