troubleshooting electric shocks coming from my pc (long and weird story)

tschan

Honorable
Oct 5, 2013
2
0
10,510
Hello all,
My system (seasonic x760w PSU, i5 2500k, asrock z68 extreme 4) is around two years old, with no problems. Last week I started getting electric shocks from a microphone (samson meteor mic, lots of metal parts) I was using. After some poking around, it seems that all the usb ports and metal parts of the casing is giving me shocks. This is not static electricity since the shocks are continuous.
After googling and some reading, the prevalent wisdom here suggest that the source of the problem seems to be either bad wiring or bad PSU. I can't really do anything about the wiring and it doesn't really explain why it was working fine before (no changes in the house or appliance), so I focused on the PSU instead.
I disassembled the PC and disconnected everything, taking the mobo and PSU out of the case (to rule out mobo shorting the casing). With the PSU connected to the motherboard (only ram and cpu installed, no cards) and nothing else, I plugged the power cable and used a multimeter to measure the voltage.
Everywhere on the mobo, the multimeter showed around 80 to 100 volts AC, including the USB ports. (I live in 220v country, and we only use 2 prong cables).
Convinced that my PSU is faulty, I bought another unit (they only have 700watt unit in stock), brought it home and tested it again (Only PSU and mobo or just PSU alone). To my surprise, the new unit shows the same symptoms (multimeter showing 50 to 90 volts), but even worse, even the surface of the PSU shocks me when I touched it.
I'm really confused now, what to do next?
Is it possible that my mobo somehow "burned" both the PSU?
Any pointers appreciated, thanks in advance.
 

Quaddro

Distinguished
whew..
i've never heard about this before..
Main function of the power supply is to convert high ac voltage to low dc voltage, and it's seems your PSU fail to do this job..

check other electronics..like your television, or radio or somethin that use electricity..check the board, is it give you same symptom?
 

tschan

Honorable
Oct 5, 2013
2
0
10,510


Thank you for the suggestion. I went around the house armed with a multimeter and an old lcd monitor. I chose to use this monitor as a guinea pig because it got some exposed screws (?) on the back that I can easily test with the multimeter. Turns out that all of the outlets in the house are giving the same symptoms, only differing in how much voltage it "leaks" ( if that's the correct term). There is always the chance that this monitor is faulty to begin with though...


Yes, that is what's worrying me, which makes the whole story really weird since the computer still runs. I probably wouldn't noticed it if not because i accidentally touching my lips to it...

(Apologies for the looooooong story that follows, I'm gonna write this down while it's still fresh in my mind... Might be useful for others, who knows...)
Since I don't know anything about grounding or wiring, even if today's a Sunday, I called the power company and told them about the "electrocution" issue. They sent two guys to the house immediately to check.

After checking the main fusebox, they claim that everything's fine and the voltage given is fine. I kept insisting that we have a "grounding" issue, as per your suggestion. They went around checking all the outlets and kept saying everything is fine. At that point I showed them my monitor trick, and insisted that there must be something fishy going on.

Later Things got a bit ridiculous when they said that my (monitor) power cable is defective and causing a short... So i brought out my collection of power cables (I got a box full of them, I'm sure everyone here got one too heheh) and said "here, please check these. What are the chances of every cable in the box is faulty?"

About fourty minutes later they are ready to give up again and blame my guinea pig monitor for having "bad regulator" or something. They also admitted that they don't have much experience handling computer equipment ads opposed to normal electronic appliances.

At that point I might have said something to the effect of "computers need a ground at the outlet, otherwise there will be a floating ground that ended up zapping people". It seems that the whole back and forth seems to give this one guy an idea, so he was whispering to the other guy about "maybe we should connect the zero to the ground" (? Not 100% sure though) the other guy was reluctant since "that might be dangerous", but then they proceed to tinker with the one outlet in my room and it passes my guinea pig monitor test.

They are in a hurry to leave so I was really wondering if they really solved the issue or whether this is actually a worse thing for me. I haven't done anything else since I'm happy that at least I got one working outlet. Small victories eh?
Posting everything here before I go get some sleep. First thing in the morning I'm gonna check all the cables just in case the guy was at least partially correct (something about weakened strands of copper inside), reassemble my computer, reconnect all the peripherals, and crossing my fingers.

Oh and my PSU seems to be fine connected to the "good" outlet..., no measurable voltage on any parts. But one thing is still bothering me: I still have no idea what could be causing the whole thing. I have been using the room for years and this only happened last week...

Should I call a third party electrician for second opinions of sort? (Cons:expensive and I doubt I can find a guy that knows computer equipment down here...)
Any comments or advice are welcome. Thank you all!

PS:
(I'm a newbie here, for long updates like this, should I make a new post or update my original post? Apologies if I'm doing it wrong.)