PC Smoke Smell

[CallMeMints]

I recently finished tidying up my cable management in my PC and it powered on nicely without any issues. However, I forgot to plug in my case fans like an idiot. After a bit of toying around with some cables, I plugged in a cord to my PSU with a female molex becuase the molex with the case fan cable was male. After doing that and turning it on, I could smell a strange burning odor coming from the CPU/RAM area. Like the idiot I am, I let denial get the best of me after I panicked and turned it off and unplugged the power cable because I ended up turning it back on only to have a small puff of smoke come from the same area where the smell originated from. Between the RAM and CPU. No need to call me an idiot because I've been doing that for about an hour now before I got past my shock and made this post.

 

[johnmanth]

Can you post a pic of the area with the smoke smell?

 

[bijan-sepahi]

This is fairly optimistic but are there any stickers on the ram.

Some brands leave thin sheets of plastic covering the ram and when you turn it on it can produce a funny smell for a while-so that could be it.
If there is physically grey/black smoke coming off these components - DO NOT USE THE COMPUTER.
Just also make sure you have plugged your cpu fan into the 'cpu_fan' header on your mobo not 'sys_fan' and I am wondering how old your computer is since your plugging your fans directly into the power supply.
Your mobo should have 'sys_fan' headers (3 - 6 of them) and plugging your fans in there means the mobo can control them rather than having them run at max rpm which can get quite loud.

On the note of stickers make sure none of your other components had little bits of plastic on them (usually covering the logo - i know corsair do this) or else that will also produce a funny smell.

Once again, if there is smoke DO NOT USE THE COMPUTER - i dont want to be held accountable for any potential fires XD

 

[1LiquidPC]

Pics would be helpful. Don't power on PC again until further investigating.

 

[CallMeMints]

I fixed it guys! Well, I'm not sure where the smoke came from, but I read that for a Phantom NZXT 410 (something I shoudlve mentioned) you don't need to connect a female wire to the "sys_fan". I only needed to connect the Molex connectors and now it booted up with the case fans spinning and no smoke, popping, or issues. All the LEDs were on and the motherboard LED was showing CPU temperatures. What a crazy series of events.

 

[CallMeMints]

I'm sure there still may be concerns, but thank you guys for helping me out when I couldn't get my mind straight!