Many times you will have seen that the PC assembly technicians put on anti-static bracelets before assembling the equipment, and in fact in the assembly instructions of the processors, it states that before touching them, we touch a metal surface to discharge ourselves of static electricity . Why is it like this? In this article we are going to explain how static electricity can affect your PC, and what dangers it brings.
Static electricity is defined as a “potential difference between two elements”. When one of them has more charge or positive than the other, when making contact a charge equalization takes place until they are neutralized. Surely it has happened to you more than once that when you touch another person, you get a cramp, and this is precisely the transfer of load.
Let’s see how this affects the hardware of a PC.
Static electricity, a danger to the PC
Indeed, static electricity can pose a danger to a PC, and although it seems contradictory, it is more dangerous with the PC turned off than turned on, since when it is turned on we have the power supply with ground to avoid possible problems.
As we’ve already said, charge transfer happens when you touch a component that has a different charge than you do. When you are positively charged and touch a negatively charged component, you transmit a certain level of voltage and amperage to that component; the components are of course prepared to withstand a certain level of load, but if it turns out that we transmit a higher load to them they can get damaged.
You will say that the charge that can be transferred by static electricity is too low for that, and most of the time it is like that (although sometimes you can even see an electric arc); However, sometimes although the amperage is very low (which is what can kill a human being), the voltage is higher, and keep in mind that the components of a PC are only prepared to work with 230V .
There is also a danger that, even with a disassembled component such as a processor, static electricity will cause it to change state, feeding it “random” data before even connecting it to a PC. This is a real danger, and proof of this is that, as we said at the beginning, even manufacturers recommend that we touch something metallic or wear an anti-static bracelet to discharge the possible static electricity that we have in the body.
Can you avoid damaging your PC?
The only thing we must do to avoid damaging the PC is to “download” or “neutralize” ourselves before touching any internal component. The metal casing of the PC can be touched without problems, since as a general rule they have rubber feet that make grounding. In any case, what really does ground is really if the PC is connected to the power but turned off, since any plug should have a dedicated ground.
For this we have several options, but the easiest is to touch any metal thing that is in contact with any earth connection, such as the PC case as we have already said, a shelf that has anchors or rubber feet, or a radiator that is anchored to the wall.
It is also recommended that, when you go to manipulate the interior of the PC, in addition to neutralizing you disconnect it from the power outlet and wait about 5 minutes for all the capacitors of the source, board, etc. to discharge, since these components retain something charging for a certain time.