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Do you guys leave your comps plugged in when you disassemble them?

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I switch off the PSU and hold down the power button to drain all internal components through the hard wired ground out into the house ground,
then I unplug everything and proceed to opening the case. I do this before pretty much any change inside the case, before doing so.

That's how it's done.
 
Originally posted by: toattett
Originally posted by: 2thAche
No matter what I do in there I always unplug. Just use a grounding strap. It's not worth screwing something up.
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What's a grounding strap?
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a grounding strap is a strap that goes around your wrist with a wire that connects to something that is grounded, say the grounded chassis of something or a screw on a grounded wall outlet, to ground your body at all times greatly reducing the risk of static electricity from you damaging something.
 
i would never do that... and if i ever did it was by mistake. just wear those dumb wristguards or shoes and youll be fine. personally, ive been building computers on a regular basis for the past 4-5 years and i've only used the static wrist-guard thingy once and ive NEVER had problems. i just try to make sure im not barefoot... maybe im doing this all wrong but its worked so far and i see no reason to change my methods. 🙂
 
I turn off the PSU and make sure the power-light on the motherboard turns off before I touch anything.
 
I simply power off the surge suppressor leaving the system plugged in to it. That way the system maintains an earth ground but the AC is disconnected.

I suppose, depending on what type of switch the surge suppressor uses (SP or DP), and if the house wiring were incorrectly installed with single phase AC hot and ground wires reversed, one could encounter a problem. However it is easy to check one's house wiring with a DVM.
 
I turn the master power switch on the power supply off. My mouse (Intellimouse Optical 1.1a) has a small red light on it that stays on for about 5 seconds after I flip that switch. After that light goes out, I unplug the power supply.
 
For years I have been making sure to plug the PSU into a surge strip (running into a known good grounded wall outlet) which is OFF, and the PSU is OFF. I then use a wrist grounding strap attached to the bare metal of the case. My opinion is that having the chassis NOT somehow grounding somewhere does you NO GOOD when you send an ESD charge into it from yourself--where does that ESD charge dissipate to? The idea of keeping the PSU plugged in is so that there is a ground for the ESD charge to run to.

That said, there are plenty of idiots around who would FORGET to turn off the PSU and not take the level of precautions I do, and would get themselves a nice volt--maybe even a heart stopping one. Hence the precautions from most people to unplug it.

 
I disagree (with the OPs statement). The PSU is grounded through the outlet and thus does not need to ground itself to the chasis (this would also be a very risky practice which is, I believe, why it is not done), thus there is N.C. between the chasis and the ground of the outlet.

Looking at it from a different perspective:
We are dealing with two rules - (a) electrons want to return to their source (b) electons will (for the most part) take the path of least resistance. Their "source" technically is the earth in this case, and the path of least resistance is most likely not through your chasis, psu, cord, outlet, house-hold wiring, and out to your earth ground. None of this theory really adds up to me.

I highly recommend you unplug the power supply whenever you stick your hands inside, and properly ground yourself. Also, in terms of static electricity, there is not really much of a "good" and "better" ground, there is such little energy stored pretty much any ground will suffice, just make sure that ground isn't a static-sensitive IC chip ^_^.
 
It's not a question of reference ("earth") ground at all, but of normalizing any static charges that you might have built up on your person (and subsequently transferred to any devices/cards in your hand), and the voltage potential of the case and components attached to it. You want to equalize those potentials, so that there is no difference, because if there was, the difference would seek to equalize itself, usually by a "zap" that goes through a sensitive component. Result? Fried chips. (Those of you from the UK can laugh now.)

That's why leaving the cord plugged in to "ground" the chassis or yourself, is both wholly unnecessary (the "reference voltage" is not ground, but rather the chassis that you are working on), and potentially dangerous (in case somehow you get exposed to 120V AC, or the PC decides to power itself on while something is half-connected and kills components, or you forget to flip the "kill" switch on the back of the PSU, and destroy your RAM or PCI cards by plugging/unplugging them while standby power is applied).
 
yes i leave it plugged in. bad idea though. there is still power through parts of the motherboard which you could short or something bad. i just forget to hit the switch. i also have a dorito on my video card
 
Originally posted by: teutonicknight
Originally posted by: bigboxes
1. Unplug.
2. Touch case.
3. Don't shuffle feet after 1 & 2. 🙂
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Add: Don't wear socks either, or a wool sweater
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For some here that in D&D DM joke terms "Smell worse than there character should" thier swamp like socks would act as a better grounding than anything else 😛

Unplug. Always.
 
Originally posted by: rocketPack
I disagree (with the OPs statement). The PSU is grounded through the outlet and thus does not need to ground itself to the chasis (this would also be a very risky practice which is, I believe, why it is not done), thus there is N.C. between the chasis and the ground of the outlet.
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That "there is N.C. between the chassis and the ground of outlet" is verifiably false. Unplug your system and measure the resistance between the 3rd wire (earth ground) of the power cord and the system chassis. Mine reads less than a tenth of an ohm which is within the tolerances of my cheap leads for a direct connection. In short (no pun intended), the chassis is indeed connected to the earth ground. (For reference, my PSU is an Enermax EG465P-VE.) Moreover, it is not a "risky practice". Rather, it is standard grounding for single phase, 3-wire AC.
 
Just a thought that I just had -- you can still have a grounded computer chassis if you leave plugged in a shielded cable that is plugged into something else that is grounded, say your monitor (Don't know if LCD monitors have a ground prong). The chassis of the computer will still have a ground path.
 
or you could just disconnect the primary power connector from the motherboard and leave the PSU plugged in as always, so nothing could possibly trip the PSON line.
 
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