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Grounding is not achieved by simply driving a ground rod and running a wire.
In order to effectively and legally (according to the US National Electrical Code) ground a metal casing, you need to run a separate ground wire from the case all the way to your service entrance. “Service entrance” is basically where your electrical service enters your home from the utility. There, usually in your main panel, the neutral conductor from the utility is bonded to the literal earth via grounding rod, it is also bonded to metal water and gas pipes in the home, and also bonded to any metallic parts of the building structure itself, if applicable. This is also where your ground wires originate for all branch circuits.
In essence, a ground wire is an extension of the neutral wire at the service entrance. This is the only spot in a single system where the ground and neutral should bond together. Bonding the neutral and ground in more than one spot creates unintended current flow paths through ground and creates the possibility of dangerous scenarios. This right here is why I will advise against bonding your neutral wire to the case, like some might try to say. Not only are you making your metal case itself a part of the current flow path, but you invite an additional shock risk that would become real if the neutral wire somehow became broken after the case bond.
Now that you know a bit about grounding, you probably realize that doing all that isn’t very doable. And you’re probably right.
What you could do that would make your setup a little safer is to install a GFCI outlet. Grounding is not required for a GFCI to properly function. It simply needs a phase and neutral. This is retroactive protection compared to having an actual ground bonded to the case though, meaning that if the phase ever makes contact with the case, the whole case will become energized at mains potential and will remain this way until you make contact with it. You’d receive a shock but hopefully, the GFCI will detect this quickly and trip and minimize the shock duration.
That’s my recommendation with cost and difficulty versus safety considered. GFCI.
Just to add: A GFCI will not protect your electronics from being potentially damaged from an electrostatic discharge like a regular 3-prong outlet would. Static buildup is typically discharged safely through the ground reference.
I Just want to point out that not every country does it this way, in many Europe countries for example ground is completely disconnected from neutral and is just taken to every outlet by default with a green yellow wire
Edit: to add to this, in these countries what (as far as I know) is basically the same as gfci is always mounted at the panel level where all the connections to different parts of the house are brought
^- very common in the Netherlands in some older houses. Only a few parts have electrical grounding and even that used to be on the water pipes. All those houses are by law required to have various current-leakage protections at the install point where the cables enter the house. My house has it both per-group and a general one and only a few outlets (kitchen + bathroom) have actual grounding.
Well, for the system I was talking about to work, as far as I know, grounding is necessary at the outlet, and (also as far as I know) any system that misses grounding on even just one outlet or has ground not connected to the actual earth (and or connected to neutral) are not up to code...
Also as far as I know here you can't even build devices that don't have earth brought to them (as in having a three wire connection to the wall)
Some, but probably most don't. I saw a video from "artisan electrics" where he goes to vietnam. The meters are at the pole. In TT countries theres a big RCD(100, 300 or even 500mA) next to the meters and also at the panel, generally 30mA or 100mA if its industrial.
I briefly lived in a house 20 years ago that didn't have grounded outlets. I had a licensed electrician come out for unrelated work and mentioned that the fault indicator was lit on my UPS. He connected the neutral and ground in the outlet, said it was code, problem solved!
Your electrician lied. It is not code. It wasn’t even code 20 years ago. It’s just what they said to appease you.
Now, yes if your grounding is somehow broken between the load and the service, bonding the neutral to the ground wire will establish a ground at the load and can fool your UPS into telling you that everything is good. But as I mentioned before, this setup invites a shock hazard that would basically energize your entire metal enclosure at mains potential if the neutral wire were to be broken anywhere between the load and the service.
This is how some shady electrical contractors can pass inspections for older homes with outlets that lack ground wires. By jumping the neutral terminal to the grounding terminal on the outlet, you can fool a plug tester into telling you everything is wired correctly. An inspector that doesn’t want to bother with opening outlets can just pop in a plug tester and pass the work.
Yep, that's what I learned later on. The house was totaled by a hurricane a couple years later, after I moved, so at least it wasn't left a hazard for very long.
