So, after the long discussion on smoke detectors I thought it best to
start a new post hole.

I opened the case and looked at the board.
It is a so called military grade MSI ATX motherboard.
I saw no charred anything.
But I did see pieces of charred something sitting on the board and
looked upwards and discovered a cable hanging loose.

Look closely at the end of the cable and saw what was left of a drive
power connector. Traced that to the power input to a Hitachi 2T HDD.

What that my C: drive (Win 7) ? Yikes!
I have four 2T drives in there.
Thank goodness I just backed up the C: drive using Macrium Reflect Free
to an external USB Drive.

Anyway, now I am wondering if the power supply was taken out.
It is a 600W CoolerMaster RS-500-PCAR.
Do these protect themselves or just melt down with the connector.
The cabling is hard ot get to since the PC is packed tight with 4 HHD
and two DVDs and a few boards plugged into the motherboard.

So maybe the connector contact was not so good and the resistance
increased to a point where the connector melted the shorted out?
The connector was melted AND also turned to dust.

Connector went bad or ?

Wonder if the drive is still good.
Got to take it out and have a good look.

Thoughts (other than smoke detectors).

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