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From: internaughtfull on 6 Feb 2010 05:28
Hi,

I have a PC clone of about 7 years, it runs fine. Until tonite when
I turned it on and it ran for awhile, then shut off and emitted a
strong
electrical burn smell. Yay! I love that.

If I try to turn it back on, the fans spin up and everything spins up
for about 15 seconds, then it turns off completely, and the smell
returns. I think the smell is coming from the power supply.

The smell is similar to the smell that lithium batteries in a
recharger
emit after a few hours.

Superficial inspection inside does not reveal anything wrong or
'burned' looking.

Could this be a capacitor or something inside the power supply?
The initial spinup for 15 seconds is confusing.

Thanks,

itchy.

From: Jan Alter on 6 Feb 2010 08:09



"internaughtfull" <itchyneebanshee(a)hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:8d47df15-d31e-4059-9f81-d3f729286d11(a)g28g2000yqh.googlegroups.com...
> Hi,
>
> I have a PC clone of about 7 years, it runs fine. Until tonite when
> I turned it on and it ran for awhile, then shut off and emitted a
> strong
> electrical burn smell. Yay! I love that.
>
> If I try to turn it back on, the fans spin up and everything spins up
> for about 15 seconds, then it turns off completely, and the smell
> returns. I think the smell is coming from the power supply.
>
> The smell is similar to the smell that lithium batteries in a
> recharger
> emit after a few hours.
>
> Superficial inspection inside does not reveal anything wrong or
> 'burned' looking.
>
> Could this be a capacitor or something inside the power supply?
> The initial spinup for 15 seconds is confusing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> itchy.
>

Power supplies don't have to fail completely to be bad. And apparently what
is happening is that the PS is maintaining an initial voltage to allow the
fans to kick in but as another portion is building up voltage (possibly
through a failing capacitor, a regulator kicks in to shut the PS down (
lucky for you). Sometimes when a PS goes bad it can destroy portions of the
rest of the system, ie mb, hdd, etc. Most of the time that won't happen and
all you need do is get yourself another PS. Avoid cheap quality.
--
Jan Alter
bearpuf(a)verizon.net


From: Paul on 6 Feb 2010 09:37
internaughtfull wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have a PC clone of about 7 years, it runs fine. Until tonite when
> I turned it on and it ran for awhile, then shut off and emitted a
> strong
> electrical burn smell. Yay! I love that.
>
> If I try to turn it back on, the fans spin up and everything spins up
> for about 15 seconds, then it turns off completely, and the smell
> returns. I think the smell is coming from the power supply.
>
> The smell is similar to the smell that lithium batteries in a
> recharger
> emit after a few hours.
>
> Superficial inspection inside does not reveal anything wrong or
> 'burned' looking.
>
> Could this be a capacitor or something inside the power supply?
> The initial spinup for 15 seconds is confusing.
>
> Thanks,
>
> itchy.
>

Once you get even one "burned smell", immediately stop using it.
If the supply was manufactured by Bestec, when one particular
model they make fails, it ruins the motherboard and hard drive.
A lot of other supplies, may stop functioning, without damaging
anything. But don't take a chance. If you get the burned smell,
replace the supply.

One poster to these groups, on discovering his computer would
not start, "flipped the switch on the back, quickly, about
50 times". The supply blew and ruined the computer. Being
impatient, or persisting with a bad supply, isn't your
best option. The burned smell, is the power supply saying
"goodbye".

While most of the time, supplies follow the ATX standard,
even some of the big companies have put non-standard supplies
in their computers. Before buying another supply, you have
to do enough research first, to satisfy yourself that you're
dealing with the standard design. To help you, these three
generations of specifications, have suggested wire colors,
which you can compare to the wire colors on your power supply
cables.

http://web.archive.org/web/20030424061333/http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/ATX_ATX12V_PS_1_1.pdf

http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/ATX12V_1_3dg.pdf

http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_PSDG_2_2_public_br2.pdf

Paul
From: John Doe on 6 Feb 2010 10:13
internaughtfull <itchyneebanshee(a)hotmail.com> wrote:

> The smell is similar to the smell that lithium batteries in a
> recharger emit after a few hours.

FWIW. I have several different brands (Bosch, DeWalt, Dremmel) of
lithium-ion batteries/chargers and have not noticed a smell. Has
anyone else noticed a smell while recharging lithium-ion
batteries? Methinks that is unusual.
From: internaughtfull on 6 Feb 2010 13:12
On Feb 6, 9:37 am, Paul <nos...(a)needed.com> wrote:
> While most of the time, supplies follow the ATX standard,
> even some of the big companies have put non-standard supplies
> in their computers. Before buying another supply, you have
> to do enough research first, to satisfy yourself that you're
> dealing with the standard design. To help you, these three
> generations of specifications, have suggested wire colors,
> which you can compare to the wire colors on your power supply
> cables.
>
> http://web.archive.org/web/20030424061333/http://www.formfactors.org/...
>
> http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/atx/ATX12V_1_3dg.pdf
>
> http://www.formfactors.org/developer/specs/ATX12V_PSDG_2_2_public_br2...
>

I forgot to mention that it was an Antec SL400. It lasted a long time
so I will
probably go with another Antec. Hopefully that will make the swap out
easy.
A local computer shop here has an Antec SP500 for about 50$. I looked
up the specs on it which said 'has three SATA compatible connections'.
However I do have four small [40g] ATA drives, the older EIDE ones.
Will that make any difference? Thanks for the advice and information.

itchy
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