# The smell of burnt electronics...



## lsevald (Nov 25, 2019)

This is the second time this has happened to me. I'm sitting down in front of my computer, reading the news online, drinking my coffee. Out of nowhere, an overwhelming smell of burnt/really hot electronics fills my room. I quickly turn off and disconnect all my gear (actually three computers, and a bunch of other stuff). 

Now the fun begins, as there are no visual clues, and everything appeared to be working fine before shutting it down, where do I start? First, I open all the windows and doors to get some fresh air in (it smells bad! the kind of chemical smell that lingers in your nose long after). 

I start with the most expensive stuff, the three computers. With a flashlight in hand, I inspect everything inside visually. But it all looks fine. No leaks (all computers are water cooled), and nothing feels warm. I reconnect the computers, and start them up one by one. Carefully inspecting hwinfo for clues, run some P95 and Kombustor to quickly check for instability. Everything seems ok, and while the smell still lingers in the room, it seems to slowly fade away.

It's only been 4-5 hours since it happened, so it's still way too early to declare "all is fine!". But the last time something similar happened to me, maybe 10 years ago (all different gear obviously), I came out of it with no losses. And while that sounds nice, it's so annoying not to be able to trust your gear! I feel I can't even leave my room for 5 minutes without shutting everything down first 

Have anyone experienced something similar? The smell of something gone really bad with your computer gear, without any casualties, and did you ever find out what it was?

A couple of notes:

1. All computers where awake, but idle, not running anything that I know of
2. There was no smoke
3. It's hard to describe a smell, but my first thought was PSU. The smell is similar to that of a new power supply but times a thousand, with a slightly burnt quality to it. Smell of overheating transformer comes to mind
4. All computers are really clean inside, no dust build up

If it's a PSU, what could it be? Blown/leaky cap? Since they all still appear to work fine, I'm reluctant to open them up to inspect them. And my biggest worry is my newest PSU, a Corsair RM1000i that still has warranty on it. Can I return it on the basis of "it once smelled bad!"? Are there any known issues with these units?

Argh, I hate this, I just had to vent a little


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## jaggerwild (Nov 25, 2019)

Put your nose near the PSU should be able to tell if anything bad happened as you'll smell it. If you have a new system(1 you just started using) it could be just burn off(break in).  But if you had a overwhelming smell then something has gone south, try one system at a time. If they boot n run normal then try to touch the back side of the GPU, you have water cooling. I'd look there first, check for leaks, I've had water spill out and take out a GPU n board. It was a cheap Thermaltake cooler that the CPU block broke open on.


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## Dinnercore (Nov 25, 2019)

I can´t say this ever happened to me, but I understand your concern. 

Since everything is still working, maybe you had some intense load on one system? Something beyond the usual load that heated VRMs to the point of them slightly 'burning' dust? Or a power cable had bad connection and started to melt the connector, which you can maybe spot if you take each power connector off and inspect them closely.


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## lsevald (Nov 25, 2019)

Thanks for some good suggestions  Two of the PSU's are modular, I think I will pull them out and maybe ask someone else to do the smell test for me, or at least go outside to get some fresh air to compare it to. I've been sitting here in this smell all day now, so I can't really tell anymore 

As far as I know, all computers where idling, just browsing the web on one of them.

What part of a PSU is most likely to cause this smell? Something that failed on a really light load, did not go up in flames but just stink terribly?


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## Kwadratowicz (Nov 25, 2019)

Have You checked power and extension cords?
I hope it would not happen again, but if you can try to check if you can spot the difference in temperature of power cords, cause where is burned smell there is higher load, and more heat from cables.


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## eidairaman1 (Nov 25, 2019)

Bad power grid, surge protectors, and cheap power supplies and poor grounding and too thin wiring cause the burnt plastic smell


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## Vayra86 (Nov 25, 2019)

Yep, I still have a laptop laying around here somewhere. We were on holiday in an old (ancient) French cottage. Had the lappy hooked to the grid, on hibernation. Hooked up my JBL Charge to charge. Went out of hibernation and heard a pop > smell... nice burn mark on the board, dead lappy.

