Gadget show £500 PC

[Aragorn]

Anyone else see the Gadget show on five earlier?
They had to buy / build a PC for under £500 inc Monitor. Jason went down the build it route, bought stuff from Scan and built a Dual Core system with only 512Mb Ram and a 7600 GPU (I think) - somewhat light on Ram I would have thought.
What struck me most is the total lack of static protection he used when 'apparently' building his system. No mat, no strap, no nothing!
Very lucky he didn't fry something in the process and totally the wrong message for any budding builders.

More details here.

Dam I need a job doing something like that. Id have used a x1800xt gfx as these are give away prices and used a 20 quid case. (although i didnt see it and dont knwo what he used) and P4D 805 an asrock board 512 meg ram nec dvd rw whatever screen and hdd combo i could afford after £500 quid easy I think

[Aragorn]

Lol - not far off what he used (D805, Asrock board).

lol cool

[Paddy1]

Been building PC's for about 14 years and I've never owned an anti static wrist strap, mat or anything else. I've made a habit of touching the radiator pipes before hand and never zapped anything Emperor style yet.

Next weeks tough lappys test does look fun

[Gareth]

The bird looks quite fit.

Originally Posted by Paddy1

Been building PC's for about 14 years and I've never owned an anti static wrist strap, mat or anything else. I've made a habit of touching the radiator pipes before hand and never zapped anything Emperor style yet.

Next weeks tough lappys test does look fun

but you can build up static just stood on carpet and you dont normally know you have damaged something it just doesnt work as well anymore.These are not mission critical in the house but all electronics in aviation is built in anti static enviroments>My dad was head of a department at the Dunlop before he retired last year and he worked on aviation electronical developement and he told me about precautions because lives were at stake.They wouldnt do this if just touching a rad was enough

[TheDaddy]

Originally Posted by Gareth

The bird looks quite fit.

Suzi Perry, she is quite famous

[jtwn]

Originally Posted by Gareth

The bird looks quite fit.

chaarrrrrrver

[Paddy1]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

but you can build up static just stood on carpet and you dont normally know you have damaged something it just doesnt work as well anymore.These are not mission critical in the house but all electronics in aviation is built in anti static enviroments>My dad was head of a department at the Dunlop before he retired last year and he worked on aviation electronical developement and he told me about precautions because lives were at stake.They wouldnt do this if just touching a rad was enough

Yeah I know static can build up quickly but I think household kit is a lot more robust than we're led to believe. It's a bit more important at 60000 feet.

I too had a techie dad. Was your attic full of Practical Electronics mags and such like as well?

Actually, just reminded me that my first "PC" was a 286 board mounted over the 68000 processor in my old Atari ST with a big clucky switch on the back to switch between them.

I dunno its just electronics are electronics and chips are chips and susceptible to static across them anyway lol I never had a pc but we had modded atari kit from the first 400 to the xl and xe.He is a scientist and tbh im not but he is very clever dunno what went wrong with me lol lol

[ZrByte]

Ive never owned any antistatic stuff myself either and have yet to do any damage to any of my components. Though having said that a faulty PSU tried to do damage to me a couple of years back. Though im pretty sure an antistatic band wouldnt have protected me from that.
Though it is all about how you handle each component. I always handle CPUs by the edges and not by the pins like I see some people doing. I always handle any PCB (Mobo, GFX etc) by the edges rather than touching any of the components in the middle.
I also normally either wear shoes or build them barefoot, as it is supprising how fast static builds up when you're just wearing socks.

How do you know you havent damaged anything? just cuz it doesnt go puff in flames or up in smoke does not mean it isnt damaged.This is a common misconception and im surprised I keep hearing this people seem to expect visable damage or something and thats just not how it works.A cpu for example leaves amd/intel perfect its been tested time and time again and produced in anti static enviroments then it reaches the customer who doesnt handle it carefully but the machine works and seems fine.How does that customer know its working as well as it did when it left base??? they dont simple as also when the cpu eventually dies how do they know it would have died then if it had been looked after properly? again they dont static can cause damage you never know you have caused end of story anyone who disagrees is simply wrong

[ZrByte]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

How do you know you havent damaged anything? just cuz it doesnt go puff in flames or up in smoke does not mean it isnt damaged.This is a common misconception and im surprised I keep hearing this people seem to expect visable damage or something and thats just not how it works.A cpu for example leaves amd/intel perfect its been tested time and time again and produced in anti static enviroments then it reaches the customer who doesnt handle it carefully but the machine works and seems fine.How does that customer know its working as well as it did when it left base??? they dont simple as also when the cpu eventually dies how do they know it would have died then if it had been looked after properly? again they dont static can cause damage you never know you have caused end of story anyone who disagrees is simply wrong

Well given the fact that almost every component I have ever owned asside from some IBM hard drives (60GXPs thats right the famous faulty ones) and an old seagate drive I havent had a component fail on me, they are all still running in various incarnations right now.
So considdering the oldest of these machines is an 8 year old IBM Cyrix MII 266 machine with a processor not known for its amazing build quality or longevity is one of those machines still running I'd say that is a pretty good testemony to my previous statement that I have never damaged a component by not observing antistatic precautions.

Ok then you must be right and everyone who actually works in proper enviroments and companies who spend millions on developement must all be wrong
Some of those componants may well have not worked at its full potential so its not testimony at all

---------- Post added at 09:52 ---------- Previous post was at 09:45 ----------

http://www.static-sol.com/library/ar...ESD_damage.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrostatic_discharge
http://www.ce-mag.com/99ARG/ESD%20AssIntro169.html
http://www.answers.com/topic/electrostatic-discharge
http://kb.palmone.com/SRVS/CGI-BIN/W...m_External2001
http://www.nechapter-esda.org/ne_esd.html
http://unitekeapro.com/pages.php?id=18
http://www.cabot-corp.com/cws/busine...7?OpenDocument (please read this one)

ESD Damage—Facts and Figures:It has been estimated that average product losses in the electronic industry due to static electricity can be as high as 33%! Per year, the cost of ESD to the industry can be figured in billions of dollars. As the world of electronics progresses, parts are becoming smaller and smaller. This means that distances between insulators and circuits are decreasing, thereby increasing the sensitivity of the device to ESD.

do I need to find more? I am amazed people pay hundreds of pounds on componants and wont spend 2 quid on a wrist band its just crazy
A very frustrated zing mutters under his breath