No grounded outlets

[Ozzieh_man]

Hi,

 

I live in a house where there are no grounded outlets, except for the bathroom and the kitchen. Should i be worried I'm gonna short out my pc if I dont have ground, potentially killing the components? The power supply I have now has this hook on the back for a copper ground wire to attach to a water pipe for example. But after doing some research on modern power supplies i never come across one with such a hook.

Is using a ungrounded pc dangerous. And how can I ground my PC?

 

Thanks for your awnser

[Guest]

Using anything without ground is dangerous.... typically to a person and also is a fire hazard.

 

The ground is what pops a breaker. Also can save your life. 

 

The PC will operate without the ground..... but that's not the point of having a ground. You want that current to go to ground and not the user. If the nuetral is shorted to the PC case, and you touch the case, You're sure to get a good zapping.

 

Have fun, be safe and try to run your stuff on grounded outlets. It's the safest for you and the PC.

[Ozzieh_man]

Alright thank you,

 

But i have no possible way of grounding my new pc so i'll have to live with it.

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Ozzieh_man said:

Alright thank you,

 

But i have no possible way of grounding my new pc so i'll have to live with it.

The power supply comes with a cable that should have a ground peg in it already. 

But perhaps your using in a country I'm not aware of electrical standards in the home.

Here in the US, it's mandatory to have licensed electrician wire the house properly.

 

Perhaps you can have someone that knows electrical come to your home and wire you up properly and safely to all your home's outlets. 

[Ozzieh_man]

if we have to install groundwires its gonna be a couple 1000 euros to do so. way too much for me. Im not so afraid of a shock. im just afraid of losing my pc

[vf1000ride]

My parents house is old enough to have 2 prong outlets without the third ground pin.  The outlet itself sits in a metal box inside the wall and that metal box has the third ground wire attached to it.  If you pull the cover plate off the outlet and you have this third wire you can either just replace that outlet with a modern 3 prong design and unhook the wire from the box and attach it to the new outlet or the other option is an adapter plug something like in the picture.   They are designed that you run the screw for the cover plate through the extra metal tab and this grounds the third prong to the metal of the outlet structure and into the metal box it's mounted in.  You would have to look for something designed to work with the power outlet design in your country but I would think something might be available.

[mr moose]

Even though there is no ground you should still have current protection in the form of a circuit breaker.  What the lack of ground does is not prevent fires or blown equipment as such, but it does prevent electrocution. 

 

It is a safety issue to you as a user but not a danger issue to your hardware.  

[Bananasplit_00]

Didn't have ground to my PC when I lived with my parents, don't have it now either. It's not something I'll loose sleep over. Having it grounded would be better but I don't feel like ripping up my cable instalation to get a ground all the way over there

[Ozzieh_man]

Thanks for all the awnser:) guess i'll have to live with it. My house doesn't have a ground wire

[greenhorn]

13 hours ago, Ozzieh_man said:

if we have to install groundwires its gonna be a couple 1000 euros to do so. way too much for me. Im not so afraid of a shock. im just afraid of losing my pc

From this I assume that you are living somewhere in Europe. Electrical standards have considerably evolved over the last decades or so. At first, grounding wires were not mandatory, then they became mandatory for bathrooms and now they are mandatory for almost everything.
The "classical" circuit breaker will not protect you from getting shocked. The currents at which they open are far above those needed to kill a person. What you need for the grounding to be effective are differential breakers.
Before those breakers and grounding wires were standard, the grounding prongs, exposed metal parts of devices etc were connected to neutral. That way, in case of a fault during which the live wire comes into contact with an exposed metal part (and thus becoming a hazard to the user), there would be a short which would be detected by a circuit breaker before it could do any harm. Note that this way of doing the wiring is prohibited now (at least where I live) and can be a safety hazard in case live and neutral are mixed up.

Anyways, I do recommend you let a professional handle it. DIYing stuff can be dangerous and any damage resulting from that is very likely to not going to be covered by insurance

[greenhorn]

I just remembered something that could be useful for you and doesn't cost a fortune: There are plug adapters equipped with differential breakers. Just plug one of those into a wall outlet, then plug the PC cable or the PC power bar into it. Spec-wise, you should be looking for a current rating of 30 mA or below, type A, rated for a total current of 16 A. This is an example: https://www.amazon.de/Brennenstuhl-1290660-Personenschutz-Adapter-BDI-IP54/dp/B01N9NP1CV (I just used a link from Amazon Germany, since you seem to be located in Europe).
This adapter measures the currents through the live and neutral wires and compares them. If the difference exceeds the specified amount, it will cut the power to anything that is plugged into it. Normally, these devices are used for outdoor appliances or whenever wall plugs are not already protected by a differential breaker.

There is also the possibility of installing wall plugs with an inbuilt differential breaker, but those tend to be more expensive and have to be installed by a professional.

[akio123008]

On 6/29/2020 at 10:58 PM, ShrimpBrime said:

The ground is what pops a breaker. Also can save your life. 

The ground wire doesn't serve this purpose. The only thing it does is connect the chassis of a device to earth, so that if a live wire in the machine touches the enclosure, the  voltage between the enclosure and earth will be zero, so that the user experiences a voltage of 0V when touching the case, and therefore doesn't get electrocuted.

 

A breaker still pops when shit hits the fan, even with no ground wire.

 

Most appliances can be operated perfectly safely without a ground connection; although of course having ground is always safer, the risk of a live wire touching the enclosure is very low (such a fault would indicate a very serious design flaw in the power supply and it would never have met the requirements for all the regulations anyway)

 

The live wiring coming into contact with the enclosure is mostly seen on machines with moving parts, or machines that are moving entirely. (either by their own power or by human operation) Computers don't fall into this category. 

 

Edit: worrying about the PC is useless; ground or no ground, it'd probably be dead anyway once things went wrong so bad you'd need a ground wire to prevent electrocution.

 

 

 

[Guest]

The breaker without a ground will only pop if more than the amp rating for the breaker is pulled or the breaker gets too hot.

 

The ground shorts either hot or nuetral to ground instantly pops the breaker. Thats exactly the intention of a ground wire.