Something's burning

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-13 06:50am

Alright, Im getting prepared to replace whatever is going to die on me in few minutes/days/weeks.

About a week ago, my computer started to...smell funny. Its not that kind of smell that you would normally expect from some burning cable or a chip and therefore I didnt identify it with my wonderbox. Plus nothing really happened, as I checked the temperatures of both the CPU, GPU, chipset and harddrive.

The smell is the kind of smell found in hospitals, like some disinfection thing.

Today I powered up my computer and after a few minutes it again started to smell funny. And after a brief moment, the entire thing stopped. No error message, zero input, zero output. Mouse pointer stopped, everything stopped. I had to reset my computer the hard way, with the switch.

I've heard the CD spin...and then the screen went blank. So I hit the reset switch again and this time, some of the letters of the initial power-up screen (where the memory testing takes place) were blurred and broken. And it didnt go beyond that screen. So I resetted it again and I got the blank screen. I turned it off, unplugged the power cord, waited a few minutes and powered it up again. After a few minutes It locked up again and I did the whole procedure again. I was getting ready to dismantle the thing, but i had to leave for the university. I again powered it up, everything went ok and I left. I came back about 3 hours later and everything is still ok.

My guess is the PSU.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2006-12-13 09:27am

Did you crack open the case to make sure all the fans are still spinning?

General Zod · Post by **General Zod** » 2006-12-13 10:33am

It sounds like either a heating issue, or perhaps you have a component that's not quite seated properly and gets loose after it's been exposed to so much heat. Either way I'd suggest cracking it open, checking the fans to make sure things are seated right, checking the chips and caps to make sure nothing is obviously loose, etc.

Tolya · Post by **Tolya** » 2006-12-13 04:40pm

It's not a heating problem. All the fans are good and temperatures are normal.

Actually I took the entire thing apart today. I took the PSU out, went to another room, sniffed it like a cocaine addict and then did something similar with the rest of the components.

Its definitely the PSU. Its funny since its a Chieftec and they were advertised as one of the better brands on the market.

And then I reinstalled my PC into a new case. It works happily now, I will see what happens to it.

Acidburns · Post by **Acidburns** » 2006-12-13 06:50pm

Check out my thread here, I've had a very, very similar problem:

[url[http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=101858[/url]

I didn't mention it there, but my mother often mentions that my computer smells like it's "burning". I scoffed mostly, but after smelling the air coming out the back, I have to agree. I also had no heat related issues.

Psycho Smiley · Post by **Psycho Smiley** » 2006-12-13 10:48pm

I've had similar experiences before; both times I lost a video card due to bad caps. That's just correlation, no idea about causation; just throwing it out there.