But yeah that sucks, don't underestimate it. I'd have the whole home grid checked out tbh... you have a fire hazard in the house atm


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## lsevald (Nov 25, 2019)

Yepp, I'm in the process of pulling one and one component and having my family members smell test each one. Fun stuff  But luckily "My precious!" main rig, with the previously suspect Corsair RM1000i, is cleared. But I now realize it also could be any of the power adapters, power bricks and chargers in this room, oh and a HiFi system, two TV's etc


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## Komshija (Nov 25, 2019)

I once experienced similar smell a month or two after I bought components and assembled my PC. It was summer and someone in the neighborhood was burning something in their backyard that smelled like fried electronics. That smell got inside my room because I have open windows pretty much the whole summer for better air circulation and I thought that it originated from my PC, but it didn't. 

I would also check power cables and wall outlet. Especially if you have a power strip with 6 or more occupied plugs.


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## Jetster (Nov 25, 2019)

New electronics will do this. But if it was a PSU just smell them


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 25, 2019)

Any component that shorts our can cause that smell. And any component can short out - either on their own due to age, or because something else caused too much current to go through it and it got too hot, there was a power surge or spike through the mains, or because it otherwise was physically damaged. All electronics will die - eventually - if given the time and opportunity.

In any case, it should be easy to determine which computer has the problem by isolating it to another room, then giving it the smell test.


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## Grog6 (Nov 25, 2019)

Any chance it was your HVAC unit powering on? 

The first few time my heat kicks on, I get a hot metal smell; I smelled it last night.

I hope it's not the electronics, but you should be able to narrow it down pretty quickly, if it's one of them.


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## lsevald (Nov 26, 2019)

It's been a long day, but I finally found the source. Turned out to be a Laing DDC-1T pump, in my media PC. Not much to see, but I'm sure the internals are much worse judging by the smell. The pump will still turn on, but the backside gets really hot fast, so I bet it will burn out eventually. There's a spot on the plastic casing that seems to have melted. I bought the pump years ago for a different project that never got done, so the pump probably has less than a month total running time. But now I'm just really happy I figured it out, thanks for all the suggestions guys


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## RealNeil (Nov 26, 2019)

lsevald said:


> But I now realize it also could be any of the power adapters, power bricks and chargers in this room, oh and a HiFi system, two TV's etc


Maybe it's the sheer enormity of everything that is connected in one room?



lsevald said:


> It's been a long day, but I finally found the source.



Glad that you isolated it


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## jaggerwild (Nov 26, 2019)

that's why, you don't leave water cooled stuff running alone........


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## Vayra86 (Nov 26, 2019)

lsevald said:


> It's been a long day, but I finally found the source. Turned out to be a Laing DDC-1T pump, in my media PC. Not much to see, but I'm sure the internals are much worse judging by the smell. The pump will still turn on, but the backside gets really hot fast, so I bet it will burn out eventually. There's a spot on the plastic casing that seems to have melted. I bought the pump years ago for a different project that never got done, so the pump probably has less than a month total running time. But now I'm just really happy I figured it out, thanks for all the suggestions guys
> 
> View attachment 137637



Glad you found it man. Finally peace of mind


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## lsevald (Nov 27, 2019)

jaggerwild said:


> that's why, you don't leave water cooled stuff running alone........



