Well, this cannot possibly be caused by upgrading firmware — the IC chip popping is gotta be a hardware-related problem and should have nothing to do with firmware update. So it’s probably a co-incidence that it happened more or less at the same time with the firmware update.
You can send a support ticket at support.opensprinkler.com. From the look of the board, this seems revision 0 of OS 3.0. We do still have a few replacement power boards and will respond to your support ticket once it’s in.