RealNC wrote: ↑06 Jul 2021, 13:34
So I have pretty much the worse electricity quality imaginable basically, but zero problems in games.
Worse electricity? Hah!
Brownout-style electricity with brief dropouts (sub-second blackouts) isn't the worst! Switching power supplies can handle that just fine -- just make sure you have a great 80Plus Platinum ATX power supply, and you're probably fine shock-absorbing that kind of power. The power factor correctors in a good unit, are also good at powering through a distorted AC sinewave. Many of them will swallow random electricity in its voltage and frequency range, and even sometimes outside. And several have enough capacitors to run a computer for almost a second of blackout, especially at low computer loads. You've got a perfectly fine power supply.
A common misconception is that flickery electricity is the dirtiest electricity from a computer POV (if using a good power supply) -- but we engineer-mindsets know that there are much worse sources of interference, like 300-volt noise (inductance) into a 120-volt line, even if it's just a staticky amount of it...
A lot of 90V-260V universal power supplies will tolerate a bit of brief overvoltage, but at some point, noise of high-voltage, can start wreaking havoc with the voltages delivered to the internal computer components (like 6 volts instead of 5 volts), and start crashing or microfreezing the computer, if it's just only at the edge of failure thresholds.
Surprisingly, some of the issues come from electricity that isn't causing problems with light bulbs, but has a lot of injected radiofrequency interference that is filtering through to the computer system -- i.e. running a gaming computer underneath high voltage transmission lines.
Since the interference is in sync with the light bulbs, you don't see light bulb problems, but detectable (by a multimeter/oscilloscope) stray electricity injected into the wiring of all kinds (mouse cable, Ethernet cable, USB cables, power supply cables, or even the intense EMF injected through tempered glass sides and injecting stray voltages everywhere; etc. If you're unlucky to live in a country where houses are built underneath 500 kilovolt lines... Or in a room right above a condo mechanical floor (with a huge bigass multimegawatt transformer under your floor). I've seen computer crash in these rare EMP-league interference situations -- injected over the air like a massive inductor -- like a mini EMP bomb. Now that's BAD interference.
- Neighbour's malfunctioning fridge compressor or dryer motor (turned into a defacto RF jammer / sparkgap transmitter) strong enough to blackout nearby WiFi / cordless phones / inject stray signals into nearby wires / etc.
- Near-megavolt transmission lines that's less than ~20-50 meters away. The types that can make an unpowered fluorescent tube glow. That same stray voltage can get injected into mostly-unshielded mouse cables and Ethernet cables, or even into a computer innards and wreak havoc with stability.
- Power substation transformer in a mechanical floor/mechanical room adjacent to your room or floor.
- Large poorly-shielded power pole transformer inches away from a 2nd/3rd floor house wall
- Machines that emit EMP-leagues of EMI (nearby MRI machine, some science lab machines, etc)
Weird things like a single malfunctioning CRT TV actually
blacked out an entire town's Internet, now try a million-times stronger interference signal than that by being in the next room instead of across town. Ouchie for your computer. The rules of squares in distance is your ally (move WiFi router further away from computer) and enemy (interference bad enough to kill internet signal 1 mile away, could conceivably destabilize a computer in an adjacent room).
These are rare problems, but with computers running at their limits, and some population unfortunate to be stuck near strong interference sources, some interference (strong EMI/EMF over the air) dominoes into a lot of freezes. This is one of those diffuse, super-hard-to-troubleshoot things, that feels very, very voodoo.
Oh, and don't keep RF-emitting devices adjacent to your computer. Keep a WiFi router at least 2 meters away from your computer & computer wiring. The cautionary tale of the
LG 5K wifi issue is actually somewhat more widespread (on a much smaller, hard-to-debug scale like affecting only 100 users out of 1,000,000 users). Even test-disable onboard WiFi and Bluetooth, just in case, since 2.4 Ghz from that can actually interfere with 2.4 GHz processor/buses (somewhat) in creating lower margins of stability, etc. Mind you, these (while they exist) are pretty unlikely causes, so use common sense on skipping troubleshooting longshot causes.
Still, some common-sense RF hygeine doesn't hurt (power and data cables socially distanced a few centimeters away from each other, and major RF emitters (WiFi routers) away from the computer and computer wiring (except the criticals such as Ethernet cables, cordless keyboard/mice), but that only helps certain causes. And sometimes you have to go wireless (e.g. switching to wireless gaming keyboard/mice if you live only meters away from a >100 kilovolt power transmission line -- can actually, in some cases, reduce latency, since you've eliminated injected voltage noise into USB cables that is causing latency caused by USB error correction).
If you're living in a detached house way out in a suburb, far from major industrial transformers/machines, and your computer is not next to a major appliance / power panel -- then don't waste time on all of the above after getting a good recent 80Plus Gold or Platinum power supply (and possibly a high-rated UPS if you're getting lots of blackouts in your area), and making sure your WiFi router is somewhere else away from your computer area (even if it's just a couples meters). That's more than enough for the majority.