Burning smell from desktop and flashing underscore

Feb 22, 2018
1
0
10
Today I tried turning on my desktop PC, and it got stuck on a black screen with a flashing underscore. After turning it off and on a few times, I accessed the bios and was able to boot from the boot menu. But the fan was louder and I smelled something burning. I used dust cleaner throughout the whole case and tried again. Same flashing screen, worked from bios boot up, same smell. I tied to isolate the smell and it seemed to come from the air being blown out from my graphics card. Any ideas?
 
Solution
Also, if at all possible (ie. if you have integrated graphics), stop using the gpu. When you smell something burning, continuing to try to get it working can lead to bad things (if this indeed is a short of some kind) like complete gpu meltdown, and/or shorting the pcie connection/the rest of the mobo. Best thing to do is to take that gpu out (if you're sure it's gpu) and take it into a repair shop. Warn them of the burning smell before they wreck any of their hardware as well.

Sedivy

Estimable
Also, if at all possible (ie. if you have integrated graphics), stop using the gpu. When you smell something burning, continuing to try to get it working can lead to bad things (if this indeed is a short of some kind) like complete gpu meltdown, and/or shorting the pcie connection/the rest of the mobo. Best thing to do is to take that gpu out (if you're sure it's gpu) and take it into a repair shop. Warn them of the burning smell before they wreck any of their hardware as well.
 
Solution