[SOLVED] question about touching bottom of CPU

[Rogurzz]

is it ok to touch the bottom of the CPU (intel)?

My school technician says he has touched them countless times and hasn't had any problems with them whatsoever.

Is it ok?

 

[Evan_6]

It depends. There are little pins on the bottom, you can touch them gently, but if you touch them to hard, they will bend and your cpu is useless and wont work

 

[gilbadon]

If you let out a static shock > ~20V, you could easily damage the CPU. That being said, to charge your body up and discharge it is often rare. So long as you ground your body (touch something that is connected to a ground) you will not harm the CPU. There is no voltage stored in a CPU so touching between different pins will not damage the CPU without discharging the electricity from yourself.

 

[gilbadon]

It depends. There are little pins on the bottom, you can touch them gently, but if you touch them to hard, they will bend and your cpu is useless and wont work

Intel CPU's have conductive pads, not pins. They do not bend. The CPU socket of an intel motherboard is the part that holds the pins. That is what you do not want to touch.

 

[Rogurzz]

It depends. There are little pins on the bottom, you can touch them gently, but if you touch them to hard, they will bend and your cpu is useless and wont work

Intel CPU's have conductive pads, not pins. They do not bend. The CPU socket of an intel motherboard is the part that holds the pins. That is what you do not want to touch.

i mean if i have no static build up, is it ok to touch the bottom? ive seen linus do it before.

 

[gilbadon]

Yeah, but there is no point, so avoid it when possible.

 

[Rogurzz]

Yeah, but there is no point, so avoid it when possible.

so its not going to affect it at all w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶i̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶n̶k̶i̶e̶ ̶s̶t̶u̶f̶f̶ when i touch it by accident?

 

[s-h-a-w-n]

Manufacturers may put ESD protection, but if you need to touch the interface pins with one hand, grab the computer's bare metal frame with the other hand first (with the plug in the power supply to have a reference to earth). If you are uncomfortable with the power supply plugged, you can turn the switch off behind the fan, the ground wire will still be connected.

I once zapped my sound card input with ESD, it died. As an electrotechnician, I failed to follow the basic preventive steps, by abuse of confidence: "Any self respecting company would put ESD protection on their inputs!" well, no... so I paid the price.