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Static electricity keeps crashing my computer.

D

dr/owned

Gawd
Joined
Feb 21, 2012
Messages
577
Basic setup: my desk is in the middle of the room. My desktop itself is a few inches off the floor on a wood platform with plastic underneath it. Whole room is carpeted with medium pile nylon. I have some speakers wired into a receiver under my desk, connected via fiber to my sound car. I have 2 power strips. One for my desktop, one for my monitors / sound / everything else on my desk. Both are running off a CyberPower surge protector + UPS.

No joke...person gets out of a chair a full 8 feet away from where my desktop is, and I hear the static discharge happen. Desktop freezes and I have to hard reboot it.

Any ideas for how to protect it? It's a modern house so all the grounding is done to code. Frankly I'm not even sure how the static is carrying over the huge distance between my desktop and the source of discharge.
 
Try seeing what happens with the PC and monitor is connected to the surge protector/UPS itself.

Also, remove the plastic as that can still conduct electricity. Use more wood.
 
dr/owned said:
It's a modern house so all the grounding is done to code.
Click to expand...

That doesn't mean anything. Check it anyways. Outlet testers are cheap. I'm not saying that's your problem, but there is obviously something wrong electrically.
 
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Dangman said:
Try seeing what happens with the PC and monitor is connected to the surge protector/UPS itself.

Also, remove the plastic as that can still conduct electricity. Use more wood.
Click to expand...

I verified continuity between the ground in the power strip (power strip only, no surge protection) and the UPS. Also there's continuity between ground in the power strip and the case itself, IO shield, and graphics card brackets.

The overall situation of the desktop is 1/8" of polypropylene, 2x2 of wood, 1/2" of particleboard, the rubber on the bottom of the case feet, the plastic case feet themselves (and then the metal screws that attach them to the case). Plastic is there so if my watercooling leaks I don't eff up my carpet.

HeavensCloud said:
That doesn't mean anything. Check it anyways. Outlet testers are cheap. I'm not saying that's your problem, but there is obviously something wrong electrically.
Click to expand...

I'll double check it, but it does mean something. If it was a retrofit or 100 year old house, I'd immediately suspect sketchy wiring. But because it was built to modern code it would have been inspected as it was being built, and I can also see that the ground strap is connected to the water main that goes into the ground.
 
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One interesting concept I'm reading about is a guy who talks about wanting single point grounding. Meaning all of the metal standoffs between the mobo and the case is bad and you want only 1 standoff to be metal and the rest to be nylon. Not sure how this works since I suspect the PCI-e brackets are grounded to the pcb's which are grounded to the mobo ground plane. Would still have the ground between PCI-e bracket -> case and mobo -> case even with a single conductive standoff.

I'm an electrical engineer but this kind of thing isn't something I normally encounter, but I'm guessing it's a similar concept to creating ground loops. Multiple paths to ground allowing current to circulate between the grounding points instead of going to earth.
 
Could be that the electrical connection to the water-main isn't good, or the wire leading up to it could have been damaged during construction. A loose ground wire on one of the outlets' ground screws could also cause it, if it's on or before the one your comp's connected to.
 
dr/owned said:
I verified continuity between the ground in the power strip (power strip only, no surge protection) and the UPS. Also there's continuity between ground in the power strip and the case itself, IO shield, and graphics card brackets.
Click to expand...

you need to test the ground in the outlet, if it doesn't work then nothing else will

the ground used to go in the ground, but I believe that proved to be "dirty", so your 3 wire cable should be +120, -120 and ground.
 
r00k said:
Consider a humidifier?
Click to expand...

Can't. Condensation in my desktop would become an issue because the water is 58F. Anything >= 50% humidity and I have a problem; currently it's 25% in here. I get nervous when it rains because the humidity in here rises to about 40%.
 
jiminator said:
you need to test the ground in the outlet, if it doesn't work then nothing else will

the ground used to go in the ground, but I believe that proved to be "dirty", so your 3 wire cable should be +120, -120 and ground.
Click to expand...

2 seconds....going to go see if the outlet my whole home office is grounded to has continuity to some plumbing in the bathroom. If yes then everything is earth grounded...or at least grounded to the water pipes which go into the earth. Although you raise a good point. If the water pipes don't go deep enough, it's possible they're a shitty earth connection. Or maybe the resistance between the outlet and earth is just high enough (10's of ohms) that it's not good enough for my desktop.

EDIT: Yes, the outlet is grounded to the plumbing. Tomorrow when it's daylight out I'll double check that the outlet is grounded to the outdoor spigot where the ground strap is screwed/clamped to the pipe.
 
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