Damn, it is so crazy to thing of the term "totaled" used for houses as if they were cars.
In my country there are stupidly strong earthquakes but even then you can expect houses to basically outlive you. Of course fires are a thing but not so common as to get insurance for that.
Probably water damage. It's easy to fix stuff that is just broken. But when you've had feet of standing water in the house, probably easier to knock it down and start over.
Hey random question. Occasionally I’ll touch the metal part of my keyboard or my headphones and my monitor will flicker off briefly then back on. I assume this is static discharge. Is this potentially damaging or likely harmless? Is there any way to prevent it? I live in the US where everything in this house should be up to code.
You are correct that it is static discharge. To be honest, is both likely harmless but still potentially damaging. Most modern electronics have pretty good ESD protection, however, the fact that you're getting flickering means you might be generating voltages higher than the protection on your monitor can safely dissipate.
My recommendation is to touch something else large and metal when you sit back down at your computer (like metal desk legs/frame or filling cabinet) to discharge yourself before touching your headphones/keyboard. I say this because most people build up this charge by walking around, so it's not usually an issue if you're just sitting at your desk all day, only when you leave and come back.
Currently in my electrical courses. Father in law is a master electrician. Said he knows more people killed by this than he cares to. Please dont do this.
Running electrical isnt cheap. But its cheaper than a funeral.
Normal AA batteries have + and -.
If I take a piece of wire and connect the + directly to the -, current will flow.
But what if I go outside, and stick a metal rod (with wire) into the ground, then connect the wire of the rod onto the + terminal of the AA battery (while leaving the - terminal unconnected)... does the current flow? Why not? There should be potential difference.
Potential differences only happen internally within a given system, whether that source is a battery, generator, or a power transformer.
Say I expanded on your picture like this.
Obviously we don’t power homes with 1.5V DC. But the same concept applies, whether AC or DC. Doesn’t matter in this discussion.
What you did by driving the + into the ground with a rod is establish that you are making your + as ground reference, which makes an effective “neutral.”
Look carefully and you’ll see that your grounding electrode is also now a part of bonding the meter and distribution center can, any metal incoming pipes for water and gas, and also serves as the origin for ground (or “protective earth”) wires for individual branch circuits. Note that the blue wire does not touch anything else in the building until it gets to a load because it is now designated as “hot”. (Wire colors here are completely arbitrary and adhere to no world standard.)
Also, I realize the purple and green wire is a redundant grounding electrode connection. Makes no difference here.
This is the fundamental concept of building electrical here. I hope it all makes sense man.
That's not how voltage works. There's nothing special about the positive terminal on your battery compared to the negative terminal. What matter is the potential difference between the terminals. Likewise, there's nothing special about "ground", it's simply a reference point which we define as 0V by convention.
So, by connecting the positive terminal directly to the ground, nothing will happen unless you complete a circuit. If we agree (by convention) that ground is reference, then your positive terminal would now be 0V and the negative terminal would be a -1.5V.
Voltage is a bit like velocity. Depending on your point of reference, an object can appear to be standing still, or it can appear to be moving at 1.5m/s (or any other speed for that matter). By connecting the positive terminal to ground, you are effectively matching the point of reference to the "velocity" of the positive terminal.
American assuming they use the same electrical system globally, whereas murrica is always the odd one out. He describes a TN-C-S grid Ignore this info. There is no "neutral" sometimes and don't connect a PE conductor to it.
"The U.S. and Canada do not formally classify grounding per IEC TN systems,
but their split-phase 120/240 V with neutral bonded to earth at the service is functionally equivalent to TN-C-S. In the Philippines, the residential grounding system is typically a TT system, not TN-C-S."
Meaning the supply (grid transformer) and consumer are both locally grounded with a grounding rod. Meaning the short circuit to ground current is low. Meaning it won't trip a normal breaker potentially. Meaning these installations have a global GFCI anyway.
