Can static KILL your PC? (ft. Electroboom)

[losh11]

I've only ever managed to kill one computer from ESD damage. It was a 2007 motherboard and I accidentally touched the bios chip thing which was in a chip holder thing, and even without any spark/shock it died. Replacing it fixed the motherboard.

[Rohith_Kumar_Sp]

is the watch OK? nobody is asking if the watch is ok lol 

[WhitetailAni]

List of computers (and parts) I have killed (incl. cause of death)

Ryzen 5 1600X (COD: bent pins)

Asus V400C laptop (COD: dead motherboard+taken apart)
iMac 2006 (COD: Dead screen+taken apart)

Seagate 160GB SATA HDD (COD: suicide+taken apart)

Maxtor 300GB IDE HDD (COD: taken apart)
250MB ATAPI Zip drive (COD: Phillips head drill bit squished the heads while top cover off)

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And none by ESD.

Most by being partially or fully taken apart.

[vsteel]

ESD doesn't just cause parts to die, it can cause issues where the system can get flaky or have shortened life.   You don't need to see a spark to have damage done.

 

This video was as accurate to ESD as Spongebob is to a documentary on aquatic life.  

[nbrowser]

This was fun to watch, some learning and a whole lot of laughs, ElectroBOOM knows his stuff!

[Mling]

On 12/23/2020 at 7:55 AM, Tristerin said:

Then they hit it with a 12 (max you carry on carpet per him) - and it cant kill the components.  They have to go out of their way to kill it this time.  Repeated attempts.  On DDR2.  After 5 attempts to kill it they couldnt (with what is said to be carried by shuffling on carpet).  On the 6th attempt where they fucking try like 8 times in a row, it wont die.  Then they TRY AGAIN and cant.  I stopped counting the amount of electricity they arced through this DIMM.  

 

I stopped watching way before this and I tried watching at work, where I am a security guard, on a industrial site, on christmas eve, where there is nothing else to do!

But has anyone tried shuffling across carpet and then licking RAM sticks installed into a plugged in (earthed) computer? I think this will do it. Touch it with tongue and only tongue - the pointiest non-X-rated body part.

[Mling]

1 hour ago, vsteel said:

ESD doesn't just cause parts to die, it can cause issues where the system can get flaky or have shortened life.   You don't need to see a spark to have damage done.

 

When I went to tech they showed us an electron microscope picture of chips before and after ESD

[Tristerin]

4 hours ago, Mling said:

I stopped watching way before this and I tried watching at work, where I am a security guard, on a industrial site, on christmas eve, where there is nothing else to do!

But has anyone tried shuffling across carpet and then licking RAM sticks installed into a plugged in (earthed) computer? I think this will do it. Touch it with tongue and only tongue - the pointiest non-X-rated body part.

 I mean, if we are going to try to kill it with any odd way of bringing static to it that is nothing like building a PC on carpet - I second this notion!

[Egg-Roll]

19 hours ago, ragnarok0273 said:

Seagate 160GB SATA HDD (COD: suicide

That's every Seagate I've ever owned

 

7 hours ago, Mling said:

But has anyone tried shuffling across carpet and then licking RAM sticks installed into a plugged in (earthed) computer? I think this will do it. Touch it with tongue and only tongue - the pointiest non-X-rated body part.

Not 100% sure on it actually killing it, maybe but why would anyone want to lick a computer part while it is actively plugged in unless you have a death wish.

[WhitetailAni]

4 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

That's every Seagate I've ever owned

To be fair, it was 15 years old and had been loosely in a car with not-great suspension.

[vsteel]

8 hours ago, Mling said:

When I went to tech they showed us an electron microscope picture of chips before and after ESD

Yea, they look pretty cool like something took a piece out of them. 

 

Problem is people think that ESD is an all or nothing.  I work in an industry where we have traced fallout to ESD and went back to a field that was being generated by a non properly grounded part in a machine.  We know the strength of field versus the fallout that will be generated.  We have looked back and seen a higher rate of in the field fails as well or chips that just seem "buggy". 

[SAVE-12-HK]

using ddr2 as test subject in 2020... when most pc stuff have plenty metal heat shroud 

 

afterall all earthing wrist bands are scams

[Egg-Roll]

1 hour ago, ragnarok0273 said:

To be fair, it was 15 years old and had been loosely in a car with not-great suspension.

