White PSU material (plastic?) melting. Should I replace my PSU? CX750 Overheating?

Karl Esller

Reputable
Sep 13, 2014
9
0
4,510
Hello! Today I was cleaning my room and noticed something in my power supply. I have this CX750 power supply for like 4 or so months and didn't have any kind of problem with it.
I noticed this white plastic ( PICTURE OF THE WHITE PLASTIC https://imgur.com/a/1yThBLd) that seems to have melted. I was checking the PSU of my brother (CX750M powering an 8350) and the white plastic seemed normal. This happened to my old PSU. I saw some people having this problem and they described bad smell and the computer restarting randomly. In my case I didn't notice any bad smell (I checked it multiple times during the day, no bad smell at all), smoke or anything like that, everything is working normally, including the PSU fan. I live in a very hot place (I'm using 5 fans on my computer case) but I've never noticed the PSU fan spinning too fast or feeling it too hot (I always check the wind coming from the PSU to know if it's too hot). The energy setting I use is the Maximum Performance one (I have a 8320BE, NOT overclocked), could it be the problem? Should I replace the PSU? When it's spring/summer the CPU fan can get LOUD due to the intense heat but it never goes above 55/60c. Could that cause this problem? Also, I am editing and encoding videos (which uses 100% CPU), playing games and compiling CS maps (also uses 100% CPU) all the time, should I just stop it?
 

Karl Esller

Reputable
Sep 13, 2014
9
0
4,510


Hi! This is a comparison with the 2 PSUs, the first is my brother's and the second is mine. https://imgur.com/a/nj01wil
 
Yeah that's the "gunk" they use to help stick things in. I doubt it would be melting as you would smell it.

You could always remove your PSU and open it up - just don't touch anything and of course don't have it plugged in! If you do want to look inside, when you pull the power cable out, turn the computer "on" and it will discharge the PSU.

By visual inspection only, you can tell if anything has died or about to die or smells bad.