My old PC is still alive and i refuse to let it retire (also it smells like toast)

so my 2013 build with an i5-3570k still runs fine, except it now gives off a faint burnt toast smell for maybe the first ten minutes after i turn it on temps look normal nothing has died my cat sits next to it every morning like its a fireplace

i've done the stuff you'd expect blew out the dust, checked the psu fan, sniffed around in there like a weirdo. i couldnt find a single scorch mark. my sister says thats how the house fire starts and i should get rid of it i say its got character. it's outlasted two of my phones, one marriage that wasnt even mine (i was the best man and they split before the warranty ran out) and a microwave i actually liked

my gut says its the psu, which is the original corsair from when i built it 13 years is probably past the point where i should be trusting it, but it's never let me down so far

so has anyone else had a pc that smelled like breakfast and it turned out to be nothing? or did it end in tragedy and if i do replace the psu, is the rest of this thing even worth keeping or am i just being sentimental about a box of capacitors

also i know the answer is "replace the psu you idi

toast smell that sticks around after a cleaning is usually the psu, not dust. the parts inside it cook slowly and you wont see scorch marks from outside dont open it up to look either, the caps inside can hold a charge even when its unplugged

check the motherboard for bulging or crusty caps while youre in there https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

your sister isnt totally wrong. a new psu is like $60. character is fine, the smell isnt

also if its old enough to smell like that it probably has a sick keyboard attached, post pics

toast smell is NOT a personality trait, its the PSU begging for help lol. id unplug it till you figure out where the smell is coming from. sometimes its just years of dust cooking on a heatsink, so blow it out with compressed air first and see if the smell goes away. if it doesnt, swap the psu, and DONT open the psu itself, the caps in there are the ones people already warned you about. also your PC is clearly just trying to make bread. its a little crumby intellectual humor, look it up

lol the bread joke got me ok but seriously, toast smell is usually the PSU or a cap that's cooking somewhere, so yeah, blow the dust out and swap the psu if it keeps happening!! also check the motherboard for any puffy or leaky caps near the cpu socket while you're in there... the tops should be flat, not domed. i have an old core 2 duo machine that i also refuse to retire... it mostly runs a planetarium program now so i can check when Jupiter's moons transit, which is a very normal use of electricity!! fun fact, Io goes all the way around Jupiter in about 42 hours, so there's almost always something to watch. anyway long live old PCs ngl just maybe not the crispy ones

checked the caps last night with a flashlight and a level of focus i usually save for parallel parking. theyre all flat, so the toast mystery lives on. my current theory is the cat has been shedding into the psu intake and im smelling slow roasted cat hair, which is somehow worse than a dying capacitor

the jupiter machine is extremely normal btw. like, my dads old pentium 4 ran nothing but a solitaire clone and a weather station program for like 9 years, and he'd print out the rainfall totals and tape them inside a kitchen cabinet. that cabinet is basically a historical archive now

dad printing out rainfall totals is honestly the most respectable thing a pentium 4 could be doing doesnt need updates or a subscription, it just tells you it rained and you file it away... my grandfather kept his in a binder next to a casio that he swore was off by four seconds a month, which bugged him a lot more than it should have

also the cat hair toast smell is a real fire risk, take the psu out and blow it clean before the city decides space heaters and old computers need a permit. give them time...

well my late husband had an old Dell he swore by too... and the toast smell is NOT something to ignore!! lowkey i just watched a Dateline where the whole thing started with a space heater and some old electronics in a spare room so please unplug it and look inside before you go to bed tonight

my grandson Tyler built me a new one last Christmas and I'll admit it's faster... but I do miss the old one humming away on the desk while I watched the herons out at the pond. Just my two cents!!

the hum was honestly half the appeal, new ones are so quiet you cant tell if theyre on or if they quietly died... Tyler did a nice thing though, and the herons dont care how fast your processor is

op if the toast smell is still there after you blow the dust out, id just retire it to the closet and visit it on weekends

lol the bread joke got me ok but seriously, toast smell is usually the PSU or a cap that's cooking somewhere, so yeah, blow the dust out and swap the psu if it keeps happening!

well I'll be... Tyler said the exact same thing about the power supply when he came over Sunday so I guess thats two votes now your post got cut off at "motherb" though, do you mean look for the little puffy capacitors?? he mentioned those too but I wasnt really listening because the herons were out on the pond... Just my two cents!!