I'm totally retarded.

Got a new nForce 680i mobo for my new build. Didn't really bother to take it out of the box at first, as the parts were arriving in different UPS shipments. I was looking at a picture of the same mobo in a magazine and a picture of my GPU (GeForce 9800 GTX) and I got worried the damn thing wouldn't fit. The card didn't arrive yet so I pulled out the mobo, took it out of the plastic frame thing and held it with my bare hands, while sitting on my living room armchair and examined it for maybe 20 minutes, trying to picture the big-ass 9800 GTX fitting in the PCI slots with the southbridge and all the other ****. I may have accidentally one or two of the capacitors. Put it back inside the plastic freight thing and inside the box.

Fast-forward to today when the 9800 GTX and my TV tuner arrive, both of which are in their anti-static bags and covered with warning stickers. Suddenly, the realization hits me that I was carelessly messing about with my mobo. What are the odds that I totally screwed up the 680i? I wasn't wearing socks and there was no carpet. Plus, I think the armchair thing is cotton or something.

I'm not expert, but unless you felt it I doubt anything had happened to it. Did you try it out yet? Seems like you haven't installed it yet.

Why don't you stop worrying about that until you actually try? No point tearing out your hair about something you don't even know.

Nah, still have to wait for the hard drive to arrive via UPS.

I guess, if I knew for sure that it was damaged, then I could ask for a replacement or something sooner.

What would happen if I had damaged it? Would it just fail to post or would there be some other side effects?

Cant be 100% sure, but I would say that it should still be fine.

Its harder to damage components with static once they are soldered into a board than it is with an individual component.

As long the caps didn't break off the board or the contacts sever somehow they'll be ok. I've bent many caps on many boards and had no issues. Although possible as far as I know, I've never damaged a component with static, or had static transfer occur, that wasn't running at the time or had power supplied to it at the time. And like guitarxe said, unless you felt it, or heard/saw it at least, I doubt you messed up your board with static. Hell, all my PC work is done in my bedroom floor and it's carpeted. I doubt you have anything to worry about. And if you want a little tidbit for the future, just touch something bare metal, like your computer case, immediately before you handel any components and that'll discharge any static build up. But again, even touching something metal beforehand, I've never discharge any static in the 10 years I've worked on computers. You shall sleep at ease tonight my friend

EDIT: If you did damage it via static, there probably won't be anything but that just depends on what you may have damaged. It may just behave sporadically, but it would probably do nothing, just be dead. You can test the system now without a HDD. Just setup everything and see if it goes into the BIOS and tries to boot into an OS and then claim there's no HDD or no OS found. If it goes into or even through BIOS, then I'd say you're fine.

Unless you really are totally retarded and where wearing one of those old oneses while rubbing your feet on shag carpet while holding your Mb it will be just fine.

Alright, alright. Looks like I over reacted....

did you really just mention a onesie? haha that's so JD from Scrubs

I build computers with socks on while standing/sitting on nylon carpet and without any anti-static wristband gimmicks, and I've never fried a thing.

Same here, have the entired room carpeted .

Same here.
Never had a problem with static.
It is just a conspiracy by the people who make the wristbands to push more out the door

They are more durable than many people think.
Most of my salvaged parts just sit in cardboard boxes unprotected and I have never had a problem with them going bad from static, getting shifted around or anything else.

Same as everyone, I've never had problems with static. And all my floors are carpeted. I just always touch a metal (like your chassis, for example) before I handle the parts as an extra precaution.

I mean, you'd have to wear a woolen sweater and be rubbing a cat in one hand to really get a static discharge that would damage your parts.

unless it's a siamese cat...