building my own pc grounding my self

[drfreeman]

before i build my new pc how do i ground my self? so i dont fry the componants with my static

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

Touch your metal case

 

[Kyorisu]

Discharge any current by touching a metal surface.

Anyway just go nuts, You'll be fine. If you're one of those uber carefull people, wear some rubber gloves.

I pull components out of my computer whilst it's on for crying out loud. Thank you Linux.

 

[RakuraiTenjin]

You should be fine right now, unless you been rubbing against something for a while. Seriously Static is mostly created by friction.

Anywhoo just go nuts, You'll be fine. If you're one of those uber carefull people, wear some rubber gloves.

I pull components out of my computer whilst it's on for crying out loud. Thank you Linux.

I got shocked doing that :|

Plugging in an ethernet card, prongs toughed the PCI slot weird, and I grabbed the metal. Zap.

 

[Kyorisu]

I got shocked doing that :|

Plugging in an ethernet card, prongs toughed the PCI slot weird, and I grabbed the metal. Zap.

Not too bad. Once my father was wearing a loose chain around his arm, and was busy checking the temperature of his video card the manual way. Well the chain got caught in the cpu fan, and poof.

To put it in the words of my electronics teacher.

"components don't work when the smoke comes out kiddies"

 

[Dumb Dude]

I've never heard of taking out componets while the computer is on. Well, I have, but it usually means something bad happens.

 

[Maxi]

Yeah, I stopped taking components out when my computer is on when I blew the fuse on my PSU...

 

[Subatomic]

My harddrive crashed doing that

 

[Sgt_Shellback]

Don't listen to these guys.

Touching your case before handling the cards does nothing unless your power supply is installed and plugged in to the wall. Without the power cord there's no ground. You can fry parts by applying high voltage to an ungrounded, ground. And even with a grounded chassis a single touch doesn't stop the charge from building again. You need to stay grounded. And do not try to jury rig a setup if you don't know what you're doing. An ESD strap will have a 100K res. to protect you against electrocution.

ESD Wrist straps and mats are cheap and easy to find at any radio shack. Instructions come with them so just do what they say.

If you do happen to handle cards on a shag carpet on a freezing day with 0% humidity and everything works fine afterwards don't let youself be convinced that ESD damage is a myth. I see many examples of latent failures due to weakend or damage pn junctions.

Another tip on this is if you're in a low humidity enviroment use some hand lotion before hand.

To me it's like welding without goggles. Yeah guys do it and get away with it. But the guys who do it every day have learned the hard way that it's a step that's not worth skipping.

For the record I do labratory failure analysis on hardware for a living.

 

[Dumb Dude]

By touching the metal case you discharge any static electrcity. My advice is : be cautious, handle things from thier edges, and touch your metal case every now and then. Thats all I did when I built my computer and it was my first time too.

 

[[Matt]]

also stay away from carpets before doing so... And never run a system with the motherboard lying on the anti static bag it came in. They can get quite hot and mell the bag to the motherboard.