this post was submitted on 24 Jun 2024
72 points (96.2% liked)

Selfhosted

40383 readers
488 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

  1. Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.

  2. No spam posting.

  3. Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).

  6. No trolling.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I know that the answer is yes, I should, but outlets near the setup are not grounded (even though they look like they are) and I don't want to have wires running though my living room.

The real question is what are potential problems ? Occasional system reboots? Permanent damage to PSU? Permanent damage to other components?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

I mean it depends on the intensity of the surge, but basically you'd be making it so your PSU is unable to protect the devices from surges. The more sensitive the electronics, the more critical the ground is and CPUs are pretty darned sensitive among other things. And depending on the type of components in the PSU, "surges" also include things like inrush current. Basically, when you turn on a transformer or certain other devices, there is a surge of sometimes as much as 10 times the rated current to create the initial magnetic flux. Depending on the components, this excess energy may end up getting shunted to the ground to avoid pushing it through your electronics. So if it can't do that, you likely will blow fuses a lot when switching the power on (hopefully there are fuses), or if you're touching the case which is supposed to be grounded, you may end up getting that jolt.

Anyway, without grounded outlets, and especially if your electronics are cheaply made because many expect there to be grounding and don't build in extra components to deal with not having a ground, you are likely to significantly reduce the life of your electronics, your life, or start a fire without even considering major surges. If you have a high-end PSU, you may never have a problem until that surge happens. How stable is your power? Because even a normally small surge combined with a cheap PSU, and no ground, is pretty likely to end up in damage to electronics at the best case.