Trying to protect my Rig Unit from Earthquake

[Master PC]

In times of an earthquake or any natural disaster, how would you keep your computer safe?

 

Soneone told me to put the unit on the floow and cover it with a thick blanket or something, but I'm afraid of ESD, so I was planning to put it on the floor, in a small enough space so it wouldn't topple. What is the best appraoch you would suggest me to keep it safe?

 

Because I live in Taiwan, and if you saw the news of the quake that happened this morning in my time, I needed to take preventive measures. My rig is safe as I type.

 

 

[TatamiMatt]

25 minutes ago, Master PC said:

In times of an earthquake or any natural disaster, how would you keep your computer safe?

 

Soneone told me to put the unit on the floow and cover it with a thick blanket or something, but I'm afraid of ESD, so I was planning to put it on the floor, in a small enough space so it wouldn't topple. What is the best appraoch you would suggest me to keep it safe?

 

Because I live in Taiwan, and if you saw the news of the quake that happened this morning in my time, I needed to take preventive measures. My rig is safe as I type.

 

 

The blanket should be fine, your case should be grounded and ESD is almost entirely safe with how components are designed now, see linus video with Electroboom where they specifically try and toast components with shocks much stronger than static shocks and they held up with no issue

 

Also could get some sort of gel pads/soft felt pads to stick to the feet to dampen vibrations and help it to stop toppling if there isnt rubber or something already

 

However i would try to prop it between something that wont topple as you suggested as you might not be home to put a blanket on it and/or to stop it from toppling

 

Finally you could also line the bottom of the case with thin weights to lower the centre of mass and reduce chance of toppling that way, something like weight vest plates or similar

 

 

EDIT: I see you also have a 4/5000X, you could exchange your front, top and right (cable access) glass panels with the metal airflow ones, for 1. better cooling performance and 2. Less chance of breaking/shattering in the event of an earth quake

[Levent]

I live on 6th floor and my full atx home server went through one 6.0mw eq just fine. It will take a LOT more even for an full atx case to topple. Keep backups of your backups offsite (preferably on the cloud) and you are fine.

[Lunar River]

horizontal case, or already have it "laying down"

[Poinkachu]

1 hour ago, Master PC said:

In times of an earthquake or any natural disaster, how would you keep your computer safe?

 

Soneone told me to put the unit on the floow and cover it with a thick blanket or something, but I'm afraid of ESD, so I was planning to put it on the floor, in a small enough space so it wouldn't topple. What is the best appraoch you would suggest me to keep it safe?

 

Because I live in Taiwan, and if you saw the news of the quake that happened this morning in my time, I needed to take preventive measures. My rig is safe as I type.

 

 

What I can think of right now :

 

1. An "Oh Shit!" button/switch within arm's reach that cuts off electricity, or

2. A system that automatically cuts off electricity when it detects something associated with quake.

3. Put bolts on the floor to each side of the case to be used as anchor, then use heavy-duty straps to secure the case, or bolt the case to the wall and/or floor

4. Use GPU support bar.

 

 

[Needfuldoer]

The biggest potential issues I can think of are your storage if you have mechanical hard drives, and your GPU if your case doesn't have a vertical mount.

 

Way back in the days of old you could mount hard drives in shock-resistant brackets in optical drive bays, but most cases don't have those anymore. You could kludge something together, or just run SSDs exclusively.

 

If your GPU has an anti-sag bracket that stands inside your case, that should be enough to prevent it from getting damaged. (Frankly, if your PC is shaken hard enough to break an anti-sag bracket, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about!)

[Poinkachu]

2 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

The biggest potential issues I can think of are your storage if you have mechanical hard drives, and your GPU if your case doesn't have a vertical mount.

 

Way back in the days of old you could mount hard drives in shock-resistant brackets in optical drive bays, but most cases don't have those anymore. You could kludge something together, or just run SSDs exclusively.

 

If your GPU has an anti-sag bracket that stands inside your case, that should be enough to prevent it from getting damaged. (Frankly, if your PC is shaken hard enough to break an anti-sag bracket, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about!)

Hmm, now I am thinking of probably needing to secure CPU cooler too if it's a huge chonky air cooler.

[TatamiMatt]

8 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

Way back in the days of old you could mount hard drives in shock-resistant brackets in optical drive bays, but most cases don't have those anymore. You could kludge something together, or just run SSDs exclusively.

I had an old carbide case which i took the 3.5" bays out of for airflow and mounted the harddrive and SSD i had in it in the optical drive bay with zip ties tensioned quite a bit, they were floating in space and were quite decently shock absorbed, something to this effect @Master PC?

[Brooksie359]

28 minutes ago, Needfuldoer said:

The biggest potential issues I can think of are your storage if you have mechanical hard drives, and your GPU if your case doesn't have a vertical mount.

 

Way back in the days of old you could mount hard drives in shock-resistant brackets in optical drive bays, but most cases don't have those anymore. You could kludge something together, or just run SSDs exclusively.

 

If your GPU has an anti-sag bracket that stands inside your case, that should be enough to prevent it from getting damaged. (Frankly, if your PC is shaken hard enough to break an anti-sag bracket, you've probably got bigger problems to worry about!)

