Hello. I know this is not directly related to the main topic of the post, but I am writing because I personally wanted to ask you something. I have been studying with great interest while reading the posts you wrote. The theory you explained is in my head, but since it would make this message too long, I will not restate it here. Instead, I would like to share the experiments I conducted after reading your posts.ChristophSmaul1337 wrote: ↑20 Feb 2026, 18:31Just adding some information you might want to be aware of before going to inspect your electrical panel. There's electrical installations that don't allow for a low-impedance neutral to earth bond, for various reasons.
A common example is the TT earthing system which not only doesn't require this bond, but explicitly disallows it. There's a good chance you do NOT want to install any low-impedance bond between neutral and earth on a TT system, even though you theoretically could. In case of a ground fault, without the bond fault current will go through the PE and the ground rod, through the literal earth soil back to the transformer. This creates small currents which aren't enough to trip a common 10A / 16A breaker; a RCD is therefore used to break the circuit in case of a ground fault. If you connect a low-impedance bond between neutral and earth, the fault current will go down the PE conductor until it reaches your electrical panel and then use the now-"PEN" conductor all the way back to the transformer as its return path instead of the earth's soil. If your installation is TT, there's almost always a reason why it's TT: Because the pseudo-"PEN" conductor you just created is too small in diameter to handle the fault current of a fully-fledged ground fault. In the worst-case, the momentary fault-current overloads the N conductor so much it causes a fire to happen. Don't fancy your chances.
Another old installation type, not commonly used today anymore, is TN-C. You get a 2-wire conductor to the receptacle and the neutral is tied to the ground prongs at the receptacle. This installation type does not have a ground rod, and there is also no way to bond the "ground" to neutral in the panel, because there won't be a ground to bond to. This installation requires bonding of "ground" and neutral at the receptacle.
There's more installation types like IT or TN-S, but that's usually not used at residential or apartment buildings, so it's unlikely you'll have one of these.
The only installation types where you would expect a ground to neutral bond are TN-C-S or the American split-phase power systems. If you're on one of these, it might not be a bad idea to check for that bond to be present and installed correctly, but if you happen to not find it in your panel, don't automatically assume something's wrong and it needs to be added. Especially if you're in Europe, there's a good chance it's not required and your installation code even prohibits the use of one.
You can check for the grounding system yourself if you know what you're looking at or give your power company a call. They'll always be able to tell you what grounding system you have.
Considering I've personally played on computers connected to TT, TN-C and even on entirely ungrounded systems altogether, all of them without problems of input lag and the like, I'd like to ask how that might be possible. What's the explanation for millions of players playing on either TT or TN-C systems (lacking the neutral to ground bond by design) without problems? I'm not questioning your findings, I'd just like to understand more. Thanks!
To summarize your argument in my own way, it seemed to me that the key point was that all PC components should be in contact with the case so that no potential difference occurs between the components.
Based on that understanding, I tried the following:
1. I sanded off the painted parts of the case to expose the bare metal frame, then used a copper wire to electrically connect the PSU mounting screws and the VGA mounting screws.
2. When the first method did not work, I ordered a case with a clearly exposed metal chassis to conduct a more definitive experiment, and I also used clean, unpainted screws for the internal mounting.
Using a multimeter, I checked whether the voltage between live and neutral at the outlet was normal and whether grounding was properly connected. I did not find any issues. I also measured the resistance between the PSU screws and the VGA screws on the case, and it was within the normal range.
Unfortunately, I was not able to solve the problem, but I found the theory very convincing. What I would like to ask is that since there has not been much activity from you after presenting this theory, I was wondering whether you have any additional information or new thoughts on the matter. Thank you.
