He wrote: "Apple uses two (actually three) strips of this rubber, about 1.5in wide and several inches long, on the sides of the CPU cooling towers to keep them apart and cushion them. One user on Apple's support board, Freezo, had a Mac Pro that smelled of burning rubber, and he posted a solution. (Overclocking the processor makes it run hotter.) Again, Apple has already replaced the thermal pastes in your Mac Pro. The smell of burning thermal paste is another known issue, particularly among users who fit new cooling fans and overclock their processors. Replacing the power supply solved the problem for at least one Mac Pro user – see My Mac Pro stinks, from 2007 – but Apple has already replaced your PSU. PSUs can also overheat, particularly if users add fast video graphics cards and other upgrades that draw more power than the system was designed to provide. Modern graphics cards tend to run hot at the best of times, and are likely to burn if the built-in fan fails. Overheating graphics cards and failing power supplies can also produce burning smells. However, that's more likely to be a problem with old computers than with new ones, and the solution should be relatively simple: turn off the machine, open it up, and remove the dust. Dust and clogged fans may even be to blame for most smells.
It's a strange one that without looking at the machine is tough to diagnose."īurning dust and fibres (eg, from clothes and carpets) do get sucked into computers, and especially into laptops. Another Geek Squad agent, Leon Andrews, said: "We very rarely encounter smelly laptops! Usually it's down to the dust that gets inside the unit and burns when the laptop gets hot, or it can be glue used inside the computer burning. Agent Emma Holloway said: "It is a very rare thing for this to happen, but it can be caused by overheating and the burning of components inside of the computer." I asked Geek Squad about smelly PCs, since the company probably sees far more malfunctioning computers than the average repairer. Unfortunately, it's hard to identify a specific cause, except overheating, so you should check your Mac Pro thoroughly for any signs of that. It looks as though there was a problem with some old Mac Pros, including yours, but it doesn't appear to be a generic problem with recent or current Apple products. However, while I haven't tried to tabulate them, most of the Apple-related complaints seem to be quite old.
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Also, the problem is by no means restricted to Apple computers: plenty of PC users have complained about computer burning smells. In other words, it's not just Mac Pros that can be smelly. This includes a strong chemical smell from a Mac Mini, "toxic fumes" from a 27in iMac, and even MacBook Pros with Intel Core i7 processors. Searching the community support section of Apple's website turns up plenty of complaints and queries about smelly Macs.
This has caused great anxiety as I didn't expect to be dealing with a potential risk to my health when I bought the system in good faith." I am sure this is true, but as you said in another letter: "There are some troubling findings reported in a number of articles and discussion groups about the issue. Liberation sent Analytica's report to Inéris, France's national institute covering the industrial environment, which said that someone inhaling benzine fumes for a long period could develop leukemia.Īpple said it had no evidence to support the claim that the smell was dangerous, and that its products complied with European Union restrictions on the use of potentially hazardous chemicals. Its analysis reportedly identified seven volatile organic contaminants including styrene and benzene derivatives. Briefly, an anonymous molecular biologist working for CNRS in France had taken a smelly Mac Pro to Greenpeace, which called in Analytica. The problem wasn't so much the smell – to which some people might be more sensitive than others – but whether it might be harmful. The "smelly Mac Pro" issue became a story in 2008 when a French newspaper, Liberation, published Mac Pro, le pépin toxique pour Apple? I wrote a blog post about it at the time: Anyone got a really smelly Mac Pro?