What made my graphics card blow up?

[MrMonkee]

I disassembled my pc to remove all dust from it with compressed air as my sapphire 7970 6gb was overheating and crashing when playing games.
When i put my pc back together and turned it on, after a few second a spark around 3 inches came from the top of the card.
If i put another card in will it also explode the same way?

 

[maddogfargo]

Where on the 7970 did the spark come from? If it was near the voltage regulator, could have been a short. Look for charring/damage on the GPU.

If it seems the damage is limited to the GPU, you could try testing your system to see if it survived. Put a basic/spare GPU in and see if the rest of your system is OK.

 

[MrMonkee]

Ive removed the Card a few weeks ago and have been using the entire system for a few weeks. Everything is working fine.. Just not sure what broke the Card.

 

[MrMonkee]

The spark came from the 8 black squares to the right side of the card in the image. I saw the spark come from one of them and it raised around 3-4 inches high.