How should I ground myself?

[muchthicc]

I've seen and been told that either not using a wrist strap at all and just building on a wooden surface should be fine. I've also seen that just building on the motherboard box is fine. Should i be safe and spend more money on a grounding strap or can I do one of the two things mentioned above?

 

[stdragon]

In low humidity environments, you definitely want to be grounded; either with a wrist strap or grounded work mat. In say, Houston TX in August... nah, not needed. Although there's always that risk if you don't ground regardless.

As for working on a wooden table, sure, wood is something of an insulator.

 

[Gam3r01]

ESD is overrated. If you arent building on carpet wearing your favorite wool socks then you are going to be fine.

A ESD wristband is a waste of money because you can level the charge for free. All the wristband does is regulate the charge between you and whatever its attached to, most of the time the case. If you just touch the case every once in a while you do the same thing.

It is also worth noting that if a component somehow accumulated a static charge (this is hypothetical) the strap wouldnt do anything. The component would still discharge into you, instead of the other way around.

 

[stdragon]

ESD is not overrated; it's misunderstood.

If you're in a dry desert or it's cold with extremely low humidity to the point of getting a small static shock from moving and touching things, yeah, you need to keep the potential level in real-time. An ESD strap will do that.

 

[Gam3r01]

10 years ago you had to worry about it, components now are not nearly as sensitive. When was the last time you heard of someone actually had an issue proven to be a result of ESD?
We get the question of "if" all the time, never any resulting damage.

 

[stdragon]

Handling RAM. ESD will kill portions of the memory. Probably CPUs too.

It's not the current, it's the insane voltages!

 

[cryoburner]

I agree that it probably won't cause a problem, particularly if you keep a hand on a grounded surface, or at least periodically touch one after moving around and before handling components. An ESD wrist strap isn't necessarily useless, since it can free up one's hands and prevent them from forgetting to ground themselves, but it's probably more useful for someone who regularly installs components on a daily basis.

 

[nobspls]

They always tell you to unplug your PC from the wall socket, because nobody wants to be liable for you electrocuting yourself. But I generally work on my PC with power plugged into wall, and have been doing so for the past 25 years now. I've got a good 110V jolt once a couple of times, but that is messing with the thing with it powered on.

But the point I trying to make here is, if your PC is connected to the wall socket, and assuming the ground pin in that 3 prong socket is actually connected to a good ground, which should be case 99% of the time, assuming building codes are properly enforced, then simply touching the PC's metal case will discharge any static charge you have on you safely without risking you or your PC, after all that is one of the fundamental basic function of a PC case. And that is the habit I've instructed to do so since I was 14 by the local hack PC repair guy. And to date I've not had ESD wreck any of my PC stuff. When transporting boards, cards, memory, CPU, etc. I always put them in ESD protected bags. This is really all you need to do.

 

[stdragon]

You can leave the PSU plugged in so long as the PSU switch is in the off position. While yes, the grounding pin of the AC cord will also ground the case, you also don't want to be installing RAM, CPU, or peripheral cards where the MB is 'live' in low-power standby mode. That used to not be the situation in old AT systems, so it was safer for the hardware.