unfamiliar smell from the desktop PC

The desktop PC was built by myself few years ago when it was my first time ever I bought the hardware and built it by by myself. Before that, I either used laptop computer or brand PC and I never built a PC by myself.

In fact, from time to time, not very often though, my computer could experience sudden blue screen and has to reboot the whole system or sometimes too lagged. It's said that it might be due to the fault PSU. However, usually after reboot the whole thing is fine and only after another few months my computer would suffer a bluescreen again, not very often.

I don't know why it is. When I was using laptop or brand PC I never had bluescreen.

In addition to that, from time to time, I could smell some unfamiliar metal smell coming from the PC but the smell would disappear soon.

And now the computer still working apparently correctly.

Is my hardware already having "partial“ failure

 

Insects can climb inside your desktop, Also they can get really dusty and burning dust smells, or a lot of low electrolytic capacitors made in china have been know to fail (burst) and this will make a smell.

John

 

but when the capacitors fail(burst), it could still work?????

on the other hand, could insect , dust etc get into laptop / notebook computer as well?

 

It could still work fine with a failed capacitor, lots of capacitors are missing from some motherboards/power supplies so you might be fine, check the link below for more information on the capacitor problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

John.

 

so it's normal that many of our computer have some kind of hardware components failure but it works totally and correctly?

 

Well capacitors should not fail at all, but a lot of motherboards and power supply's from a few years ago had cheap Chinese capacitors and they were basically crap, and failed after a few months of use. they can leak or even pop off the motherboard, or the top splits open and all the gunk comes out.

It should be easy to see if you have a faulty one on you motherboard or add-on cards, but it could have blown in your power supply which would mean taking it apart to check.

Give your desktop a dusting while you are checking form faulty parts, just be careful of static electricity.

John.

 

checking and Looking for blowing capacitors???

 

a blown capacitor will be bulging on top (normaly there flat on top) or have leaked

 

Here's a good guide. Pretty easy to spot them.

 

You could take everything apart and visually inspect for any blown capacitors or rust or white spots on certain points of a motherboard. Also, take a look at the rear side of the board as well.

 

Oh just, you know, OP could follow the smell using his nose...