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Why does my computer smell like it's burning?

B

Bluesun311

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 21, 2013
Messages
2,523
Specs in sig are current. PSU is about 1 month old, little more.

Generally, it doesn't. But if I run benchmarks on my SLI setup, the room begins to smell a bit like hot plastic or something. I figured that's what happens when you are running 750Watts+ full blast and that it would go away after the PSU matured.

I can eliminate the graphics cards from the smelliness because my previous CrossfireX setup also did this. It must be the PSU.

Is this normal or did someone spill barbecue sauce somewhere in there?

Will it go away completely?
 
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Dude, check and make sure nothing is getting fried in there. Make sure the gfx cooler shrouds aren't toasted, or that you removed any plastic covering(s) off of your internal components. I have the same psu powering a crossfire setup and never once has anything smelled like burning plastic.
 
Yeah, that's a fair enough response. :) I am 99.9% sure it's nothing simple like that--everything is good and clean and carefully installed and has been running with no problems instability or weirdness for a while now.

I just don't really get to use it much. So I am wondering if it's normal for a new high-powered PSU to give off a funky smell for a while when it's chugging away at 200fps on valley.

The ONLY thing that is weird about my power setup is that I used an extension for the 8pin (2x4) CPU connector. I've checked the extension cable buncha times for melting or even heat and it doesn't seem to be involved at all.
 
Fabreeze came out with the new burnt plastic smell. I'd keep a fire extinguisher handy or mod your case to have a fire suppression system
 
Isn't that what AIOs are for? :D Guess i'll rma the psu. It's such a feint smell it never alarmed me. The word "fumes" has me concerned. Probably either light up at some point or i get ozone poisoning and die in my sleep. What a pain in the ass.
 
Good news and bad news.

Nenu said:
Find what smells.
Click to expand...

This advice turned out to help a lot more than it should have and I'm pretty sure I found the problem. I decided to just power the system down and see if I could get my nose up to all the vents and sniff for traces of the odor. The PSU smelled like... nothing--but the top mounted 780 had a plasticy smell coming from the vent. I pretty much always feel stupid but this is on a whole new level.

There were a couple problems. First off, last time I took my cards out I reversed them, one is a SC and one isn't and even though I have the SC BIOS on both, the SC should be on top I think, if for no other reason than it runs cooler in the top slot than the non-SC does in the bottom (they both top out at 80degrees C but one gets there about a minute before the other). Reversing them only made that worse.

More importantly... it seems there was another click in the seating of the top card into the PCIE slot and it wasn't quite all the way in. I hate forcing things!

I've been running Valley since I swapped em and reseated (for me I have to push harder than really feels normal to get these cards completely seated in the slot) and no smell...

So what's the bad news? I've been saying for a couple weeks whenever I noticed it (which was rare) that it was just the smell of a high-powered system. It seems more likely I was smelling faint plastic fumes, which are probably carcinogens or worse. I even had my 3 year old sniff for it once, but he said he couldn't smell anything.

Anyone think I still have anything to be worried about or is that something to just look out for in the future--make sure PCIE cards are realllllly firmly seated?
 
Nobody can know, you have to see if the issue persists.
At least you know to be careful that cards are fitted securely.
 
Are you saying the smell went away since you "reseated" the 780 correctly? If so, I suppose the smell could have been power related because the PCI-E slot itself feeds up to 75W of power to the card which of course it's getting from the PSU. If it wasn't seated good, maybe something was sizzling a bit. This might also be why you only had the smell during heavy GPU loads when the 780's would be drawing all the extra juice. It might not be a bad idea to check out the PCI-E slot itself and the PCI-E cables/connectors on the card to check for any burn symptoms. Even if this was possible though, it wouldn't explain why your crossfire setup had the same smell..
 
I suppose it's possible that the xfire setup wasn't firmly seated as well...but that would require me to be an even bigger idiot and I'd prefer to think that wasn't the case.

I'm a bit puzzled, no burn marks I can see in or around either of the pcie slots, all cables are fine. What I'm left with is the memory of that smell. It was almost pleasant, more like warm new shoes or new video card smell than something burning.
 
Is the plastic smell more like vinyl (wire insulation) or epoxy (circuit board material, chip packaging -- a diode or transistor may not be clamped firmly to its big heatsink)?
 
Well ya i think vinyl sounded about right so i went looking again for something the video cards might be warming or melting. Along the way (this s thread helped immensely just because hey your comp shouldn't smell at all even feintly really) solved the problem of why 10 degrees difference between the cards and maybe some closure on the mystery.

Was hiding the power/reset/hdled leads behind both video cards and they were touching. I still am now but i've routed them carefully flush against the side of the sata ports which are right behind the intake area of the gtx's. Now temps are 1-2c apart.


 
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