Horrible Smell....Bad?

[Vault7424]

I finished my new computer last year and it works like a charm. For the past week, it started to give off a extremely horrible odor like it's burning. I check inside and nothing seems to be burnt and everything looks fine. My computer runs smoothly, but the stench is unberable. Anyone know what the problem is?


I use air cooling and their a few specs of dust around.

[theelectic]

Something is probably cooking/ready to burst. Probably in your PSU. You could just be sensitive to chemical off-gassing, but since the computer is 1 year old (not brand new) I doubt that's the case.

[Vault7424]

I suppose that too. My old computer's PSU burst too and it did smell like that. Thanks for the update. Is it dangerous to leave it like that for a while?

[Bootup05]

Yes

[perkam]

Check your motherboard carefully first (take out any pci, pci-e, and the cpu/heatsink), then the back of your processor, then check your nb and sb VERY carefully for burn marks or burnt capacitators.

Only after that can we conclude that its your psu.

Perkam

[tiro_uspsss]

a friend once gave me psu as well as the mobo it had been plugged into - i reconnected everything, & as i was doing so noticed that 1 of the pins in the 4-pin cpu connector was balck & surrounded by black, molten plastic - neither he or me had smelt it or seen it before - so my advice would be a) check every darn connector & then b) get rid of the psu no matter what (or if its a good one, send it in for rma or something)

[Solarfall]

no dead mice cooking inside the PSU... :D seriusly there was an article in a finnish pc magazine about stupid people trying to RMA there stuff.
long story short a grandma had returned her pc to a store were she bough it complaining that the pc whould not start and it smelled weird.
when the tech gue started to inspect the computer and found the problem... a small dead mouse inside the psu... i kid you not true story.
this was in 1995 or 1997 not sure about the year.

[Vault7424]

a friend once gave me psu as well as the mobo it had been plugged into - i reconnected everything, & as i was doing so noticed that 1 of the pins in the 4-pin cpu connector was balck & surrounded by black, molten plastic - neither he or me had smelt it or seen it before - so my advice would be a) check every darn connector & then b) get rid of the psu no matter what (or if its a good one, send it in for rma or something)



Ding ding ding! Thats the problem. The wire melted and the pin was covered with black stuff and smelled horrible. Thanks for the help everyone. :)

[[XC] DragonOrta]

I hate that smell. When I set my first computer up a few years ago, I needed a floppy drive because I was going to run RAID0 on 2 Raptors. I plugged the floppy in, turned my computer on, and a HUGE cloud of smoke came pouring out of the computer. It scared the :banana::banana::banana::banana: out of me.

Turned out that the ground pin on the floppy drive's power connector had somehow been bent and wasn't actually going into to the power cord. The entire cord burned right through the plastic and was glowing orange. Can you say "YIKES!" :p: