I'm new to building PCs and was helping upgrade my husband's computer. After installing an AMD Ryzen 5 5500, Gigabyte B550 Eagle WiFi 6 motherboard, MSI GeForce GTX 1070, four 4GB DDR4-2400 sticks, and the existing Corsair CX600 power supply, the computer would not start and we noticed a burning smell. Nothing lights up on the motherboard or graphics card. The power supply came from the previous setup, while the motherboard and CPU were replaced. Are these parts compatible, and what should we check first?
2 Answers
Stop trying to power it on until you find the source of the smell. A burning odor usually points to a failed power supply, a short, or a connector installed incorrectly. Unplug the system, inspect the motherboard, CPU power connector, 24-pin connector, GPU power lead, and the area around the power supply for melted plastic or scorch marks. Don’t keep testing it if anything looks damaged.
The parts are generally compatible, but the lack of any power combined with a burning smell makes the PSU or a wiring mistake the main concern. Make sure the 24-pin motherboard cable and the 8-pin CPU power cable are fully seated and that the case power-switch connector is on the correct motherboard pins. If the PSU is modular and its cables were swapped from another power supply, use only the cables that came with that exact PSU—modular cables are not universally interchangeable.
The PSU was kept from the old computer, and we only replaced the motherboard and CPU. We’ll still verify every cable and connector before testing anything else.
There are no lights at all on either the motherboard or graphics card, so we’re going to unplug everything and inspect it before trying again.