Burning smell

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 08:05

So I just booted up my pc left the room for a moment and when I came back there was a weird burning smell. I've turned it off and I can't see any damage on the mother board and am assuming it's the psu. When it booted everything worked fine, what are the chances anything was damaged and how can I check its 100% the psu?

DaleTheWhale · 25 Sep 2014 at 08:07

Does the PSU smell burnt, did it go pop when switched on?

What PSU do you have?

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 08:10

Didn't hear any noise, but I left the room shortly after hitting the power button. The smell does seem like it's coming from the psu area. It's a be quiet dark power pro 550 watt and it is fairly old so wouldn't surprise me if it was the culprit

DaleTheWhale · 25 Sep 2014 at 08:19

The BeQuiet units are quite decent, possible that it's got old and a transistor/whatever has slightly burned. If nothing has blown up or gone bang, it might be OK but if your thinking of being safe, grab a new PSU.

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 09:15

I think I will be safe and replace it. What kind of wattage should I look at for my rig (in sig) if I wanted to leave open the option of going sli with my 780?

porushinobu · 25 Sep 2014 at 09:19

just to make sure, I had a similar issue and it turned out to be the 8 pin connector to my mobo

can you pull out that cable. I had a cheap PSU and was inaqequately protected during a surge, turns out the surge melted the 8 pin cable to its port on the mobo, and it worked for a week with a buning smell after. Had to replace both PSU and mobo

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 09:35

I've taken the psu out and all the cabling and still can't see an obvious fault but the smell does seem to coming from the power supply. There does seem to be a lot of dust in it, I wonder if some of that just caught, but the smell is quite synthetic, not really like burnt dust.

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 09:56

Are silverstone good? Looking at this one as I would need quite a small unit if I did ever want to go sli.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-362-SV&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2283

Boozebeard · 25 Sep 2014 at 10:11

Or maybe this to save some money if you think 750 would do it.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=CA-011-SF&groupid=701&catid=123&subcat=2466

Danny75 · 25 Sep 2014 at 12:06

YOUR BASKET
1 x EVGA SuperNova G2 850W '80 Plus Gold' Modular Power Supply £99.95
1 x EVGA SuperNova B2 850W '80 Plus Bronze' Hybrid Modular Power Supply (110-B2-0850-V3) £89.99
Total : £199.54 (includes shipping : £8.00).

DaleTheWhale · 25 Sep 2014 at 12:42

850W is a bit overkill for a single 780.

650W Superflower will do the trick or 750W if you want to overclock the card & CPU.

Akagi · 25 Sep 2014 at 13:00

I would get an 850 if you want to go SLI though.

Dempsey22 · 25 Sep 2014 at 13:24

BeQuiet has a 5 year warranty on the Dark Power Pro so check when you bought it

Boozebeard · 26 Sep 2014 at 22:31

I ended up getting that silverstone as it was the smallest 850 watt I could find and it has to go in front of the graphics cards in my case (PC V700) . Not 100% sure if there's enough space to fit another 780, would be super tight but had no immediate plans to do so, just wanted to leave the option open.

I got the dark power pro off the members market about 3 years ago so not really practical to chase up warranty on it.