Heat/Burning Smell From Case

FinnegansLog

FinnegansLog

FinnegansLog

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Joined
1 Apr 2014
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155
Location
Birmingham
Hi All,

When playing any game on my PC I am getting a burning type smell coming from inside my case, I am not able to locate exactly where the smell is coming from but the smell is intense enough to be smelt outside of my room.

Could it just simply be a cooling issue where I can introduce more fans to help cool all working parts quicker? Or is it something more?

See signature for spec.

Thanks.
 
If you can smell something that strongly, then it's not just a case of better airflow unfortunately. Something must be getting very hot somewhere - probably 100C+. It could be something on the motherboard, the graphics card or PSU but something is definitely not right.

If you open up the case, does the smell seem to be coming from anywhere in particular?
 
Take caution whilst sticking your snout in your PC, I had a similar smell, PSU blew up in my face. Scared the crap out of me lol.

Funnies aside, it doesn't sound right. I'd do as Borealis said, get the side panel off and see if you can locate the smell, could be worth getting an infrared thermometer it may help you find where the heat issue is coming from.
 
Take out your GPU just to eliminate that. Download a monitor programme like RealTemp to see what temp your cpu is. Check all wires for heat damage, melted insulation, scorching, etc.
 
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@trejo - that's a fair comment, when PSU caps blow, they blow big.

I let mine sit unpluged for a while before sniff testing just in case something was red-hot. In my case, the moment I got near the GFX card I knew what was wrong.

P.S. What CPU heatsink are you using?
 
Alpenfohn Brocken CPU Cooler, according to the invoice. Its a pre-built system by OcUK, the Titan Katana to be precise with a couple of added extras.
 
I have sent them a message to ask about this already but I wont have a reply till tomorrow. I wouldn't mind but I have had it a year and all was fine until now.
 
No, like I said I shall do this tomorrow and post the results, when trying to get the gaming results does it make a difference if the game is minimized whilst I run a check?

I play my games in full screen and it minimizes when I go onto the Temp Monitoring programs.
 
MSI afterburner allows monitoring temps ingame (GPU, CPU). As well as other parameters.
 
Ok todays findings,

Had a browse inside the case whilst I ran a few games and saw a cable sitting on top of the graphics card, moved this cable underneath and after a fair few hours of continuous playing the smell is no more. I hope this was the issue anyway.

I did a few system checks aswell and there wasnt any particularly noteworthy high temperatures. The highest temperatures were the Graphics card which reached 70 degress at its highest and TMPIN3 on the Motherboard which reached 63 degrees. All the others were low to high 30's and really low 40's at a push.
 
What GPU is it? Some of them can get very hot so if a cable was sitting on it the insulation around the wire could easily begin to heat up enough to give off a smell.
 
Nah it didnt melt any of the cable away that was the strange thing. The cable was its own PCI-E cable from the power supply, it was just neatly placed on top of the, what I am assuming is, the radiator for the graphics card. So I decided to tuck it underneath out of the way.
 
I had a fan cable melt on the back of a graphics card ages ago. Luckily it didn't short or there'd have been a bang followed by a fire or something. It did cause horrible smell and some smoke though.
 
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