Gaming PC's Are NOT properly grounded to the Case

[winkli]

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The modern gaming PC is no longer sitting in a well shielded EMI resistant metal beige tank. At best we get 1/2 or 1/3 of the shielding capabilities using tempered glass, meaning swaths of EMI can go straight through as light would a glass pane.

Worse still, new released parts and components make ZERO mention of how to secure the cards, motherboards, or mounts are meant to go in the case with compliance to grounding, how hard they're meant to be taut, with which screws, and why 90% of your screws have a barely conductive black paint or powdercoat on them instead of being anodised or plated. After all, why have historical mounts for PC's been either chrome plated steel or brass for the standoffs?

The following issue entails that the return current, after being spent at the IC, is now being cross interefered with PCIE power and data, USB data, and NIC data traces on the return routes through the motherboard to the 24pin and 4+4 or 6+2 pins on the motherboard/GPU; worse still on poorly shielded 4 layer boards that have next to no copper in them for the ground or return planes. Modern gaming PC's frequently rely on the GPU to ground out the motherboards' southside, with rarely any boards seen in the low end with a southern PSU connector that goes to a grounded molex or sata connector.

Now it's no issue if the shielding is good internally, but the voltages of these data lines can cause unwanted AC or perchance modulate onto raised ground, if there is any leakage through to it. Since the operating ceiling of CPU's and small IC's are well under 1v at worse these days, it's really really hard to ensure this interference doesn't cause any errors in the data traces, delays, or extra magnetic inductance at other parts of the data lines; even at the processors themselves since they operate on such tiny margins of error.

My solution has been to use chromed, steel screws that have no anodizing, painting, or powder coating whatsoever. It seems to work extremely reliably in the (very few cases) that I've enforced this in. I'd always found it odd that the large builds I did for really expensive clients had horrid input lag whereas the Huananzhi motherboards that came with chromed DVD screws for the motherboard generally had no issues with Desync or input lag whatsoever, despite being made of 2nd grade parts out of some Shenzhen factory.

Since doing so with my home computer and the experimental rig at work, I've got nothing less than good game after game despite having 20 chrome tabs open with just 16gb of RAM. Sleeping my computer also no longer presents wierd varying lag. At this point, so far as my Active PFC PSU from thermaltake and a couple of chrome screws have to say, the variances are largely gone. Next step is to try ground isolators that are 150$ a pop together with that funny 37$ antenna inside a block of wood to dissipate excess RFI.

[Ferr0]

Aren't the cases themselves with the screw holes painted black and have powder coatings on them?

[I LOVE TIN FOIL]

would you say a NZXT H510i would have this issue?

[texre]

I think he’s on to something

[cursed-gamer]

Changed black coated standoffs and screws to brass and chrome ones. Made zero difference.

[Ferr0]

Changed black coated standoffs and screws to brass and chrome ones. Made zero difference.

Because mystical electricity is not the boogeyman and all the lag people experience is likely software related or hardware or placebo.

[cursed-gamer]

Changed black coated standoffs and screws to brass and chrome ones. Made zero difference.

Because mystical electricity is not the boogeyman and all the lag people experience is likely software related or hardware or placebo.

I know but I can't figure out which software or hardware causes it. Common thing for my all PCs and laptops is the same steam account and google accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if steam messes up something.

[Ferr0]

Changed black coated standoffs and screws to brass and chrome ones. Made zero difference.

Because mystical electricity is not the boogeyman and all the lag people experience is likely software related or hardware or placebo.

I know but I can't figure out which software or hardware causes it. Common thing for my all PCs and laptops is the same steam account and google accounts. I wouldn't be surprised if steam messes up something.

I would just start with basic things, disabling power saving features in windows and bios, making sure your hardware such as your mouse is decent, disabling hyperthreading or SMT. YMMV but if you have an XM1r I noticed a major improvement when I switched off of it and to a viper 8k. Something about the XM1r was really scuffed, in RTINGS latency tests its sensor lags behind others and its just hard to aim with.

[bumbeen]

there's ground pins on every electrical connector in the pc except for maybe like a fan lmao

[Zodasaur]

Changed black coated standoffs and screws to brass and chrome ones. Made zero difference.

Because mystical electricity is not the boogeyman and all the lag people experience is likely software related or hardware or placebo.

If it's not mystical electricity, what type of electricity is it then?