Yes, I've had so many water cooled PC's running 24/7 over the years (was into F@H years ago, back when electricity was cheap here), with very few issues, that I clearly have forgotten about the safety issues  I'm thinking of starting another thread discussing this. What will actually trigger a "hardware" shutdown of a PC if the water cooling fails? TjMAX? Or will it just throttle the CPU down? Depending on the CPU watt output, your coolant can get really hot before the CPU reaches TjMAX. And hot can equal pressure that wants to get out of a closed loop, easily destroying your hardware, floors, not to forget the fire hazard etc. For now, I'm using the MSI Afterburner->Monitoring-> Alarm feature to launch "C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 3" (shutdowns in 3 seconds) if something important goes out of my defined normal range. But that rely on the system still running to function, so it's not a really good solution. Also, sadly, I can't find my motherboard fan headers in Afterburner, as setting it to shut down if a fan/pump RPM goes too low would be really useful since it takes some time for things to heat up.

This stuff really should be built into the BIOS. So you can configure it to shutdown if a fan/pump stops. From my experience, the best the BIOS can do, is to alert you during post?


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## ShrimpBrime (Nov 27, 2019)

lsevald said:


> Yes, I've had so many water cooled PC's running 24/7 over the years (was into F@H years ago, back when electricity was cheap here), with very few issues, that I clearly have forgotten about the safety issues  I'm thinking of starting another thread discussing this. What will actually trigger a "hardware" shutdown of a PC if the water cooling fails? TjMAX? Or will it just throttle the CPU down? Depending on the CPU watt output, your coolant can get really hot before the CPU reaches TjMAX. And hot can equal pressure that wants to get out of a closed loop, easily destroying your hardware, floors, not to forget the fire hazard etc. For now, I'm using the MSI Afterburner->Monitoring-> Alarm feature to launch "C:\Windows\System32\shutdown.exe /s /t 3" (shutdowns in 3 seconds) if something important goes out of my defined normal range. But that rely on the system still running to function, so it's not a really good solution. Also, sadly, I can't find my motherboard fan headers in Afterburner, as setting it to shut down if a fan/pump RPM goes too low would be really useful since it takes some time for things to heat up.
> 
> This stuff really should be built into the BIOS. So you can configure it to shutdown if a fan/pump stops. From my experience, the best the BIOS can do, is to alert you during post?
> 
> View attachment 137778



Cpu ThermTrip shuts the board off. 
TJMax would be highest recommended running temperature (not sustained). Throttle point. Cpu/Board controlled. 

You don't hear much of electrical fires in PCs these days. It can happen, but generally a breaker trips in the PSU if on the 12v side, or the 120/240v side on the fuse panel. 

A short from liquid cooling should seldom happen if using proper non conductive coolants. 

Love the smell of new electronics, almost smells the same when the "burn out" lol.


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## lsevald (Nov 27, 2019)

You should come over, the smell of "new electronics" is still very much present 

Where do I find the ThermTrip value of a CPU? I quickly checked a few Intel spec sheets, but I'm not finding it.

HWiNFO64 also has an "Alert->Run app" section, but it seems a bit heavy to run in the background all the time? Is it really  meant for that? I guess I could optimize it and remove all the sensors not needed, maybe I will try that


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## Bill_Bright (Nov 27, 2019)

The smell of new electronics and components that have burnt is very different.


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## Dinnercore (Nov 27, 2019)

lsevald said:


> What will actually trigger a "hardware" shutdown of a PC if the water cooling fails?



I tested that as I forgot to power on my external pumps once. The 1950X or my Vega64 triggered a system shutdown as I tried to play CS:GO and was wondering why frames went to shit after 2 rounds...
Thankfully nothing bad happened, both CPU and GPU still clock the same and run fine. Thanks to some clever people that think for me and plan ahead for my carelessness 

On my new build this will not happen as both pumps get power from the PSU and if one pump fails I have the other one as back-up.


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## Grog6 (Nov 27, 2019)

Here's a paper on how it all works; this is old, but the mechanism hasn't changed.

DTS is "Diode Temperature Sensor", an easy way to read die temperatures.

P10 lists the conditions for shutdown.

There's a list of max temps for some Xeon processors in there, including the 5080 I'm building today, but not any newer ones.

I believe that info is in the HWInfo program, but I would be wrong.


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