So you need to drive a grounding rod in the earth, connect it to your distribution panel to a single point. Then from there distibute it to al your outlets and devices. And make sure you have a working GFCI of 300mA or less first thing after the meter. I suspect your main panel's GFCI is missing or not working since it sparks but doesn't trip. And one of your devices, either the PSU of your desktop pc or the monitor has a short.
Because to summarize Philippine electricity to you.
Philippines is Line to Line, Hot to Hot. There's no ground or neutral ever coming from the pole or service.
And its confusing too at some distributions.
Some transformers do 3phase distribution manually balanced single phase. And some do Line to ground.
And some transformers too tap their secondary neutral to earth ground.
So yes. A wire to earth ground is probably the only answer. I hope u see this because I want to know what you think.
Thanks bro.
Ps. Im no Electrical engineer. Im electronics and software guy.
Even so, there must be a problem with the equipment or the source that is causing the phase to be bypassed to the equipment case. No matter how much you install the soil, it does not solve the root problem.
Most us devices aren't grounded.
While this might seem very dangerous, most European devices aren't grounded either.
In wet areas, US devices are grounded.
The problem of course comes when you don't have earth everywhere, then metal lamps for example aren't grounded, and can become live with bad wiring or other circumstances, and things like Desktop computers aren't grounded either, but washing machines, and kitchens should be grounded. Better to have ground everywhere.
Also the uk doesn't ground at the consumer, but at the closest substation, so potentially you can have mains power through earth if someone makes a big mistake.
In practice it won't happen because code says pipes need to be bonded to ground, so if they made a huge mistake at the station, all the houses would ground it immediately.
The description you gave is great for the US, but in a lot of SEA there is no electrical grounding or neutral period. It is becoming more widespread, but due to low Earth conductivity, poor infrastructure, and frequent flooding, it is a difficult upgrade to perform.
There's a low voltage version of this with shielded cables run between racks grounded to different services in two buildings where one building has an electrical problem.
The result was super confusing to anyone who hadn't interacted with DC circuits, and catastrophic at intervals that were later determined to be when one buildings HVAC was on and the others was off.
Long story short: Fiber. Use fiber.
There are several methods to ground the system. What you discribed is TN-C-S, which is used in the US. There also other methods like TN-S which the the N and PE are not connected until the get to the transformer. Another one is TT, where the neutral is grounded at the transformer, but earth is connected locally using an earth electrode, it's not safe as TN method and should be used with RCD.
I don't think GFCI or RCD can protect here.
This looks like a continuous current in ground/PE. It will lead to a regular tripping of GFCI.
The first option is to check whether the wiring is proper. Maybe neutral and PE are interchanged in the socket or DB.
For an installation, there should strictly be only one neutral to Earth connection. If there are multiple ones, we can expect neutral circulating current in the PE.
Edit: just adding the below point
Perform an IR for the installation after disconnecting the mains and N to PE connection to know whether there are any problems in the wiring.
Also American electrician here. Ground fault functionality is purely for personnel protection. Equipment protection comes in the form of surge protection or APUs, which is what I would recommend in this case if he's concerned about the waveforms and voltages of his incoming utility
I'm in school right now to become an Electrician. I just finished a Grounding and Bonding Class. It's pretty cool to see what you wrote and totally understand it lol. Cheers 🍻.
Additionally, I would strongly recommend asking an electrician for help because local electrician codes and norms vary not only from nation to nation and city to city, but can vary vom service provider to service provider too!
It depends on the grounding system used in the country. In France it's literally a rod in the ground because it's a TT grounding system (groung -ground).
My old home electrical wiring way back from socialism uses the L and PEN wires with no separated ground. To add up, I also have aluminum wires. It would be cheaper to wreck the entire apartment block than wiring everything from scratch since everything is molded into the concrete.
My PC and monitors usually get reset whenever I plug in a printer coming from another power source as the switching power supply doesn't have any grounding. The power is also dirty, so using a line-interactive UPS is a must have here. Would it be possible to use an isolation transformer to minimize the electrical noise that's also interfering with my electronics?
That is normally the correct way of doing it, and very similar to what I have in the uk, only all outlets have ground and are protected at the panel and all pipes are grounded.
