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?
It will not affect system stability, but… Surge protectors do not work at all without a ground wire to drop excess voltage to. Any kind of line voltage disturbance could kill every device.
Additionally, without any ground wire to pull the housings of devices to ground, the potential for a short to energize the case and then electrocute you is also high.
additionally additionally, if you have grounded outlets that don’t actually have a ground connection running to them, that means either the wiring system is broken or it was “updated” by an unlicensed hack job who has undoubtedly made numerous more dangerous decisions elsewhere in the circuit.
If your house is entirely ungrounded you really should have an electrician come update it ASAP. Outlet grounds have been mandatory since 1971. The chances are high that wiring predating that code is still using old cloth-wrapped wire insulation or even knob&tube, both of which are huge fire risks as the insulation is decayed badly by now. It’s expensive to have all new wire pulled but it is necessary.
Can confirm. Neighbors house had an attic fire with knob & tube wiring.
… Just like the stuff still in my place today. Eek! Landlord won’t upgrade unless there is a problem. In my house, the breakers are all 20amp and that’s a lot to run on, best guess, 70 year old wires.
Oh, and do not assume anything is wired as expected. Test after. I’ve found a couple plugs “upgraded” to 3-prong by jumping the load and ground together. That made for a fun firework show when my metal fan touched something metal. Even the landlord was impressed by that stupidity.
A cheaper solution is to take a copper wire and connect the ground screw of the socket to a water pipe. It does the job and is better than nothing.
Looks like your landlord and the people who flipped my house hired the same electrician. They did the same stupid thing jumping the load and ground so that it’d pass inspection (the little tester will show everything properly grounded).
Unnnnfortunately, that’s also a good way to cause serious damage to things and in my case it managed to short in such a way that it melted one of the phases coming into the house and damn near burned my house down.
Don’t do stupid shit with your outlets, kids, because uh, yeah, fire.
Note to anyone heeding this advice: it has to be a metal water pipe, no plastic.
Second note, the metal pipe has to be continuously metal from at minimum where it enters the house, don’t trust that if you see a metal water pipe (or drain pipe) that it’s grounded.
Yeah it’s pricey, very pricey, but the risks are just too high for a home not to be properly grounded anymore. Homeowners have had 50 years to do it, it’s time to get it done.
Absolutely. Don’t fuck with electrical.
Heh. House I rented was built before ubiquitous electricity. At some point, someone slapped a fuse box on the outside of the back wall and drilled a bunch of 1" holes in said wall to pass wiring. House was built on piers, so they just dragged wires around to places where they wanted outlets, which were mostly planted in the floor. Not a ground wire on site. I have no idea how they got away with renting that out, but it’s not like I called code enforcement, either.
Generally speaking most buildings can be “grandfathered in” under code such that it’s perfectly legal to rent as long as the electrical system functions and meets code for the year on which it was built or installed… shitty, but legal.
My house was built in 1939. Initial installation of ecectric cables consisted of a wire in a sleeve filled over with concrete. That was all replaced with proper tubing and isolation, but these few outlets do not have ground.
Without a ground there is nowhere for a surge to go, permanent damage is much more likely. Surge protectors or a UPS will not protect against surges at all without a ground.
There’s also no ground so the chassis may have enough voltage on it to cause a shock if you touch it. This could also damage components as they are not grounded and touching things can introduce high voltage from static electricity which will have nowhere to go.
Additionally if you have ethernet connected to it the system may end up grounding itself through the ethernet cable, if the device at the other side does have a ground, which could cause issues.
So it basically just means you have a much higher chance of damaging the parts, or injuring someone touching things.
