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My computer has a sort of burning smell
Hi,
Recently, I've noticed my computer emitting a burning type smell. This smell usually emitted whenever my computer started heating up and that usually happened whenever I played games (at least this is what I think). I thought the burning smell was coming from my cpu so I decided to buy a new cpu. However, since replacing the old cpu with the new one, the smell still persists. In addition to that, the smell emits without me even having to play games. Within maybe 10mins after turning on my computer (and not even playing games, just updating steam games) I can smell the burn like smell. I've read online that it may actually be my psu. I honestly don't know at this point, because I'm not good with computers. I don't have much money, so I don't want to rebuild a new computer, I just want to figure out what is causing the smell and replace that part.
On a side note, iono if this will help, but before, whenever I played CSGO (rank games), the game would run fine. However later down the line (maybe a month or so before I started noticing the smell) whenever I played CSGO (rank games), my computer would crash. And when I turned my computer back on, it mentioned something about heating or like high temperatures. After noticing the smell, I tried dusting my computer, but the smell still persisted. If anyone has any insight on this matter, it would be greatly appreciated!
Recently, I've noticed my computer emitting a burning type smell. This smell usually emitted whenever my computer started heating up and that usually happened whenever I played games (at least this is what I think). I thought the burning smell was coming from my cpu so I decided to buy a new cpu. However, since replacing the old cpu with the new one, the smell still persists. In addition to that, the smell emits without me even having to play games. Within maybe 10mins after turning on my computer (and not even playing games, just updating steam games) I can smell the burn like smell. I've read online that it may actually be my psu. I honestly don't know at this point, because I'm not good with computers. I don't have much money, so I don't want to rebuild a new computer, I just want to figure out what is causing the smell and replace that part.
On a side note, iono if this will help, but before, whenever I played CSGO (rank games), the game would run fine. However later down the line (maybe a month or so before I started noticing the smell) whenever I played CSGO (rank games), my computer would crash. And when I turned my computer back on, it mentioned something about heating or like high temperatures. After noticing the smell, I tried dusting my computer, but the smell still persisted. If anyone has any insight on this matter, it would be greatly appreciated!
Comments
Buy some magnetic filters and place them on all intakes, should help ya keep it clean.
Do you have a program that checks your temps on fans and cpu?
Does the comp still crash when you play games for a while?
List the parts you have in the comp, cpu,PSU,vid card, sound cards, everything you have.
For steps i would take.. first i would take everything out and clean it very good. CAREFULLY!!!
Use vacuum and canned air to clean out everything and look at motherboard closely. See if you notice anything.
Blow out all the slots real good, along with the parts...vid card, mem sticks, so on.
Put the minimum back in to get it to run 1 mem stick HD vid. Run it for a bit see if it still getting hot.
If it is you can try those new parts if you have any around that you can use, or maybe a friend will let you try HD vid card see if that is the problem.
If you try new vid card and HD and still have issue may be PSU or MB. Too small of PSU might be an issue that would act this way, but seems you would crash more often if that was overheating.
Those are the early thoughts untill you list more info. Good luck.
2. Check that all the fans function. Simplest way is to start the computer with the case open, and look that they are revolving. Don't touch anything inside the computer while it's plugged on, only look.
3. Get a program to monitor the computer's temperatures. Something like Open Hardware Monitor is good:
http://openhardwaremonitor.org/
If none of those steps are enough to catch the problem, then it's most likely PSU. Most PSUs don't have any temperature monitor, or anything else that you could use to easily catch and verify that it's PSU. Once the case is open, you might be able to locate it by smelling around the case. But really carefully, without touching anything in open case unless the computer is plugged off.
I don't know if I'm using the same heatsink or not (sorry I'm really bad with computer parts/stuff) but when I got the new cpu, i took out my old cpu (the box thingy which I assume is the heat sink and the square chip looking thing) and replaced it. So I would assume I'm not using the same heatsink.