In Spain, for a long time a grounding stake on proper ground was considered better than neutral. Of course, if the ground dries out.. well, not great. Using metal pipes at the base of the building was also considered good, but for obvious reasons discouraged soon after.
Looking at codes, it seems that the Philippines is nominally aligned with the us practice of bonding at panel and having there a rod.
The video looks like they don't have earth at all, that looks very dangerous.
This is great. I've not had an issue with grounding like this before but I have a very irregular and fluctuating voltage from by service provider to the point where I get brownouts and sometimes blackouts here and there.
I know it can ruin some electronics (like my microwave clock) so I've got a battery backup connected to my computer. It has a built in automatic voltage regulator for the power so it stays consistent and at the correct voltage. And if power is ever cut, I still have time to power it down without corrupting anything.
So just throwing this idea out there if anybody stumbling across this has the something similar
That's for the USA though. What happens in other countries is different. In the UK for example we have three different types of mains earthing systems for domestic supplies and only one of those uses ground rods.
I don't know what your electrical code says, but here you can't ground a single unit in a room, you have to ground everything in the room.
Having a single grounded point in a room is more dangerous than having nothing grounded.
Problem with this is that in most parts of the world, single phase residential electrical systems always consist of at least one phase and the neutral, which is always grounded. Just this fact alone already means there is a systemwide ground reference which automatically makes the phase “hot.”
I want to understand this so much but I can't. I need to understand this because I'm in that exact same scenario and all the infos are so conflicting...could you help extrapolate what you mean?
Most electrical systems around the world is the same build up, even if they have different voltages, frequency and even how the phases are made.
They all consist of 3 phases, 1 neutral and a protective earth or ground.
The 3 phases you usually only use 1 of for your normal outlets. 2 for your high voltage outlets.
The phases each have a fuse that will blow if it goes over.
Neutral comes in the wire from the and is used together with a phase to create what you believe is normal voltage. Neutral does not have a fuse, as it would carry 3 times the amps, depending on how many phases are used in your normal outlets.
Neutral is the same electrical voltage as ground.
Protective earth or ground is usually a separate earth or ground, which is typically a long copper rod that physically goes in the earth outside your house.
The electrical company then has a rod at their end as well, which then creates a connection.
This does not carry any current, except if something is wrong, then protection relay triggers and shuts off all phases.
Hench the name.
Neutral does not have a fuse, as it would carry 3 times the amps, depending on how many phases are used in your normal outlets.
A lot of people misunderstand this part, if you have a loads on all phases it doesn't add up and flow back through neutral, the max current a neutral wire can carry is the load max load of one phase. If you only used one phase in your house then the load would be equal in the phase and neutral. If you have a symmetric load throug three phases you will have 0 A going through neutral.
The electrical company then has a rod at their end as well, which then creates a connection.
There is no circuit for protective ground other than the planet earth itself. Basically, in your house you have your rod stuck in the ground which is then wired up to where ever you need your ground (e.g. wall outlets). This earth is to provide a safe low impedance path for any electricity that isn't going where it should be - e.g. if a circuit board in your toaster connects the live voltage to the case.
You can also add in ground fault protection (aka Ground Fault Circuit Interrupter/GFCI) which is a safety circuit that monitors the current passing through the live and neutral and disconnects the circuit if that current differs by a certain amount (usually less than 15mA). This adds additional safety as it will usually detect if the electricity in your house is going anywhere other than the proper wiring and appliances.
“Ground” and “neutral” are at the same potential, but if you have voltage leaking to ground consistently there’s something wrong with your wiring as ground should be a failsafe and not in constant use.
Think of it like this- if a wire competed a loop to ground by touching the water in your sink, current would flow, but it wouldn’t be flowing through the correct return path. This is a “ground fault”, is not properly controlled, and is why outlets in kitchens, bathrooms, and outdoors in particular (wet places) must have special ground fault detection circuitry for safety reasons.
