Slashdot Mirror
Gassing Off - Motherboards that Smell?
dmauer asks: "I recently purchased what ought to have been my Dream Machine. An uber-fast dual Athlon with oodles of speedy RAM, a Geforce4, and a hard drive big enough to choke a horse (all in a snazzy aluminum case, even). So I get the thing home, set it up, and proceed to install Debian, making sure all my hardware is working nicely, etc., etc., and then I realize that there's a problem I hadn't anticipated. It smells." Usually when consumer electronics have a distinctive smell, something is wrong. Has anyone else run into such a problem, before? Assuming this isn't a electronic or health problem, what can one do to eliminate the odor from the immediate area without resorting to periodic fumigations?
type "apt-get remove odor" and that should do it. Let that teach you to heedless select everything in tasksel ! Always unselect the "workstation that stinks so people will leave me alone" option.
It's a somewhat metallic smell. The supposition that it's epoxy or something from the motherboard gassing off due to the heat produced by the chips seems pretty likely. Anyway, it's not really the odor that's the problem: the real issue is that while it only slightly annoys me, my girlfriend has a pretty strong reaction to whatever it's gassing off, to the extent that it actually makes her feel sick, get a sore throat, and have trouble breathing, which Just Ain't Okay.
Someone mentioned getting the motherboard replaced: well, it's a dual athlon, and to my knowledge there's only one motherboard available with the appropriate chipset (the Asus board I have). Or is this something that actually might be different on two of the 'same' motherboard?
Thanks,
-Dan
=== "Some people see the glass as half-empty. Others see it as half-full. I see the glass as too big." -G. Carlin.
Alcohol is fairly commonly used to clean board of solder resin from the manufacturing/repair process. At Motorola we used alcohol quite frequently to clean the boards of all the pagers that ran through. As long as there is no power going through it you can dip the entire board in Alcohol with no ill effects. I would take a small stiff bristled brush to the underside. I used to clean the inside of keyboards with this method before it became cheaper to buy a new one then pay me for 20 minutes of labor.
01010100 01101000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01101101 01111001 00100000 01010011 01001001 010
Well, as others have already mentioned, new components will likely out gas during the initial operating period. There's various new rubbber and plastic parts, and there may be some pastes (like under the heatsink) and adhesives that will also release the "new car smell" from your computer.
The important thing is to recognize the normal out gassing from something that's burning. If the smell tastes burnt, investigate the smell right away. If you see any sooty deposits (especially the black kinds), things have overheated to a dangerous level.
Perhaps your manufacturer has not burned in your new machine as long as what had been the norm. Computer manufacturers used to talk about having "72 hours of burn in" or "5 days of burn in". So, maybe you're on the earlier part of the curve in amount of smell being released.
I've noticed that most of the power supply units I get (mostly Enermax) put out a strange odor (smokey smelling) for about the first week of usage. I've been told by Enermax that this is normal and just a "burn in" (no pun intended) period for the electronics inside.
Perhaps this is what you are smelling, and not a motherboard or CPU. I've never had one of those smell. Just my power supply.
Not All Who Wander Are Lost
(I know, offtopic)
Using plug in deoderizers is generally a bad idea. How they work is by spreading a chemical agent that overloads certain neurreceptors in your brain, the ones that sense the "bad smell", so you can't smell it. Using these can really mess up your brain chemistry over the long term, and cause headaches, etc, over the short term.
BBK
To protect the thermal paste during shipping, there is a little removable plastic film over it. It is similar to the plastic bits that you peel off of a band-aid before applying it.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
Turn your oven to 100 degrees F, use a thermometer to insure that is actually 100 degrees F. Prepare a cookie sheet with a half inch layer of baking soda and a half inch layer of sand on top of the soda. Place the offending circuit board component side down on the sand bed. Insure that there are no insulated wires in with it (remove the northbridge cooler). Cook for 24 hours. Raise temp to 140 for another 48 hours.
The board did not get cooked long enough at the fab to get all the flux out of the soldier. It will not last long without a good cooking. The soldier will be very prone to cracking until the board is properly cooked.
DO NOT try to accelerate the process by using higher heat. The plastic components will melt. this is normally done before the capacitors are mounted so be SURE not to exceed 140 F.
Let it cool at 100 F for 4 hours then cool overnight with oven powered off still on it's sandbed until the thermometer is reading same as ambient air temprature.
Clean Oven before and after. Use the vent fan the entire time the process is running. Failure rate should be 5-15%. Boot the board clean (no components, CPU, memory) listen for no CPU beep code, add processor, listen for no memory beep code, add memory, listen for no video beep code, and video card etc...
The sand bed is hazardous waste. Flux, while a paste at room temperature, is an acid when heated.
If voting were effective, it would be illegal by now.
>It was too late to scrape it off so I just let it burn away by running it without a heatsing for a while and the smell went. I DO NOT RECOMEND THIS!!!
Neither do I or Tom's Hardware.
It takes 3 seconds to set an Athlon on fire.
Don't do this folks. Just _very_ carefully scrape it away if you screw up like this instead...
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
Better yet, if that's REALLY the problem (no experience, no knowlege, no judgement intended), return it and get your money back. That's a just-plain shoddy product and you should not be required to take the risks involved in following that procedure in your home (both to your health and the health of the motherboard) when you don't have the proper equipment.
It may even just be a bad batch of motherboards that was shipped out improperly processed.