PC Smoke/Burning smell

Zack Brown · June 10, 2016

SPECS IN SIGNATURE

I made a topic about this yesterday but it's dead now, and the issue is kind of solved but I just want to make sure that it's all good.

Yesterday, I built my PC outside of the case (new build) to see if everything is working, I turned it on and everything was working fine with no problems at all.

I built my PC inside the case, but before I installed the CPU cooler heatsink, I turned it on to see of everything was working, and I smelt a burning smell and turned it off immediately.

I tried to smell around the PC components and I smelt traces of a burning smell coming from the GPU. I took the GPU off, switched the PC back on again to see if the GPU was the problem. Within a second after switching on the PC, the burning smell came back with some smoke coming from the top of the case. I switched it off again immediately.

I smelt the top of the case and the smell seemed to have came from the front I/O panel.

This is when I made the post. A couple of people recommended that I rebuild everything outside of the case, and to check if any of the components were fried. And so I did. Luckily, none of the components were fried or had any burning smell on them. They all looked brand new.

I built everything outside of the case, this time with the thermal paste replaced and with the heatsink installed. I switched the PC back on, and the PC worked like a charm.

I also checked under the front I/O panel to see if anything was fried, it looked brand new.

What should I do now? Can I build everything back in the case?

Thanks in advance.

June 10, 2016

I once fried the onboard sound card. It was broken really bad. (dropped a screw while power was on) Have had some real visible damage. The mobo booted up just fine, after I checked things. 5,5 years later, and my cumputer is still running fine. (with PCI sound card ofcourse)

I would suggest that you look for any possible causes of the problem. Maybe a broken USB port, where some pins would touch, or something like that. If you can't find anything wrong, and if it runs fine out of your case, just put it back in.

Try to be very carefull putting the mobo back in. Look for good clearances, so it wont short out again. Use an power extension coard with a button, so you can REALLY quickly turn off all the power, just to be sure. If all works fine after this, just keep going on.