CX430 Has a burning smell

Hi all,

Five days ago I installed a new CX430 ( I am assuming it is a V2) into my HP pre-built to replace an older CX430 I had that seemed to be malfunctioning. I did the paper clip test prior to installing it, and everything seemed to be working fine even though this PSU is much quieter than my old one ever was. Once installed however, I noticed that the PSU now has a faint burnt plastic smell coming from it, something I don't remember my old one ever having. I re-opened my PC twice to check the connections, but everything looks to be installed correctly and nothing in the system looks to be damaged.

I saw somewhere online where someone mentioned something about the "newness" of it needing to burn off, and I decided to test this by not removing the PSU, and just letting it run. Its been five days and my computer is still running fine. I've run a few of my games on it (such as The Secret World and GW2), and didn't experience any shut offs or crashes that I would expect if anything was faulty. Yet the faint smell still persists even after all these days.

Should I be concerned about this? I am not sure if this is something to be expected or not since I can't remember if this was an issue I had with my old unit. I'm sure the computer itself is fine, since it is still fairly new (I had only recycled the older CX430 from an older system I had), and I had reinstalled the generic PSU that came with the pre-built for weeks prior to even ordering this new one without any issues though I couldn't hook my GPU to it.

I saw somewhere online where someone mentioned something about the "newness" of it needing to burn off, and I decided to test this by not removing the PSU, and just letting it run. Its been five days and my computer is still running fine. I've run a few of my games on it (such as The Secret World and GW2), and didn't experience any shut offs or crashes that I would expect if anything was faulty. Yet the faint smell still persists even after all these days.

Yup, it's not uncommon for that smell to still be there. As long as everything is stable and it's NOT getting any worse, then i wouldn't worry about it much

Yup, it's not uncommon for that smell to still be there. As long as everything is stable and it's NOT getting any worse, then i wouldn't worry about it much

Thanks for the help! I've been worrying that something was going to catch on fire all week. :biggrin:

I have a TX850W going strong still after 4 years. I remember that smell lasted a little over a week when my PSU was new. So yes it is normal.

Thank you. It's good to know that I'm not alone.