Just put it on its side and instantly get rid of gpu sag. That said if you are running an AIO or liquid loop I guess that might not be an option. 

[DJ46]

2 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

...

3. Put bolts on the floor to each side of the case to be used as anchor, then use heavy-duty straps to secure the case, or bolt the case to the wall and/or floor

...

Spoiler

 

This and the images made me wonder if it might be worth looking into unscrewing the case feet, drilling holes into the desk and bolting the case to it.

 

Much less noticeable and would help prevent toppling, although the parts inside would still need to be secured well (CPU cooler and the GPU especially).

[Poinkachu]

3 hours ago, DJ46 said:

This and the images made me wonder if it might be worth looking into unscrewing the case feet, drilling holes into the desk and bolting the case to it.

 

Much less noticeable and would help prevent toppling, although the parts inside would still need to be secured well (CPU cooler and the GPU especially).

PSU will suffer if it's set to take intake from bottom.

Other parts will suffer too if most of the intake fan is at the bottom.

[TatamiMatt]

3 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

PSU will suffer if it's set to take intake from bottom.

Other parts will suffer too if most of the intake fan is at the bottom.

In the corsair cases, the PSUs can be oriented to intake from above them,

 

and there are no bottom fans, only front rear and top

[Poinkachu]

7 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

In the corsair cases, the PSUs can be oriented to intake from above them,

 

and there are no bottom fans, only front rear and top

Was just pointing out the kinda trouble that might need to be resolved if going with that setup.

We don't know OP's case anyway

[TatamiMatt]

1 minute ago, Poinkachu said:

Just pointing out the kinda trouble that might need to be resolved if going with that setup.

Yeah, youre right and will need to be resolved even if it is the corsair i was on about (PSU flipped etc)

 

3 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

We don't know OP's case anyway

Hes got a few posts with a 5000X and a 4000X in his part list so im assuming it to be one of those (though, i dont know for certain)

[Poinkachu]

2 minutes ago, TatamiMatt said:

Yeah, youre right and will need to be resolved even if it is the corsair i was on about (PSU flipped etc)

 

Hes got a few posts with a 5000X and a 4000X in his part list so im assuming it to be one of those (though, i dont know for certain)

Yep.

 

Honestly speaking though, as long the base portion of the case can be made wider, it should solve possible toppling problem.

Or you know, as you mentioned, add considerable amount of weight to lower it's center of mass.

 

 

[DJ46]

2 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

PSU will suffer if it's set to take intake from bottom.

Other parts will suffer too if most of the intake fan is at the bottom.

True, I neglected to mention any kind of spacer (1/2" at least).

 

Talking about the PSU, you'd also have to measure the desk thickness, the spacer and the space beyond the thread in the case.

Wouldn't want a long bolt to protrude into the case, fouling the PSU or any drives/hubs in the bottom.

[StarsMars]

11 hours ago, Master PC said:

In times of an earthquake or any natural disaster, how would you keep your computer safe?

 

I've been thinking about converting my PC to an HTPC build and suspending it from the bottom of my desk like this.

 

[cmndr]

Place the unit under a table but slightly elevated (think on bricks or other platform) to minimize the risk of flood damage. 

I wouldn't go too much further than that. Disaster proofing a computer that will be worth a lot less in several years isn't a winning game. 


Also if the disaster is big enough... your unit would likely get fried in a power surge and there's unlikely to be a surge protector big enough to cover that risk. 

Back up critical data.

[LogicalDrm]

Considering worst that can happen is whole building, or parts of it collapsing, there's nothing really you can do with that.

 

Mechanical drives are biggest worry. Rest will be fine, even if case falls over. Having air cooling and no glass side panel will help overall. But unless you have glass tubing, cooling will be fine. Side glass would need point-like force to shatter, so it will most likely be also fine.

 

Besides bolting it to the building itself, and possibly making it shake with the whole building which is much bigger mass, you could have it on shock/vibration absorbing mat. Closed cell foam or stuff they use in cars to muff noise.

[Kisai]

On 4/3/2024 at 12:06 AM, Master PC said:

In times of an earthquake or any natural disaster, how would you keep your computer safe?

 

Soneone told me to put the unit on the floow and cover it with a thick blanket or something, but I'm afraid of ESD, so I was planning to put it on the floor, in a small enough space so it wouldn't topple. What is the best appraoch you would suggest me to keep it safe?

 

Because I live in Taiwan, and if you saw the news of the quake that happened this morning in my time, I needed to take preventive measures. My rig is safe as I type.

 

 

Your life is worth more than your computer. 

 

Forget about trying to protect the computer and instead protect the data, cloud storage or burn optical disks, or store on NAND flash drives/SSD's

 

If you really want to try and save a computer form potential damage from earthquakes, you need to plan more in advance. You basically need to put the computer on a shock absorber. You can buy "shock absorber" screws for hard drives. But realistically, unless you put the desktop tower on a sled with wheels with shock absorbers, you're probably spending a lot of money on trying to protect the device rather than the data. Hardware can be replaced.

 

SSD's aren't impacted by earthquakes. They can be erased by ESD however.

 

Worst case scenario, your computer SCREEN's will be damaged or destroyed, towers will usually be fine unless you have a heavy GPU, which might be ripped from the motherboard.