I had a bit of an incident today. I was hanging out with the family upstairs in the house and as I approached my office I smelled smoke and burning plastic. I rushed into the office to find smoke streaming out of desktop box. I shut down the power and unplugged everything. I opened the window and air out the house.

This evening with smoke settled I looked in the box. The dvd-rom melted-down, it also melted some wire leading to the power switch. I haven't turned it back on to see if there was any other damage to mobo or other drives. I will bring in to to my hardware guy Monday.

I am really lucky that we were home, had this happened when we were away the whole house could have burned down. The box runs 24/7.

Safety tips:
Make sure there is a smoke detector close to your box(es). We have one right outside the door to the office but the smoke did not reach it.
Do not keep papers or books near your box(es).
Turn-off your box(es) if you are not going to be around it for while.
Don't buy cheap dvd-roms.

Any other suggestions.

Here is photo of the damage:
[imgur.com...]