Grounding my pc

Hosam-Jensen

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Aug 11, 2015
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Hello everyone
I want to do something and want to ask the pros here if it would work or not....
So the electricity in my house isn't grounded and I'm thinking to make my pc grounded...so what I'm gonna do is get the psu power cable and link the earth prong with a copper cable and link the other side of the copper cable on the wall or on the floor..will it work or not?
 
Solution
Bunch of junk.
Touching 120v won't kill you. Shock the Hell out of you maybe at best, but not kill you. Your body simply provides too much resistance. V=IR. With 120v = amps x resistance. With a human having 100k ohms resistance, that's @0.0012A, if you are all sweaty you might see 0.012A and thats it. Takes much more than that to kill, about an ⅛A applied directly to the heart or more than 10A via hand to hand travel.

GFI is a Ground Fault Interrupt. They don't work if they don't have an attachment to ground.

Yes, you can use a ground rod, at least 8feet long, galvanized, with #6 copper wire as a grounding wire. If used from the mains panel, that needs to be #4 copper wire, tied in 3x places in a continuous line from the house meter...

skitszo

Honorable
if your in an ungrounded house. its a bad idea to ground. problem with grounding in that situation is that you can electrocute yourself by grounding out but not enough current will flow to trip the breaker.

the old idea that earth is your ground and it goes to the municipality is false. it goes to the nearest grounding rod near it that the municipality puts in the ground then back to the municipality thru the wires.

don't mess with grounds in a house thats not grounded.... you need a electrical contractor for that;
 

skitszo

Honorable
just hook it up to a good protection device that says its good in an ungrounded house. leave it at that.

grounding is more complicated then how it use to be said. They are now sending grounding rods over 50 feet to get the proper 'grounding" which basically means trying to get it to the water table to help it "ground".
 

Grounding isn't to protect your PC. It's to protect you. If your PSU shorts out and electrifies the case of your PC to 110V 60Hz AC, and it's not grounded, it will kill you when you touch it. If it's grounded, that electricity will be diverted to ground, overloading the circuit and tripping the room's circuit breaker.
 

skitszo

Honorable
look.... i told you....... this house is not safe to run a ground. you have to run a ground the the main panel... you cannot use a grounding rod. not a water pipe and be safe. there's a high chance the current will not be great enough to trip the panel fuse.... this is new thinking thats just coming out and proved by the electrical unions in california.


if your gonna ground.. have a licensed good electrical contractor set up a dedicated ground that goes to your electrical panel.... you cannot stick a grounding rod down and think your safe. don't so it...


if you want to feel safer put a GFI plug there at the computer; then a good computer protection device that does ground faulting and surge protection.

 

Karadjgne

Titan
Ambassador
Bunch of junk.
Touching 120v won't kill you. Shock the Hell out of you maybe at best, but not kill you. Your body simply provides too much resistance. V=IR. With 120v = amps x resistance. With a human having 100k ohms resistance, that's @0.0012A, if you are all sweaty you might see 0.012A and thats it. Takes much more than that to kill, about an ⅛A applied directly to the heart or more than 10A via hand to hand travel.

GFI is a Ground Fault Interrupt. They don't work if they don't have an attachment to ground.

Yes, you can use a ground rod, at least 8feet long, galvanized, with #6 copper wire as a grounding wire. If used from the mains panel, that needs to be #4 copper wire, tied in 3x places in a continuous line from the house meter base to ground rod to panel, and the neutral buss of the mains panel needs to be bonded at the very first means of disconnect. Which is the panel with the main breaker. That's all that's needed to ground a house. And ½way decent electrical contractor can do it in minutes if the mains panel permits easy access.

Don't use water bonds. Copper piping when subjected to electrical discharge via ground suffers from electrolysis, basically if there's any microscopic weak point in the pipe, it'll corrode to the point you get leaks. In a 10foot section of pipe it's easy to get over 1000 separate pinhole leaks, now subject that to the whole house and you'll be replacing a serious amount of copper piping in about a year or so.

The best way to get a faux ground in an ungrounded house is to use a decent APC, battery backup, as it creates its own ground via exchange between DC and AC voltages.

Unless you put the pc case directly on bare concrete, in a house that's slabbed to the ground, not suspended above the ground, then it'll make no difference where you put it, the case will be shielded from any grounding source. I'd not put the case on any carpet though, that's asking for static buildup with no ground outlet for removal, which can backfeed through the case to the mobo attached to it, and cause issues.
 
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