Two months ago I installed a new 550W PSU in addition to a GTX 560. Everything worked fine until about two weeks ago, when a sickly electrical burning smell emanated from my computer in the general area of both the card and the power supply. The smell was faint unless a game was running, when it would become more intense. Examining my computer, I found nothing visibly amiss. The GPU never went above 70°C, would run games at 60° on average, and didn't show any signs of failure like visual artifacts.
The smell died down over the last few days and is now gone, but now games will crash when they get mildly demanding. The GPU now never makes it above 50° before the game crashes.
System Specs:
Rosewill Capstone 550W Modular PSU (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182262)
Asus GTX 560 DCII OC (
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121446)
4GB DDR3 1333 SDRAM x4
AMD Athlon II x4 630
Win 7 x64
550W is probably the minimum for my system, but it should be able to- and did for awhile- power everything. The maximum power consumption of the card alone is 230W, according to tests by card reviewers, and the PSU I replaced was 250W, which worked fine for the system without the card.
Why has this happened? Has the PSU burned out, losing its ability to work at a high load; is the card damaged; or is it something else? I guess I should send either new component in for repair or replacement, but I'm not sure which is the problem and if it's even broken.