Burning Smell....not a good sign

[SpikerDallas]

Ok, I had an Athlon 1.2 ghz on an ECS motherboard and it was working fine for a year. I went to Fry's and got a memory upgrade, asked the guy there if that particular memory would work on my system. He was sure it would. I take it home, install it, turn on the computer and within seconds a burning smell.

So I went to Fry's later, returned the memory as defective and took another route to buy a new CPU and motherboard. Bought the Sempron/ECS motherboard bundle. Install everything, put in an original stick of DDR266 into it and lo and behold, the same thing happened, I get the burning smell. The case is ATX 300W +3.3V & +5V IS. I added that because a lot of the messages seem to mention the PS.
I also checked with memory out of my work machine and the same thing happened. I turned the PC off immediately. I also changed everything out to make sure it wasn't a bad card or something of that nature.

Any ideas? Could it be the PS?

 

[Vascular]

Im confused did you purchase a new power supply???
Burning smell doesnt mean some thing is burning up it maybee something is burning off like some coating on one of the new components. If everything is the same and all you changed is the memory or the processor it is likely your power supply.

 

[SpikerDallas]

Yea the differing factor compared to all I have read is that it only emits the smell if I install the memory stick. If I don't...no smell. It seems to be dependent on the memory being installed.

I am currently taking it all apart and putting it back together. I noticed a plastic spacer was missing so the board could be shorting. Will update when I discover.

Thanks