[SOLVED] I get minor electric shock when I touch any metal part in my PC ?

[Bikyo]

Hi,

When i plug my pc and touch any metal connected to it I feel a minor electric shock.
If i touch my case i dont feel it but if I touch a screw or the IO shield i get shocked a bit, also if i connect my keyboard I'll also get shock when touching the metal part of it.

I tried switching outlets and its still the same (though it feels less in other outlet).

My first guess is because the outlets are not grounded in our old home (I recently moved).

Will buying a UPS solve this? Or I still need to ask an electrician to ground the outlet? Or maybe this is not a grounding issue?

P.S. even if PSU and PC is turned off as long as its plugged in the outlet i can feel a bit of shock.

 

[Jmi20]

that's just static electricity...

 

[Bob.B]

Hi,

When i plug my pc and touch any metal connected to it..
i fell a minor electric shock..
If i touch my case i dont feel it but if I touch a screw or the IO shield i get shock abit.. also if i connect my keyboard ill also get shock when touching the metal part of it.

I tried switching outlet and its still the same (though it feel less in other outlet)

My first guess is because the outlets are not grounded in our old home (i recently move)..

Will buying a UPS solve this? Or I still need ask an electrician to ground the outlet?

Or maybe this is not a grounding issue.

P.S. even if psu and pc is turned off as long as its plugged in the outlet i can feel a bit of shock.

Start with something like this.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Gear-Receptacle-Indications-50542/dp/B002LZTKIA

There are different brands you might be able to pick one up at your local hardware store.

 

[Bikyo]

that's just static electricity...

The thing is i cant use my pc because of it..
If i touch my keyboard i get shock every single time.. its not the 1 time static shock only..
My pc turns on normally except for the continous static.

 

[USAFRet]

that's just static electricity...

It's not "just static".

 

[USAFRet]

The thing is i cant use my pc because of it..
If i touch my keyboard i get shock every single time.. its not the 1 time static shock only..
My pc turns on normally except for the continous static.

Hows the electricity in the house?
Fully grounded?
Does this happen with any other devices?

 

[Bikyo]

Start with something like this.
https://www.amazon.com/Power-Gear-Receptacle-Indications-50542/dp/B002LZTKIA

There are different brands you might be able to pick one up at your local hardware store.

I already ask for electrician to change my outlet.. but still need to wait till next wednesday..
And im not sure if its only the outlet not being grounded is the issue.
(My old house only got 2 prong outlet so im sure its kot grounded)

 

[USAFRet]

I already ask for electrician to change my outlet.. but still need to wait till next wednesday..
And im not sure if its only the outlet not being grounded is the issue.
(My old house only got 2 prong outlet so im sure its kot grounded)

That IS the problem.

Ungrounded outlets.

 

[Bikyo]

Hows the electricity in the house?
Fully grounded?
Does this happen with any other devices?

Im sure its not grounded

That IS the problem.

Ungrounded outlets.

That IS the problem.

Ungrounded outlets.

I see, thanks.

I was not sure if ungrounded outlet does those things.

Will an AVR or UPS remove the static on my pc?
Or anything i can do to not get the static shocks?
(My keyboard is mostly metal so i can use it XD)

If not quick fix then i guess i need to wait till wednesday. (Sucks to be in far away town)

 

[USAFRet]

The whole house electrical system needs to be fixed.
This will not be inexpensive.

 

[Bob.B]

I already ask for electrician to change my outlet.. but still need to wait till next wednesday..
And im not sure if its only the outlet not being grounded is the issue.
(My old house only got 2 prong outlet so im sure its kot grounded)

Sounds like my old house.
Fuse box, paper jacketed wiring, circuits that jumped from room to room sometimes via the attic, 2 prong outlets, some outlet boxes grounded some not.

I finally got tired of the mess.
Started with a breaker panel then new romex to each room via the basement, stripping out the old wiring.
New 3 prong outlets.
Since this was a weekends job it took a few weekends.

 

[Joseph_138]

I'd unplug everything from that outlet and if it's connected to a switch, turn the switch off, until the electrician does his work. It's better to be safe, than to risk destroying anything plugged in or burning the house down. I had a faulty outlet catch on fire on me once, but I was sitting in the same room at the time and was able to put it out before it spread. I changed the outlet the same day. If nobody had been home when it happened, it could have been a disaster.

 

[Paperdoc]

Ungrounded outlets are the root cause here, but not just because of grounding. Having proper Grounds at every outlet that ARE connected by a bonding wire in the cables to a true Ground at the breaker panel is important for removing small electrical noise signals as well as the safety factor in the design. BUT what is also less obvious is that the new wiring system forces reliable connections at every outlet regarding the polarity (that is, Hot versus Neutral) of the slots in the outlets, AND of the way that user devices are plugged in. MANY current plugs have blades with different widths for Hot and Neutral, and so they only fit into the outlets (also with different slot heights) one way. In older systems with only two conductors in the cables in the wall, and only two identical slots in the outlets, is is always possible to plug devices in the "wrong way" and they still appear to work perfectly. But that CAN give these kinds of symptoms when you plug in several devices connected together in a multi-device system. Even worse, at the time that the original wiring was installed, very often the installer made NO effort to standardize which outlet slot is the Hot line, so even if today's user tries to make identiocal connections, the outlet itself MAY be "backwards" in the way those older slots are wired.