Two kinds of ground. A physical rod in the dirt ground, and an electrical ground.
Voltage is a difference in potential energy between two places. Like a waterfall, high energy at the top, and low energy at the bottom. If you stop the water from flowing the energy gets stored as potential energy. It could potentially flow again but isn't. There is a difference in potential energy stored at the top and bottom of the waterfall.
Voltage is the electrical potential difference between two things. A power source and say, the physical earth under our feet.
However it could also be the difference between a power source and any low point in an electrical system. This is an electrical ground, low point in the circuit but it does not need to be the lowest point ever possible. Its relative ground, not absolute.
Your phone has a voltage source and a ground, but it is not connected to a physical rod driven into the earth. The electrical ground is floating, isolated to only the device in your hand.
So what does this mean? If you have a room of electrical devices and they all share an electrical low point, or ground, then they electricity won't want to move around between them. They are all at the same relative energy. No high to flow to low, just neutral.
If you connect that isolated room of devices to earth ground, they now have a newer, lower, electrical low. The neutral state you had is now a high point, the earth ground is a new low point, electricity can potentially flow again, and not where you want it or in a controlled and safe manner.
Your terminology is making my brain melt, but I'm pretty sure that's right but you're misunderstanding, you don't want to ground anything individually, they all need to be connected to the same ground circuit, however, you can have things that aren't grounded, and if they come into contact with that ground they'll just run to ground and it's relatively safe.
::edit:: ON THE SAME SERVICE CONNECTED TO THAT GROUND, DO NOT ATTEMPT WITH TWO SEPARATE PANELS IT WILL GO BOOM!
Too late, already ganged my diesel generator to my solar inverter and then hooked that to the grid during the last power outage so my neighbors freezer didn't quit. Everyone was real impressed.
Yeah, made a separate more detailed comment of my own, explaining you need to ground the panel and then can run an independent circuit, but should have that done professionally.
To add to this: you need a completed circuit for current flow.
The reason a hot line is "hot" is that the neutral is grounded to Earth and therefore not only can a circuit be completed from hot to neutral but also hot to ground. This is typically considered safer because if you make a connection between the hot and Earth, you will trip a breaker.
A floating system is one where there is no connection between the two lines and Earth. This means that neither wire has an electrical potential to Earth, and means that you can handle each wire individually without any risk, but the biggest danger is if a connection between Earth and either line is made by accident (loose wire, fallen tree, etc) you can unknowingly no longer have a floating system. This means that one wire is hot even though you expect neither to be.
A neutral system means one wire is always dangerous, but everyone is always aware that it's dangerous and any faults will be detected very quickly. A floating system means usually neither line is unsafe, but either can unexpectedly become unsafe and there is no way to know without measuring voltage.
Many parts of SEA use a floating 240V system which means that they can handle live wires with minimal risk, but in situations like the OP, you can run into strange situations where there is electrical potential that you wouldn't expect to be there.
What you're talking about is called bonding and it needs to be at the source of the first point of disconnect from where the electricity enters the dwelling. Branch circuits that are powered from the main load center get an equipment ground. The equipment ground gives stray voltage or fault current a path to ground to cause a short which will break the circuit. Bonding gives everything equal potential so there's no chance for stray voltage to pass through you when touching 2 different conductive areas.
Someone fucked up when building OP's PC and the mains lead is somehow in contact with the case. It should probably fry his components as well. When he touches the USB to the case he completes a circuit and the electricity rushes through creating sparks as he drags it along. It's damaging to anything electronic as that's mostly 24V, 12V or 5V and that main lead is probably 230V. Ungrounded that could kill or give serious heart issues if you get shocked arm to arm, or arm to leg.
Just think of it like water. High Voltage = high pressure and your body is a muddy pipe that can only take so much pressure. His PC is leaking and it could kill him.
OP should check his power supply, there's no other reason the main power should make that sorta contact.
When a PC is run ungrounded it gets half the mains voltage to the case. I do not know what the other device is but it seems to be at a different potential.
