I had a weird one today - problem I mean. For the past several days to a week there has been this odd smell in my tv room but it only existed in about an 8 sq. ft. area. Before that or after that, no smell. Only if you were 'in the zone' did you get a whiff of it.
At first I thought it smelled vaguely like mold or mildew but I wasn't really sure. Then today when I was standing there sniffing like a blood hound I felt a very slight draft on my leg. So I look over in that direction and the only thing suspicious there was the HTPC. Hmmm. So I take a sniff at the back exhaust fan and it's much stronger. But when I sniff the top exhaust which is right next to it just perpendicular, nothing.
So weird. So I blow out the case with some compressed air thinking that maybe too much dust had accumulated and some of it was sublimating into vapor, sort of 'smoldering' to use the term loosely.
But then I noticed that the fan I had pointing at the PSU wasn't working. This isn't a problem in the winter but in the summer, the increase of about 10F degrees makes the PSU flaky. So I sniff the fan and bingo, that's where the smell is. The fan had stopped working and the motor was just heating up and either melting electrical connections or the plastic housing.
This was very disappointing since the fan is only a couple of years old. Sure, it's been running continuously for that time, but come on. Plus, how did I manage to not burn down the entire house with this dodgy fan? I mean on the one hand it makes feel less worried about cheesy Chinese electrical crap since it didn't burst into flames, but at the same time, this was going on for about a week and that could have happened at any time.
I don't mind buying a decent small fan, but you can't even find one that is actually made in a Western country. Not that those can't also be garbage but I'd at least feel better if it had a real rather than fictitious UL tag.
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