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unidentified burning smell, XPS 600
I got called home from work yesterday that there was a nasty overheating/burning smell in the house and a little very light smoke, which was coming from my XPS600.
I cannot find anything vaguely wrong with it - nothing burnt, nothing failed, diagnostics shows nothing wrong, Win7 starts up normally.
However, there is a nasty burning smell coming from it in general within less than a minute of startup from cold, so much so that its unusable.
I'm thinking that either the PSU is about to go, or that its one of the fans on either the PSU or elsewhere ... anybody had similar problems, so that i have a clue what to look for ?
cheers :)
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Dell XPS 600 PentD 3.4 8Gb RAM Win7-64 2.5Tb HDD, GeForce® 9600 GT OC™ 512MB
g-akula
9 Posts
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February 27th, 2010 15:00
had another good look at it today, couldn't see anything inside the main case that was of concern ...
however, when i turned it on, burning smell re-appeared in ~60 seconds, followed by a light mist of smoke from the PSU outlet fans at the bottom ... so have ordered a Dell surplus (ebay) PD144 to replace the entire PSU/fan assembly
will have a go uprating the current (non-working) PSU to a higher capacity, as i understand that that particular PSU might not be beefy enough to deal with higher-drain cards
bowmansauce
2 Posts
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January 13th, 2011 05:00
I have a Dell XPS 600 with the same issue. a very nasty overheating/burning smell. Do you know what the problem is?
g-akula
9 Posts
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January 13th, 2011 11:00
turned out to be two issues for me
1. one of the conponents in the power supply unit in the power section below the bottom of the case - burnt out
2. LOTS of thick dusk in the above and blocking the free flow of air through the power supply case
I swapped out the PD144 power supply for one off ebay. (Involves taking the machine to bits!!). As its a bespoke part for these specific machines, its a nightmare to remove before removing the power supply itself (it pays to mark connectors)
The machine goes back together much MUCH easier than it is to take apart, lol
i opened up the old power supply, found an electrical component had been overheating, started to smoulder - probably due to - mats of dust blocking the front air vent (the one below the Dell insignia frontplate on the front of the machine) - i haven't tried to change the burnt component, but did vacuum out a LOT of dust
I understand that this is a bit of a problem for the XPS 600 - what would be cool would be for Dell to come up with cheap, user-serviced air filters like the high-flow filters on photocopiers - wouldn't cost much, would save a LOT of this kind of problem, improving Dell's reputation for doing the job properly first time, the only time.
you *could* find the PD144 power supply on ebay - but make sure that its not one thats already been fried ;)
hope it helps a little :)
bowmansauce
2 Posts
0
January 13th, 2011 11:00
This is very useful thanks so much. I am watching a Dell XPS 600 on ebay. I can wait to pull apart the power supply. i have spotted a lot of dust down there and have cleaned the best i could.
Thanks again.