Odd question about grounding/current from vga port.

Grimmkyu · August 27, 2016

I'll come out and say I do not have grounded outlets in my room and cannot switch to them as I do not own the place I live, and will be moving soon. Okay, when j found that out about a month and a half ago about how bad things can be without one I freaked out and tried to diagnose everything to make sure nothing was wrong with my PC. I use a 1000 joules surge protector of the Prime brand and an EVGA SuperNova 650w p2, and as I touched all over my case I felt nothing until I touched the vga port from my motherboards integrated graphics. Nothing from PSU, Dvi/HDMI, usb etc. I felt nothing anywhere other than that one port and it was a constant low current feeling and it freaked me out. Over the last month I've felt nothing at all from anything but it still freaked me out to have felt that and I feel I may be crazy having never felt it after, maybe it was in my head?

Is it possible that if there were grounding issues or a short to my case that for some reason I'd only feel it extremely rarely sometimes? I don't really touch my PC since my setup is pretty solid and I don't need to change/plug things in. Should I be worried? Can that short/fry my pc? It's the only entertainment I have and I can't do anything to remedy my outlet situation. Thank you for any and all help!

BlueChinchillaEatingDorito · August 27, 2016

Are the grounding tabs of the I/O shield actually touching the shield of the VGA port?

Grimmkyu · August 27, 2016

I'm not sure. I can't tell as I'm writing this from work on one of my breaks. Would that be a likely cause then if it was touching it? And in that circumstance could that spawn an issue?

Curufinwe_wins · August 27, 2016

I doubt very much it could ever be an issue. If you really wanted to be certain, you could connect the vga port to a wire, and ground it somewhere else.

Grimmkyu · August 27, 2016

So even though I felt an electric pulsing (100-120hz I would guess) it should be okay? Like I said I haven't felt it in over a month since the one time I checked for the first but it still worried me that maybe it was intermittently doing that. Thank you for your help very much. Eases the mind of a PC gamer who can't afford to lose his PC ^^;