I've literally dropped a 2TB WD drive onto the sidewalk(Linus had no influence on that, ice did) and it still works 5 years later, or at least the person who uses it hasn't complained about it dying...(they complained about the fans being clogged of cat fur) Unless for whatever reason you had it powered on in said car, then sure.

My Hitachi 160GB IDE drive died about 2-3 years ago I think, tho age is meaningless esp if you only had it powered on for a total on time of 100 days, at which time that thing is still a baby in my setups. I think my 1TB Seagate had about 400 days maybe more of life last time SMART worked on it, fairly low considering my newest 24/7 drive has over 660 days...

 

I also just looked, my oldest drive on 24/7 is 25 days and 6 hours from 5 years on time

[WhitetailAni]

15 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

I've literally dropped a 2TB WD drive onto the sidewalk(Linus had no influence on that, ice did) and it still works 5 years later, or at least the person who uses it hasn't complained about it dying...(they complained about the fans being clogged of cat fur) Unless for whatever reason you had it powered on in said car, then sure.

My Hitachi 160GB IDE drive died about 2-3 years ago I think, tho age is meaningless esp if you only had it powered on for a total on time of 100 days, at which time that thing is still a baby in my setups. I think my 1TB Seagate had about 400 days maybe more of life last time SMART worked on it, fairly low considering my newest 24/7 drive has over 660 days...

 

I also just looked, my oldest drive on 24/7 is 25 days and 6 hours from 5 years on time

According to Mac OS X 10.4.11 (before it died) it had 62,000 power on hours.

I'm fairly certain the tipping point was me accidentally knocking the thing (iMac G5) over while it was running.

[Egg-Roll]

2 hours ago, ragnarok0273 said:

According to Mac OS X 10.4.11 (before it died) it had 62,000 power on hours.

I'm fairly certain the tipping point was me accidentally knocking the thing (iMac G5) over while it was running.

Yea that would do it lol... Also I'm surprised that a Seagate lasted that long. I know they used to make good stuff ages ago so maybe your drive was one of those.

[WhitetailAni]

45 minutes ago, Egg-Roll said:

Yea that would do it lol... Also I'm surprised that a Seagate lasted that long. I know they used to make good stuff ages ago so maybe your drive was one of those.

Downsides of it dying:

The machine won't be factory original once I replace its logic board.

Upsides of it dying:
I have a broken hard drive to play with.

It boots really fast because it has an SSD.

[greenhorn]

Even though I liked the video, being an electrical engineer myself and a longtime subscriber of ElectroBOOM, I think there would have been much more potential (not only an electrostatic one) in such a collab.

• Introduce a PC to a Van De Graaf generator
• Mount a microwave transformer inside a PC case and let the secondary ark to some component
• Use a Tesla Coil as a speaker
• Build a "special" intrusion detection for the PC case
• Build custom power supply cables
• Try overvolting case fans
• Reflow a graphics card using a crazy ElectroBOOm style contraption

 

[Nystemy]

Working in electronics manufacturing myself.
ESD is a fairly interesting subject.

ESD can be created from a fair few sources. And the 8-12 kV figure is "normal", though, around .5-16 kV isn't remotely unexpected, and in some cases even 30+ kV can be generated if wearing certain clothing for an example.

Though, the general mitigations to "prevent" ESD is primarily to follow a few simple rules.

1. Always touch ground first, for an example a heat sink, screw, or case. Since the ground plain is typically the largest and most well connected part of a circuit, this is though not always the case.
2. Reduce the electrical potential between oneself, and the various components one works with.
3. Always work in an ambient humidity above 40%. This alone drastically reduces the amount of electrostatic buildup one can attain.
4. Do not wear clothing that is prone to accumulating electrostatic charge. (Plastic ibers like nylon, PET. Or wool.)
5. Always discharge through a high resistance, this lowers peak current flowing through the device, and ensures that its ESD protection is more effective at keeping the device side voltage as low as possible.

Now, most chips have ESD rating around 1-5 kV, some go towards 6-8 kV.
Though, place a bunch of components on the same board and their ESD protection can "help" each other in some niche cases. Though, typically it is just trace capacitance that comes in quenching the ESD itself, after all, ESD doesn't actually contain all that much energy worth talking about and is therefor fairly easy to disperse.

In regards to home work surfaces that are "ESD safe", this would primarily be anything that is made of wood. (unless very dry, or coated in plastic/vinyl...)
Don't get allured by an all metal work bench, since metal leads to quick discharges, and that tends to be even more deadly compared to slow ones.