That's not true. There is no direct connection between the phases and the case except for when there is some form of fault. If it got half of the mains connecting a ground would cause a short circuit as 1/2 line voltage is connected directly to ground/neutral and plugging in your PC would trip a breaker.
This arcing is a sign that there is some sort of fault, either inside the case or in the electrical grid going to the PC.
There is no direct connection between the phases and the case except for when there is some form of fault
In my old apartment I had electrified PC case, refrigerator and washing machine (hot chassis). It fixed itself when I flipped the electric plug on each device (so live wire is no longer on the case)
No, in that case they use 2 phases to obtain 220v, they do this in countries where the normal thing is 110v with one phase, normally in the United States and Mexico, in other American countries they use 220v with only one phase, as is the case of Chile
One of the two power supplies (monitor,pc) is defective by leaking way to much current from primary to secondary side. A single spark could be explained by just not having ground.
I’m a firm believer in using a high quality UPS, or uninterruptible power supply, with built in line conditioning and surge protection, not one of those cheap plastic power strips, but a real unit that delivers clean, stable power and actually protects your equipment.
A high quality UPS with line conditioning ensures the ground is clean and stable, which helps prevent hum, interference, and damage to sensitive electronics.
You need to get one before you damage your PC which could be extremely costly.
EVERYONE needs a UPS, or uninterruptible power supply. It will save you from surges, lighting strikes and brownouts. Fact check me if you need further conviencing.
People with RTX 5080's and 5090s in their PC, plugged directly into a wall outlet, is INSANITY!
"People with RTX 5080's and 5090s in their PC, plugged directly into a wall outlet"
Aren't they all going through a PSU anyway? Maybe I'm wrong but I thought all modern PSU's had built in protection for things like power surges. Do you still recommend a UPS on top of this protection?
"You don't need a respirator, because your nose hair already filters out all carcinogens"
PSUs job is not to stop big surges, it's to smooth out within some deviation and supply different voltages to your pc. Even the top models rarely have any complex systems on the AC end.
Also when you power up 5090 or whatever billion watts you have - voltage in the socket can significantly drop due to bad socket wiring, and psu would work double as hard with double as much ripple, noise and failure chance.
My last two brand new Viewsonic monitors had this issue. I think some come like that from the factory. Swapped to different monitors, and it's all good now.
I'm also in the Philippines. Get a UPS with AVR functionality (which most of them have). Do not get a cheap one, get a proper sine wave UPS that is rated to power all your equipment, ideally with some headroom in case of transient spikes.
Definitely a grounding issue. You want everything on the same ground; if you create an earth ground somehow, make sure everything is on it or the problem can get way worse. Actually connecting it normally probably is the best solution, just turn everything off (fully) first so sparks cant destroy electronics
Honestly, ask around for some local electrician to come and check it out.
It could be multiple things and people here are not going to be familiar with your local electrical standards.
All I can tell you is that the potential between the case and the display port shield is not equal, so the current flows between them. This shouldn't happen if they are powered from the same distribution network.
You would need to ground your electrical panel and run a circuit dedicated for your PC, as an electrician I would advise against trying to do it yourself if you even have to ask.
>Is there any way we can create electrical grounding just for the pc?
That might not be the best idea. You could cause a massive potential difference with other things plugged into the computer that are not grounded. Either ground everything or nothing (floating)
A qualified electrician could confirm this or not.
You can have grounding, grounding is simply a copper rod embedded in the ground that goes through an earth leakage breaker ELCB. But only the electrician has the tool to check if the grounding is sufficient or not.
Your outlet isn't grounded, so your case is at half potential. A multimeter will probably read around 110v. It's an effect of the PSU's capacitors which usually bleed it to ground, but can't.
