Loud pop...

So I was playing ARK last night on my Alienware 18, when I heard a nice pop, instant shutoff, followed by burned electronic smell....

I went to restart and....everything is fine? WTF..... I'm so confused. I still smell a burned electronic component of some sort, but no errors in device manager, CPU working fine under load, GPUs both working fine under load, RAM is usable. WTF happened here.

 

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random pic 18x R2 motherboard; pops can be a few things, sometimes a capacitor 'cap' will pop but still leave the system working. Blown cap soldered off / new soldered on. Visual inspection reqwired; it's tough to say what popped, check for a blown cap as likely culprit

edit @Raidriar

I read that when a cap blows - even though the system may be 'functional' - it could cause fatigue (&/or failure) on components downstream, leading to bigger problems, maybe. I've no idea what popped, I don;t advise running it until someone here advises you to or it's been taken to a shop for a look-see. Better safe than sorry.

 

Can I run my system as is if it is still operational?

 

Update: Inspected the board....nothing wrong with any component that I can see...maybe it was from the GPU? No clue, but board looks fine. No popped capacitors or burned looking components. Who knows?

 

I'd sell it at this point, or claim warranty.

 

Warranty out on this unit...don't ask me how, but it just is. I really don't feel comfortable pushing on somebody knowing something is up with it. Sucks having a conscience sometimes.

 

nah bruh, it's going to be alright. just find someone that accepts it within 30 days of ebay policy and you're set.

 

Nobody should buy your used hardware... If this is your way to get rid of a problem !!

 

Definitely sounds like a capacitor... also, hard to identify by sight, if the cap just blew it might not have leaked out enough yet to see it - the blow out usually vaporizes the liquid - cleaning out the site around the cap. That "spray pattern" can sometimes be seen glinting in the right light.

You have to use your nose. Don't let the laptop run much until you can put your nose into it, otherwise you may air it out too much. If so, let it sit unplugged, battery pulled, for a few hours before sniffing out the bad cap.

It will smell faintly like what you already smelled, at least a little smokey.

You want to find it and remove it - it's going to leak. Buy replacements for all similar caps around it, as they are going to weaken similarly over time. You might as well replace them all now, rather than waiting for another catastrophic failure.

If you don't have a good sense of smell, find someone you know that does and ask them to sleuth out the blown cap.

http://console5.com/wiki/Identifying_Bad_Capacitors

Have fun

 

Consider your laptop as broken now instead of working one otherwise it will become real broken soon. I know you want to play on it but...

Faulty cap can be little bit bigger, bulbed, not ideal shape.
And if you don't see it then try to smell indeed.

 

This is not mine?

 

I did sniff around, and couldn't find any of that "electrical burn" smell, the capacitors looked perfect, no strange smell to them at all (at least, not the big capacitors). Maybe it was one of those tiny SMD capacitors? I mean everywhere I smelled, I couldn't find that burn smell again. I'm starting to think it was something else in hooked into the power strip that may have blown, because this computer is running fine with no stability issues.

 

As guys told earlier it's probably a capacitor as mainly them could make a loud pop.

 

That's too bad, that you can't identify the area it happened in, or identify any other bad looking caps.

Hopefully it was a sound from somewhere else other than the laptop, but maybe you should investigate the other possibilities, as they might need the same attention you thought you needed to give to the laptop

Some times the debris pattern registers on the surrounding area - you get a clean blowout, look where the shrapnel stops / hits for impact debris on the shell inside bottom/top.

If you have monitored voltages before, do it not and see if any of them are out of spec, or at least different than you recall.

 

All the voltages run the same as before, no difference in tolerance (or if there are...it's not measurable)