Any thoughts about an interesting plastic smell from new PC

[iLigand]

Hi there, apologies in advance if there's some funky formatting, I'm using my phone at the moment.

 

I built a new PC last weekend, but thanks to finals and work I haven't really had the chance to use it much until today. When I booted it and did some benchmarking last week there was this plastic smell that was coming out of it. I opened the case back up and made sure I got all of the plastic sheets on components to rule out any melting (there weren't any) and let it run for a bit. There was this sweetish plastic smell (not burning) in my room after that, and my throat felt a little scratchy. Now in the present time, I booted back up and tried to run some Cyberpunk to give a little bit of a run to the PC. About 30 mins in I started to notice the smell again, but fainter than the last time I ran it. Temps seemed pretty normal according to previous knowledge and my friends, so I am unsure if there is some burnoff happening or of it is something else. It seems the strongest at the bottom of the back of the PC, so at the PSU if that helps anyone who has dealt with issues like this before.

 

Pretty much just want to see if anyone has any ideas on what it might be or if I am just overthinking a smell I somehow missed in the last PCs I built. Also if I am in the wrong part of the forums let me know and I'll mosey over to the right topic.

[WhitetailAni]

What are your specs?

[iLigand]

1 minute ago, ragnarok0273 said:

What are your specs?

CPU - Ryzen 5 3600XT

Motherboard - Asus ROG Strix B450-F

RAM - 32GB Corsair Vengeance RGB

GPU - NVIDIA RTX 3070 Founder's Edition

Case - Corsair 465X Mid Tower

Storage - Samsung 970 EVO NVMe and Samsung 860 SATA SSD

PSU - CORSAIR RM Series RM750

Display(s) - 2 generic HP monitors

Cooling - Corsair LL120s (3 came with case, added 3 extras for better coolong)

[WhitetailAni]

I could (and probably am) wrong, but it could be a faulty PSU.

If no one else chimes in, I would RMA it and get a replacement unit.

[iLigand]

Just now, ragnarok0273 said:

I could (and probably am) wrong, but it could be a faulty PSU.

If no one else chimes in, I would RMA it and get a replacement unit.

Yeah thats what I was feeling too, I've heard some things about corsair RMA but hopefully it was just people being dramatic on reddit. Thanks a bunch for your response.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

Might be board, i dont know if its even enough for the 3600xt. b450-f has really bad vrms for the price, and is marked as maxxed out by the 3600 on the mobo vrm teir list. Check for weirdness around there first (melted plastic,  if you can, take off the vrm heatsync and check for damage, just to see fo the vrms commited.... toaster bath?

[iLigand]

5 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Might be board, i dont know if its even enough for the 3600xt. b450-f has really bad vrms for the price, and is marked as maxxed out by the 3600 on the mobo vrm teir list. Check for weirdness around there first (melted plastic,  if you can, take off the vrm heatsync and check for damage, just to see fo the vrms commited.... toaster bath?

Looks like I'll have a busy day tomorrow then. Probably should have done some more research outside of just trusting PCPartpicker's compatibility stuff.

[iLigand]

14 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Might be board, i dont know if its even enough for the 3600xt. b450-f has really bad vrms for the price, and is marked as maxxed out by the 3600 on the mobo vrm teir list. Check for weirdness around there first (melted plastic,  if you can, take off the vrm heatsync and check for damage, just to see fo the vrms commited.... toaster bath?

Also, any suggestions on a board that would be enough? May as well set up a contingency for myself if I run to MicroCenter tomorrow morning.

[parrotperil]

My new Corsair RM650 smelled plasticy like that for about a week, but it works fine.

 

Check your temps, and if they're all good and nothing else is suspect I'd chalk it up to 'new PSU smell'.

 

If it were me I wouldn't RMA unless something else goes wrong or you still smell plastic after a few weeks. You mentioned the smell was less strong the second time, so you're probably in the clear.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

13 hours ago, iLigand said:

Also, any suggestions on a board that would be enough? May as well set up a contingency for myself if I run to MicroCenter tomorrow morning.

b550-f gaming, if you can buy it

[iLigand]

14 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

b550-f gaming, if you can buy it

I'll take a look. Thanks again. Also, I was doing some reading earlier and it mentioned VRM matters for overclocking but does it matter in this case too? I asked a buddy of mine who is way more knowledgeable than I when it comes to PCs but never got an answer.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

8 hours ago, iLigand said:

I'll take a look. Thanks again. Also, I was doing some reading earlier and it mentioned VRM matters for overclocking but does it matter in this case too? I asked a buddy of mine who is way more knowledgeable than I when it comes to PCs but never got an answer.

vrm is power delivery. so bad ones that are bairly enough for your cpu (like these) can matter for everything.