Can Thermal Paste be cause of noxious fumes?

Nitrom

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Oct 21, 2004
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I just finished to build a computer. I have an Athlon XP 2800+(OEM) assembled on top of a CHAINTECH 7NIL1 SUMMIT mobo with a Thermaltake Extreme Volcano 12 heatsink and fan.

I used ARTIC SILVER Polysynthetic on the CPU.

After first power up I can smell noxious fumes coming out of the computer. I suspect it may be the thermal compound even tho operating temps show seem to be normal. ABout 43 C for the processor and 32C. for the motherboard under certain amount of load.

However I noticed that the fan speed of the heatsink (which I purchased separate from the CPU)was about 2500 RPM and I am thinking that maybe I should install the manual speed control in order to have better fan performance.

Any input will be appreciated.
 
Well you could look at it this way...You would need to heat the thermal compound over 500 Degree's or by formula X's 2 + 30 = 1030 Celsius in order to get it hot enough for it to turn into a vapour (gas) state.

More likely you are smelling the aluminum heatsink bake off some thin film of oil that was present on it.

<font color=red>GOD</font color=red> <font color=orange>LOVES</font color=orange> <font color=red>CANADA</font color=red>
 
Yeah...U R right...I guess it can be some brand new capacitor or some brand new component that needs to burn some until it starts working clean.
 
cough weezing cough cough splutter, i just used the same stuff on my cpu, cough cough, i seen some smoke cough it did me the world of good.

cough

cough

sh1t i see some blood.

errrhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
 
scuze me, just farted. Smell will drift away soon.

<pre><font color=red>°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°`°¤o \\// o¤°`°¤o,¸¸¸,o¤°
And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign</pre><p></font color=red>
 
*breathes deeply*
Now THAT's quality!


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Probably your PSU. They often stink for a little while when brand new.

If it's still smelling after a week then give it a bath :wink:

---
A64 3200+ Winchester @ 250x10= ~2.5Ghz, ~1.41 Vcore
1Gb @ 209Mhz, 2T, 3-5-5-10
Voltmodded Sapphire 9800Pro @ 450/350 w/ modded VGA silencer 3.
 
Many components have a thin shelac coating, which burns off when it gets hot. As long as it's not burning off a transformer, you're fine.

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Electric burny type fumes or plasticy type fumes... 1 blew up a hub once, the capacitor that went exploded stunk out my whole room for a week

Trust me I know what I'm doing... ooops, grab the cat...