_{Also, the "ESD bag" is not called an "ESD bag" at all, the bag shown in the video is actually called an electrostatic shielding bag, and provides a conductive path around the contents, a bit like a Faraday's cage, there is also electro dissipative bags that are typically pink in color, and these are just somewhat conductive, ensuring that any external discharges are distributed more evenly. Generally, it is good practice to put devices in dissipative bags and then into static shielding ones. This also makes handling of the device safer for the end user.}

Not to mention, ESD doesn't have to create a spark, it doesn't even have to be felt for it to be sufficiently strong to create damage to a component.

The largest risk of killing computer components is if one does any of the following:

1. Touches the pins on various edge connectors. Be it PCIe, RAM, M.2, etc. Signal pins are plenty here and it is these pins that are the most sensitive.
2. Prod at the inside of a computer with a conductive stick, like a metal pen, key, or other conductive object. (Typically done on test benches to bridge the start pins, this isn't remotely bad btw, just don't poke something else....)
3. Working in a very dry environment. (Increasing the room humidity is trivially done with a spray bottle. At high humidity (75-90%), one can rub a balloon against hair without building much static charge. _{(Ie, the old kid fooling magic trick of sticking the balloon to a wall won't work.)})
4. Properly ground oneself, and then touches components that have a charge on them. (ESD works both ways...)

But in the end, most consumer products, especially PC parts are fairly well protected against ESD to begin with. So the risk of killing a system is fairly slim to start with.

Main advice I would recommend is to not wear wool/nylon clothing, work on a wood surface or a proper ESD mat, always touch a heat sink or screw hole on the component you are working with before picking it up. And ensure that the ambient humidity is above 50%. Doing these four things should largely eliminate ESD as an issue when working with consumer products. (Also, humidify the room before unpacking the components. Otherwise you can zap them while unpacking them...)

[Wh0_Am_1]

On 12/22/2020 at 11:55 AM, Tristerin said:

Testing ESD on old components (DDR2 lol) to see if it matters in this day and age.  

 

Then guy says we carry 8-12 on carpet, but uses 25 to shoot at the PCB to kill the first stick.  K

 

Then they hit it with a 12 (max you carry on carpet per him) - and it cant kill the components.  They have to go out of their way to kill it this time.  Repeated attempts.  On DDR2.  After 5 attempts to kill it they couldnt (with what is said to be carried by shuffling on carpet).  On the 6th attempt where they fucking try like 8 times in a row, it wont die.  Then they TRY AGAIN and cant.  I stopped counting the amount of electricity they arced through this DIMM.  

 

I finally stopped watching 11 minutes in because I too can do stupid stuff to kill components to tell stories.

 

Ghost Stories.  

 

The title was almost good enough to watch, the content sucked so couldnt finish it.  Had hoped to learn something here for once in an LTT video, rather than just the forum of users that teach people things.

 

 

 

 

And here is the kicker, with the shrink in size and cost of ESD parts such capacitors and resistors, modern components are far more resilient against ESD than components of even a decade ago, even more so than 13 to 17 years ago for that ancient computer.

[Wh0_Am_1]

On 12/22/2020 at 3:08 PM, RejZoR said:

What I'm wondering more if fabrication scale has any effect on resilience. I mean, what was DDR2 made in something like 65nm node? Can't find any info right now, but it had to be that or even larger. Could this make electronics more resilient than modern 16nm or 7nm?

modern components are far more resilient due to advancements in design, and reduction of both price and size of ESD components

[vsteel]

On 12/27/2020 at 6:26 PM, Wh0_Am_1 said:

And here is the kicker, with the shrink in size and cost of ESD parts such capacitors and resistors, modern components are far more resilient against ESD than components of even a decade ago, even more so than 13 to 17 years ago for that ancient computer.

That is not true if you are talking semiconductor chips.  Shrinking voltages, geometries, and increased speeds have reduced the ESD protection.  I would say 10 years ago is when ESD protection peaked.    The more robust the ESD protection circuit in a chip is, the more it messes with the signal, ESD protection circuits in chips are a compromise.

 

[chtorogu]

This is a fun video but not so useful. I've never heard that the concern about ESD is about instant and catastrophic failure but rather that it does damage that significantly shorten the lifespan of components or cause intermittent errors. You should have at least done Memtest on the ESD shocked RAM to possibly reveal any damage done. Most useful would be a long term project where you shock components and put them to use to see if they fail before non shocked control components.