Member Avatar for OrgasmicCry

Came home from work today to the house smelling of a burnt plastic type smell...of all the things I didn't want it to be, it had to be my server.:twisted:

I immediately thought to power supply had blown, but then I noticed the Power on LAN LED was lit. Sure enough when I unplugged the PS this led went out, and when I reconnected it the light came straight back on again.

After a cold resatart the fans turn for maybe 0.1sec then nothing happens. It;s like the PS has blown (this happened a year ago, which was why I upgraded from300W to 500W PS. I am running 5 hard disks on this server by the way.

So is it the PS? I dont think so, but I'm sure you experts will tell me!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by dcc
Member Avatar for dcc

The first thing I would do is to open the case and see if I could determine where the burnt component is. If it's the PSU you should be able to smell it through the fan's vent on the rear. You could use a volt meter to see if there is any output from the PSU's 12V rail by reading it from one of the molex connectors, yellow is 12V+ and black is negative.

The smell of burn electronics usually is serious, if it isn't the PSU look at the motherboard for arc marks and any discoloration. Also look for bad electrolytic capacitors, they will look bloated by comparison to the others, they can open and leak or even explode...more like a pop. Check for burn marks or breaks in the traces.

Another possibility is that this is a heat issue with the CPU, if for some reason the HSF has failed the CPU could over heat fast enough to produce the same kind of results. The BIOS has a set temperature the it reads from a thermistor at the CPU, and when it exceeds this temperature it should shut down you computer.

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