Hi folks,
Just recently (as of last Saturday) I've started to smell an unusual odour when sitting at my PC. It's a really acrid, dry, kind of stale burning smell, that makes a king of burning sensation in my nostrils when I get a good whiff of it. I've also been experiencing slight itching and watering of the eyes and a mild headache after sitting at it for a while.
I haven't been able to track it down to even a general source, except to say I definitely seem to be getting it while the computer is in use. I've tried to sniff it out, going around the monitor, and inside the side of the PC case and sticking my head in the exhaust air coming out the back, but I haven't detected it any stronger when I do that. Can't see anything amiss (eg. leaking electrolyte) in the PC. I have a hunch it might be the monitor (4-year-old Hitachi CM721F 21" CRT), as it seems to come when the monitor is on and warmed up, and abates when it is off or goes into power-saving mode... but the smell comes and goes anyway, so there may be no correlation. I took the cabinet off the monitor (had to adjust the focus anyway) and had a good hard look at the circuit board but couldn't see anything obvious on that either.
Note this is unrelated to my recapped graphics card as that card isn't even running in this PC... but on that topic, while I had the card in an antistatic bag waiting to get the bulging and leaking caps replaced, sometimes I'd take it out and get a faint whiff of an odour that I think was similar to this (though nothing like as strong or persistent).
Besides the PC tower and monitor, I have a Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 speaker setup that's on all the time the PC is, and the whole lot is plugged into an Artec surge-protected powerboard... that couldn't cause any kind of frying smell could it?
And of course everything is running fine (well I have intermittent probs with the PC/Windows but I think they're drivers-related), so I don't know what else I might do except keep using the machine, and wait until either it goes away, something starts definitively acting up, or I get a strong enough whiff of it to isolate a source... hopefully before I poison myself.
Any suggestions are welcomed on what this might be or how to trace it with more precision (any way to test emissions or something?)...
Just recently (as of last Saturday) I've started to smell an unusual odour when sitting at my PC. It's a really acrid, dry, kind of stale burning smell, that makes a king of burning sensation in my nostrils when I get a good whiff of it. I've also been experiencing slight itching and watering of the eyes and a mild headache after sitting at it for a while.
I haven't been able to track it down to even a general source, except to say I definitely seem to be getting it while the computer is in use. I've tried to sniff it out, going around the monitor, and inside the side of the PC case and sticking my head in the exhaust air coming out the back, but I haven't detected it any stronger when I do that. Can't see anything amiss (eg. leaking electrolyte) in the PC. I have a hunch it might be the monitor (4-year-old Hitachi CM721F 21" CRT), as it seems to come when the monitor is on and warmed up, and abates when it is off or goes into power-saving mode... but the smell comes and goes anyway, so there may be no correlation. I took the cabinet off the monitor (had to adjust the focus anyway) and had a good hard look at the circuit board but couldn't see anything obvious on that either.
Note this is unrelated to my recapped graphics card as that card isn't even running in this PC... but on that topic, while I had the card in an antistatic bag waiting to get the bulging and leaking caps replaced, sometimes I'd take it out and get a faint whiff of an odour that I think was similar to this (though nothing like as strong or persistent).
Besides the PC tower and monitor, I have a Creative Sound Blaster 5.1 speaker setup that's on all the time the PC is, and the whole lot is plugged into an Artec surge-protected powerboard... that couldn't cause any kind of frying smell could it?
And of course everything is running fine (well I have intermittent probs with the PC/Windows but I think they're drivers-related), so I don't know what else I might do except keep using the machine, and wait until either it goes away, something starts definitively acting up, or I get a strong enough whiff of it to isolate a source... hopefully before I poison myself.
Any suggestions are welcomed on what this might be or how to trace it with more precision (any way to test emissions or something?)...
But today, I’m making an exception here. Why? No idea. Perhaps only because the repair details are still “fresh” in my head… which is ironic, given this is a 16 year old monitor that hardly anyone will care about today. It is new to me, though. 
I picked it up last November from someone on my local Craigslist. It wasn’t very close to where I live, but was close to a family friend that I had to go visit anyways. So after watching the posting on Craigslist for a few weeks and seeing it getting...
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