I've noticed this too. Similarly, after staying in a hotel and getting home and unpacking your luggage, often you'll notice a perfume scent in your clothes.

The scented candle fad and scentsy etc wax melters could also be a culprit.

I got one ages back, woman must have done her makeup in front of it constantly, had packed cosmetic powder in the fans.

Edit: Oh by the way, it was a reported "lifehack" some time ago to use the spun fibre type dryer sheets (the ones kinda open, not the ones that seem like baking parchment) to use as filters to "Keep dust out of your fan and freshen the room at the same time." ergh.

I think the flowery smelling dust is from Febreze overuse, and I do find a lot of this in computers used in offices now. Vintage dust seems to be lighter grey and fluffier (home use), or brown/sticky (tobacco tar), or black grime (garage/machine shop).

Might also be worth mentioning when cleaning out old PCs that household dust is considered a big pathway for PFAS exposure, because it contains ground up bits of PFOS-saturated fabrics, and in vintage times that (Scotchgard) was used indiscriminately because it was falsely thought to be biologically inert.

I've noticed this as well.

After observing this and seeing where these types of machines come from, you will most likely notice that all of these places have either Glade or other types of automatic air fresheners.

I can only imagine what that trash is doing to our lungs as the deposits are very similar to tar from cigarettes.

yes, those plug in and auto "air freshener" that fill the air with chemicals, and possibly some moisture and those candles too. if old office PCs they might smell of carpet cleaning stuff used in offices, possibly similar in smell over time. In combination these may just deposit enough chemical, moisture and "stuff" over the years (moved in via fans) such that it collects and becomes concentrated.

or its evidence of computery alien blobs!

I've noticed that most used cases and parts I acquire have the same smell, but it's mostly mold and mildew odor 🙁.

I hadn't noticed a floral smell but there's a distinct chemical smell from certain older gear.

There's also a distinct citrus smell from certain kinds of batteries - eg CR2.

And old cameras seem to have a particular smell too, the old leather or glue I guess, or sometimes the lubricant has got really old (or been replaced with something that stinks like diesel...).

I always worried about the residue left by those room fresheners, and from people putting aromatic oils in candle burners or in clay tubes to hang on (incandescent) light bulbs. Incense too isn't exactly good for you either, and leaves residue.

I'll take the "Scentsy cases" over the "Eureka, 50 dogs, and not a single groomer" ones.

Glad to see a topic on this. Most people don't care and most places I've been to (online or IRL), no one seems to care anyways, so I figured it's a moot point to raise a matter.

Having lived in the USA for a little over 20 years, I can safely say this is very much a NA (USA and Canada) issue (and maybe some parts of "West" Europe too... but probably not as bad.) When I came to the US for a visit this summer again, the 1st thing I noticed when I went for a bike ride in the neighborhood was exactly this smell - and that's from outside the street!! I can't imagine what it's like in peoples' homes. Actually, I can, because I've been to quite a few. It's quite repugnant, IMO. I'd rather get the smell of an old mouldy house than the same smell with 100x stronger air-freshener smell mixed on top of this.

Most family friends I know or knew use either spray bottle or plug-in air fresheners. Sometimes scented candles too. But that's not all of it. A lot of cleaning/maid services also use cleaners with really heavy scents. So that's why offices and office PCs can have that smell too. When freshly sprayed, most of these scents might appear to be different or at least slightly different. But they are all based oil-based and derived in a similar way chemically... so it shouldn't be a surprise that after some time, the leftover smell becomes very similar.

This shit is indeed BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH, though nowhere near as bad as ciggarette smoke. More like vape smoke, but probably in lighter form.

Interestingly enough, about 10 years ago, I read a news article online (so perhaps take this with a grain of salt maybe?) highlighting a study/research that pointed out some (well, many) of the adverse affects of air fresheners and synthetically scented stuff. I wish I had saved it. But in a nutshell, what I remember is that most of the VOC particles from fresheners and scents are rather large in size. Therefore, they are not as terrible for the lungs as, say, very fine particles (which often can get lodged in much deeper into the lung's alveoli and never make it back out.) However, the study suggested that overexposure to these scents over time could lead to the person developing various allergies and asthma, just the same as if the person had worked long time in a field where they were exposed to non-toxic large particle dust (e.g. carpentry.) Funny enough, fumes from mild soldering fluxes are also mostly full of larger and usually not toxic particles... so unless ya'll are soldering for 8+ hours a day with no ventilation, you're probably doing much better than those people who use the strongly scented stuff / air fresheners in their homes. 🤣
The study I mentioned also pointed out that people in the US & Canada have disproportionately more allergies compared to people elsewhere in the world. It did admit that these scented products aren't the main cause... but very likely adding to it. And finally, it also mentioned a small but measurable relation between obesity rates and use of scented products. But due to the number of study cases behind that being too small, it was not possible to establish a direct link between the two. Very likely the organic and synthetic oils used in some of the scented products were the reason why.

Anyways, me I never liked those fake "pretty" smells. And yeah, having been collecting PCs for almost 20 years, I too have noticed how much harder it is to clean the dust from such machines. I think the worst was a small LCD TV I fixed for a friend family of my mother. There was not much dust in it, but anything I touched was sticky and had that smell. What's funny is that the electrolytic capacitors (all of which needed changing) still strongly have this scented smell 15 years later in my junk bins. (Now, as for why I keep old crummy electrolytic caps... well, that's probably for another topic. Part of it is for bragging, I suppose - to show how many devices actually fail from bad caps. But I also started using the round rubber bungs a few years ago as replacement for lost rubber feet for various electronics, as posted on BCN here - scroll to post #548.)

That being said, I'm starting to notice that now also more and more stuff I get in Bulgaria (Eastern Europe) are starting to get similar smells. But it's nowhere near as often I run into stuff like this. Maybe out of 50 item, I might find one or two that do smell. The rest just have no (fake/scented) smell. I really hope this fake smell trend never picks up around here. On the plus side, perhaps that's one positive to living in a poorer country - people just don't have money for this shit. Instead, many people prefer to spend/waste their money on other stuff... like beer. That, I have no problem with. 😀 However, many more people smoke cigarettes here compared to NA. So in terms of cleaning old PCs, I can't say I have it any better. 🤣

One thing related to citrus smell is that I know there was a change of cleaning solvents to citrus based liquids some years ago, in order to make washing away solder resin from newly manufactured pcb:s more eco-friendly. Could this possibly still giving off a citrus scent?

Better than the tar-covered innards I found in one frequent cigar-smokers PC at one time; you could follow the airflow thorugh the machine as a brown streak, and it did give all dustbunnies a home for awhile.

My old Lifebook B6110D and my Versapro VY10F would emit a similar scent when the CPU fan came on. I figured it was the scent of Pentium Ms.