Friday, May 12, 2006

Strange smell from an old computer

My main and old computer (Pentium II from 1998) is giving off a bad smell, as if rubber/tyres are burning or I'm in a train/bus with new brake lines. It's giving me a headache and I have a bad feeling about its health effects.

No wires are touching the heatsink - I already checked that.

Any ideas on what this is?

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe an old rubbing fan.

Thomas Beinicke said...

My bet is the PSU as well.
Probably a electrolytic capacitor is dying and they do smell very bad.
You could also check if the electrolytic capacitors around your CPU have a "bulge" on top.

Clarence Dang said...

Thanks to everyone for their replies. Apologies for my late one.

It turns out it is probably the fan in the power supply unit. Removing the dust from the fan not only gets rid of some noise (which I thought was the hard disk getting scratched) but also gets rid of the smell on most days. Sometimes the smell is still there.

I tried to look for a new power supply but given how old the case and motherboard are, I still haven't succeeded and it would probably cost more than the computer anyway.

Anti Galau said...

Hemm, i think you should replace your computer with the new one :P

Or try to buy a new gadget like Android Tablet PC. :D

asus fonepad tablet 7 inci dengan fungsi telepon said...

Trya tablet PC, now they're become better and better :D