I haven't played long enough to see if my computer still crashes (the smell gets unbearable after like 10 mins or so that I just close my computer).
I will test out the suggestions you guys mentioned. However, I don't think I'll be able to do it that soon, seeing how I'm still swamped with school.
Thanks for all the tips so far though!
1) Dust cleaning ( including CPU , GPU & PSU fans )
2) Change CPU Thermal pasta
The burning smell comes in most cases from PSU and GPU . If your mother board has a integrated GPU , takeoff the dedicated one and "try again" , but my bet for burning smell will be because of the PSU and is a sign that it will come to an end. Take care with it in this situation. Do not let your computer run over-night while you sleep or when you are away from home. I woke up in a morning with a insane burning smell because of the PSU. Good think that computer shut down ( of course ) and .. nothing else bad happened.
Cheers!
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Sometimes when things get hot, and they have a bit of dust on them, you can smell that, and it will smell "burning", but it won't be like smoke, it'll mostly just smell hot.
When something electronic is going though, it smells liek synthetic burned popcorn - best I can describe it. It will still smell a good deal even after you shut it down and it cools off. We call this "the magic smoke" - because usually when this happens, the genie has been let out of the silicon and whatever it was (usually) no longer works at all.
If you have the latter, that's bad. Unless you have to, I would not run that computer.
Now, there are two ways to troubleshoot it.
The hard way is you need to power it down and open the case up, and realistically dismantle the entire computer. Often times you can find the bad component (or at least general area) just by smell - that acrid smoke lingers pretty well. You can sometimes see physical damage - IC packages blistering, traces on PCBs warped and overheated, capacitors bulging, conformal coating blistered, sometimes actual charred marks, etc. Do NOT open the PSU to look for stuff, just give it a quick smell check.
The easy way is --- keep right on running it and wait for whatever it is getting hot to either blow up or catch on fire. Then you'll know exactly where the problem is. It probably won't go out alone though.
If something is getting hot enough that your smelling it - I would not just install some temperature monitoring software and keep on running it, unless you are wanting to inadvertently troubleshoot this via the second method.
Sounds to me like it could be the PSU, but if you're getting temp warnings, then it could be a number of things because lots of stuff in a computer can overheat from the CPU, to the VGA card, to the Chipset or the RAM.
Cleaning is a good suggestion using some compressed air but beyond that it gets hard to diagnose the problem unless you have some level of familiarity with building a machine - just my 2 cents..
Speccy is a good suggestion if you want to post your system specs as is Glary Utilities. Be careful of other "freeware" out there. Some of it is anything but. Best of luck.
Seaspite
Playing ESO on my X-Box
Second, don't try playing games on it again until you track down the problem.
Doing anything else when we have no clue what you've got is a waste of time.
The problem is that testing them isn't easy unless you for some reason have older spare parts lying around.
I would certainly check the motherboard carefully, look for burnt markings and similar things. That might sound silly but it is often possible to see marks on a motherboard that is about to die and starting to smell.
The graphicscard is possible, does it smell more when you game?
The PSU is hard to check unless you have some competence in electrical engineering. Personally I would check what PSU it is, both brand and wattage. It might be that it is underpowered (common with cheaper PSUs, they often don't deliver what they promise while premium PSU tend to deliver more then promised).
https://www.amazon.com/Singer-Machine-Oil-4-Fluid-Ounce/dp/B000YZ1Y06
Second, check for any missing memory, Ram Heatskins / Heat Sinks usually wont be an issue if not running custom ones anyways...
Third if not check the power supply for sure, you can also check Voltages in BIOS / UEFI.
Over-All not that hard to find out what it but usually its a fan that has stopped and burning up, and if not that I would check the Voltage Regulators / Mosfet...
Heres a picture if ur not familiar with what that is.
http://img.techpowerup.org/100801/labeled_PWM.jpg
Sometimes a Thermal Cooler will cool it down leaving condensation and causing damage if left unchecked and touching it its what happened to one of my old boards.