Do you have a spare PSU ? That would be the easiest thing to test, If the strange oder is acrid, and acidic, it could be a leaking capacator, Try to Follow you nose.

Probably the "smell" is the PSU as far as both people said. My old PSU did that while I was playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R: SoC or doing other intensive applications back in my old system.

But follow the smell. That's how I found out the problem.

FWIW, it looks like a short between the 3.3 VDC line [pin 2] and the COMMON (Ground) [pin 3] lines.

I have no idea what could have caused it though.

Good luck!

IC

I'm still waiting to hear back from EVGA to find out if the m.b. is covered under warranty, any ideas how to test the power supply and find out if it's good or bad...it's only a month old, had the exact same model before, had random screen freezing since before xmas with old 280's and then with my new 480's, tried everything to fix, ended up replaceing the psu, THAT problem went away, everything has been running great, then Friday night I'm playing Metro 2033 and started smelling the odor (I'll never forget that smell) and then it slowly over the next 15 min. or so started acting real weird so I shut down 'till this morning start pulling the power supply to swap in ol 850 watt to test and found the damage. I don't know if I suspect the psu because when I noticed the smell the game and whole computer were running fine, no obvious glitches or freezing or anything, then I shut the game down after a couple minutes and started investigating. I'd hate to install the psu on whatever m.b. I end up getting next if it caused the problem! There never was any smoke or anything else to indicate something major, I thought one of the fans on the top rad was going out, due to the smell coming out the top.

Couldnt that be caused by a weak connection between the connections?  As in the the guy clearly removed all the wires to wrap them and the 1 or 2 was'nt all the way seated in the connector and casued it to get hot?

Update..pins WERE correctly installed...2 & 3 down were the trouble makers...same as in the link I provided from another forum. I have ANOTHER new psu (new 1200 watt Corsair and new 760 Classy coming tomorrow from Newegg while I wait on the rma process with EVGA.

Maybe a sign of multi rail power supplies no good after all?

DFGum

AHowes

Maybe a sign of multi rail power supplies no good after all?

Quit trolling.

Excuse me? Trolling?

I had a car radio plug get hot and melt, because of a bad connection inside the plug, and I think you had the same problem.

If you look at the 6th picture from the top, the second female pin is split open slightly, this would cause a bad connection.

Also, plugs are not usually the weakest link, so for it to melt, before a component burns out, pretty much narrows it down to a bad pin connection inside the plug.

I hope every thing works out for you