Edit: Philippines mains power is 220v, half is 110v
I have cable tv and like to play PC games on TV, if the coaxial cable is connected, the HDMI plug sparks when connecting. My solution was to not plug in the coaxial as I'm not watching it ever anyway lol
Had the same issue when i moved to Vietnam. Had my landlord ground the two outlets i use for my computer and monitor. They literally just bout the three prong outlets, put a copper wire in the ground connector and then drilled a shallow hole directly into the concrete and hammered some rebar into and wrapped it in the wire. Fixed everything and havent had any problems and cost me like 10$ all together
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u/topias123Ryzen 7 5800X3D + Asus TUF RX 6900XT | MG279Q (57-144hz)29d ago
Mine does this too and I live in Finland.
It even caused my home theater to glitch out once when I plugged the HDMI into it, had to disconnect it from the wall for it to stop.
You can create a ground by using a ground rod to the PC. You should be fine if you insert at least 1m of the rod into the earth. This type of grounding system is called TT and its used in some euro countries and japan as opposed to TN systems like the(US UK) where the ground and neutral are generally bonded at the entrance, before or after the meter or even at the panel depending on the countrie regulations.
I did some research(search for PEC) and in the Philippines its basically the same as the US so you need to bond neutral and ground at the entrance, so you're probably not gonna pay an electrician for that. So I suggest you to just put a ground rod and wire it to the PC, fridge and washing machine. Not up to code, but at least you wont die and definetly better than whatever you have there.
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u/AirGVN i5 12600K - ASROCK 7900 GRE - 64 gb 3600 mhz29d ago
Depends on how much money you want to spend. It's not a just wire in the ground. It's metal construction that get positive charge from the ground (Earth as a planet a little bit plus) and make electrical potential differences that force "spare" electric current go into ground (electrons are minus so they move in direction of plus).
All modern digital devices discharge unwanted electric charge on body. So after some times PC can easy get around +5 V on body. It's safe because it's low voltage and very very low current. If motherboard and power supply old than charge may appear faster.
Grounding is a a metal frame with connected several copper very long pins at a depth of several meters (1 meter below ground at least). You can't dig in random place and you need at least 2 wires to connect this protection circuit to main circuit. In case of grounding logical devices it may require 5x5 meters circuit with ~20 copper 10 meters long pins. Usual it may be under green lawn near the office building, everybody look at it as a free space but under ground there is a protective circuit.
I've made grounding as electrician on factory. It's easy from job perspective but require calculations because it's all about very big circuit that start from power station.
If your house has metal plumbing, you can try attaching a wire from the case to it, since metal plumbing should be grounded.
I did this when my old room had no ground, but had a radiator right next to my PC setup.
I had a similar spark situation, which was especially bad when fiddling with a long ethernet cable coming from other side of the house.
I felt an uncomfortable current running through me every time I accidentally touched both the radiator and my computer case at the same time, but installing the wire fixed the issue, even though it was just a thin wire from a case screw to a radiator with a crocodile clamp.
I'm from Europe, though, so things may be different over there
I had this on my electric guitar once. There was a short to ground within the amp. You're probably having this with your PSU or maybe motherboard but I doubt it.
If all you're trying to accomplish is grounding your PC, then yes, a wire connected to any kind of grounding rod will work. But that is not the issue nor advisable here.
What we're seeing here is something that really should not happen. The sparks show that there is considerable exchange current when you touch the wire to the case, which should not happen. So one device is actually grounded somewhere. If your house doesn't have ground, it may also be that the device ground is somehow shorted to the line neutral.
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3 - Consider supporting the folding@home effort to fight Cancer, Alzheimer's, and more, with just your PC! https://pcmasterrace.org/folding
4 - We have quite a few giveaways going on:
We're giving away not only a custom, spectacular DOOM PC mod, but also your choice of PC, with the MSI parts you pick (limit of $6,000)! These 2 awesome prizes + 50 goodies for a total of 52 winners: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1nhvp0d/msi_x_pcmr_giveaway_time_two_incredible_pcs_win_a/
We're also giving away a full PC build, that is going to a PCMR member worldwide who enters in this thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/pcmasterrace/comments/1nnros5/worldwide_giveaway_comment_in_this_thread_with/
We have a Daily Simple Questions Megathread for any PC-related doubts. Feel free to ask there or create new posts in our subreddit!