xps m1710 gpu heatsink has a strange smell ?

yesterday I installed my new t7600g and put a "pea" size amount on the cpu which was artic silver 5 - the good stuff. also cleaned out the fans and what now, and now today I sniffed my gpu heatsink and it has a smell to it, its not like a burning smell, but something else. my laptop is in "Excellent Shape" never smoked with it, always taken care of my computer. never even let dust get in the fans since I often clean it frequently. To me it smells like hot hair coming out of a heatsink ? and my temps are fine, and I can game with no problem. it just seems strange anyone else run across this ?

 

you never smoked with your XPS? that's evil, man. sounds like you two are otherwise good to each other.

on topic: could just be the thermal compound curing. i've never used arctic silver so i can't speak from experience. but if your temps and everything else is otherwise fine, i wouldn't worry about it. it'll go away in all likelihood.

 

I figured out the smell, its just "Hot air" coming out of them sexy bronze heat pipes

 

Was just gonna ask if it smelled like cat pee...

 

-Sniff, sniff-

You smell that? That's the smell of FAILURE!

GPU failure that is. The burning smell could very well be burning silicon.

 

I noticed it only smells from my gpu fan if the gpu fan is not on. Like if my gpu is73c and the fans haven't kicked in yet. But I just oc my cpu in the bios whicb makes my fan constantly run so lowers my tempsm my gpu is fine and new. I have checked. I got my new go 7950 gtx in may. Oh and its not cat pee I have cats and I can tell you its not pee ;-) now what I was thinking it could be too much artic silver because that's what happened last time when I cleaned my t7200 before I upgraded to a t7600g a few days ago.

 

Or at the very least he's good to his XPS. I wasn't very nice to mine (I didn't clean it as much).

But I also got a defective Nvidia Go 7900 right out of the box. And it kept going bad. So I was allowed to be mad at it.

The burning smell you detect may be some form of contamination on the heatsink or silicon chips (finger grease, but of skin, etc) as it burns off. If you are so inclined, you can remove your GPU, remove it's heatsink, and scrub just the heatsink only in warm water with a clean dish brush. Be thorough about it, getting in between the vent blades. The only drawback is you need to make sure it's absolutely dry before reinstalling to your GPU. You can always put it in the oven on a piece of tin foil at the lowest heat setting (200F) for 5-10 mins. That's what I do to clean the heatsinks in my Alienware. Just make sure you let your heatsink cool before reinstalling it as well.

 

Yeah because the hardware is fine even with my OC on the T7600G @ 2.88GHz, I can only think of using my can of compressed air at on my my fan fins that may have caused the smell. but the smell is going away as it seems. As long as the computer works, im good ! Wish my battery wasn't going, will never be able to find a new dell oem battery for it though. only got the original I got now