Alaric
New Member
- Joined
- Dec 4, 2011
- Location
- Satan's Colon, US
I'm going to fall back on this increasingly likely scenario.
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PC-Case conducts energy
- Thread starter f4k3
- Start date
I'm going to fall back on this increasingly likely scenario.
f4k3: one thing your case, guitar, and every USB cable have in common is that the exterior metal bits are connected electrically to the ground pins on your electrical outlet. It's supposed to be for safety, as an internal short circuit that might energize external metal is supposed to cause a fault that trips the breaker. That's not happening which indicates there is most likely reversed wiring somewhere, not a fault. Call an electrician to check your electrical outlets.
For those in the US: that's a European 220V Schuko tester, two pins and neutral. The ground pins on schukos are on the sides of the outlet. They don't always have ground pins (depends on the nation), but this one clearly does or it wouldn't be giving him two green LEDs in the first photo. It's not fundamentally any different than US outlets aside from it's reversible (no differentiation between hot and neutral pins in Europe), and operates at 230V 50Hz. So any troubleshooting tips you have from US would apply.
For those in the US: that's a European 220V Schuko tester, two pins and neutral. The ground pins on schukos are on the sides of the outlet. They don't always have ground pins (depends on the nation), but this one clearly does or it wouldn't be giving him two green LEDs in the first photo. It's not fundamentally any different than US outlets aside from it's reversible (no differentiation between hot and neutral pins in Europe), and operates at 230V 50Hz. So any troubleshooting tips you have from US would apply.
That was my very first thought when I saw this thread, but it still shouldn't be shocking him if his case is grounded to the neutral. My suspicion is that someone TRIED to use the neutral as a ground, but mistakenly reversed hot and neutral and used the hot as a ground. The other possibility (less likely) is that the outlet is properly grounded, but there is a short circuit somewhere in his carpet and touching anything grounded completes the circuit.
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- Thread Starter
- #23
Thank you very much for your answers. I will go with @sjfehr advice and call a professionell electrician in the next 2 weeks. I will definitely update all of you and report hahah 
If someone has another idea that i can perform by myself until the electrician comes just feel free to post it here
Thank you all very much!
If someone has another idea that i can perform by myself until the electrician comes just feel free to post it here Thank you all very much!
- Thread Starter
- #24
I have one more idea. I do have an UPS between my PC and the outlet(but i had the problem also before, so the source is not the UPS). If i connect my PC only to the UPS without anything being plugged to the outlet i should not feel any shock if the theory is correct that the outlets are the reason, right? How would i measure if there is any voltage on lets say the guitar strings?? Since there was concerns raised in that thread that i should not test it by touching it anymore i rather play it safe from now on and measure it somehow with the multimeter. Thanks!
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2008
If you have another free socket nearby, set the meter to measure AC volts, and touch one end on earth in socket, other end on whatever you're testing. Note it is normal for there to be a small number just from the leads even if not touching anything. You're looking for anything "bigger". I'm not sure what threshold to set as concerning, but certainly 50v+ is.
I still have a suspicion that if there is some fault in either the power cable of PSU that might potentially also give the symptoms you're seeing. Even if you can't replace the PSU without getting another one, do you have a spare power cord you can try swapping?
I still have a suspicion that if there is some fault in either the power cable of PSU that might potentially also give the symptoms you're seeing. Even if you can't replace the PSU without getting another one, do you have a spare power cord you can try swapping?
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2016
I don’t know about in the US but in the U.K. if you test something to ground and there is a current it will trip the fuse box as it should do.
I personally think that the outlets being a problem is a red herring. I could be wrong here and it doesn’t hurt to have an electrician check. But for there to be electricity running through your computer case there has to be a short somewhere in the system. Without power going where it shouldn’t power comes into the psu from the mains and back out of the psu into the neutral wire. Obviously that’s in very simple terms but basically you don’t need an earth wire to complete the circuit. The earth wire is there if something goes wrong to provide a route for the current to go that has less resistivity than the human body. That way you don’t get a bad electric shock.
Can you just build with the barebones of a system? Ie take out the graphics card, fans etc and just leave the motherboard, cpu (cpu fan as wel) and ram with the power supply. You should still be able to turn the system on and have power going through it. That way we are eliminating some things as the problem.
If there is now no more power going through the case, add each item back in one by one.
If there is power going through the case it is either the power supply, or the motherboard is grounding out somewhere on the case.
I personally think that the outlets being a problem is a red herring. I could be wrong here and it doesn’t hurt to have an electrician check. But for there to be electricity running through your computer case there has to be a short somewhere in the system. Without power going where it shouldn’t power comes into the psu from the mains and back out of the psu into the neutral wire. Obviously that’s in very simple terms but basically you don’t need an earth wire to complete the circuit. The earth wire is there if something goes wrong to provide a route for the current to go that has less resistivity than the human body. That way you don’t get a bad electric shock.
Can you just build with the barebones of a system? Ie take out the graphics card, fans etc and just leave the motherboard, cpu (cpu fan as wel) and ram with the power supply. You should still be able to turn the system on and have power going through it. That way we are eliminating some things as the problem.
If there is now no more power going through the case, add each item back in one by one.
If there is power going through the case it is either the power supply, or the motherboard is grounding out somewhere on the case.
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