 

[mikewinddale]

Your problem is that the outlets aren't grounded.

A UPS won't do any good because a UPS (or a surge protector) requires a grounded outlet to work. Those devices direct any excess power to ground. If there's no ground, then there's nowhere to send the power to.

So by the way, you have no surge protection. If you have a surge protector, it's not doing anything.

And fixing this is not as simple as replacing an outlet. You have to replace the entire wire that runs from the breaker panel to the outlet. In other words, it's equivalent to creating an entirely new outlet that didn't exist before.

I recently added an outlet to my house. Cost estimates ranged between $385 and $1,230. That's for one outlet. You're going to want to get multiple estimates by different electricians. If you have many outlets in your house that require grounding, you're probably going to want to ask electricians about financing options.

Also, outlets are often grounded for safety reasons, i.e. to prevent electrocution. So if you can't afford to ground every single outlet in your entire house, then ask the electrician to install a GFI outlet on every circuit which isn't grounded. A GFI monitors the difference between electricity flowing in and electricity flowing out. If it detects a difference, it breaks the circuit. This way, you aren't electrocuted. One single GFI outlet can protect every single outlet on the entire circuit. So it's a lot cheaper than running a whole new wire from the circuit breaker panel.

A GFI outlet won't help your computer, since a computer needs a ground to help it establish what a binary zero is. That is, for a computer, the ground is needed for data integrity, not just for safety (against electrocution). But installing GFI outlets everywhere else in the house can help cut costs compared to grounding every circuit in your house. Perhaps you can ground just the outlet that serves your computer, install GFIs in other locations (especially bathrooms and the kitchen, where electrocution is most likely because of water), and then over time, you can ask the electrician to slowly ground additional circuits in your house, piece-by-piece, so you pay over time.

 

[Paperdoc]

Actually, replacing 2-prong outlets with a GFCI device and NOT installing new cable from the breaker panel CAN help with OP's problem. Doing this does NOT provide a true Ground, so there is no place for electrical noise to be sent from grounding shields in cables and devices, and they cannot help there. However, it CAN eliminate hte major cause of these "it shocks me to touch it" problems. As I said, that problem VERY often is because some part of the system is plugged into a power outlet "backwards" from other devices - that is, Hot and Neutral lines are reversed in the power feed to that part. When an electrician installs a 3-prong GFCI device in the wall box to replace an older 2-slot outlet, he / she most certainly will ensure that the polarity of the new outlet is correct. Further, in doing that job he / she should be replacing all of the other old outlets on that same circuit - the ones downstream from the GFCI that it protects - with new 3-prong outlets, and ensuring that those, also, have correct polarity. So if your system components all are plugged into the SAME circuit downstream from the new GFCI and with new outlets, the possibility of "backwards" connecting is almost gone. Even if you use different circuits for some components, IF those, too, are on circuits updated as above, they all will have correct polarity.

Now, there still is a way to get polarity wrong when plugging in a device IF that device's plug has two IDENTICAL prongs. Most newer devices have one prong wider than the other, so you can't do it wrong. SOME new devices have only two identical prongs, but that is because they use an isolation transformer as the first power input device, so wall outlet polarity is not an issue. However, IF you have a very old device not equipped this way, or IF you have a new device that HAD different prong widths and you filed down the wide one to make it fit into an old outlet, then you have defeated the protection of that design.

While replacing all the old wiring system in a house with 2-slot outlets is very much to be preferred for several reasons, it is expensive, and usually out of the question for renters. We recently had a small one-story 2-bedroom house electrical system "updated" from an old fuse panel and 2-wire system to a new breaker panel and higher amp raintg. In general the existing wire cables in the walls were NOT replaced, just re-used, so those circuits have no Ground leads. Only a few new circuits were added, and those certainly have Grounds in their cables. ALL of the older 2-wire circuits were done with a GFCI in the first outlet, and new 3-prong outlets in all the ones downstream.
Such circuits do have improved safety against electrical shocks from malfunctioning devices, as mikewinddale above says, but they do not have true Ground connections on their third round contacts. That job by pros cost about $5000, whereas complete replacement of all cables etc. would have been nearly twice as much, with significant work afterwards patching up walls that had to be opened to run new cables. For a large house even more. Makes me really glad I completely re-wired our house the new way when we bought it 50 years ago.

 

[Jacob 51]

The whole house electrical system needs to be fixed.
This will not be inexpensive.

The money will quite be worth it. It's like buying an expensive PSU instead of a cheap one, cause that will be powering up your whole house. I did a mistake of getting a cheap electrician to work on my house and the lights got short circuited in a month. Had to spend extra money to fix it.