August 2011 is the second year anniversary for my PC. The quad core piece of machinery served me amazingly well for the last two years, spanning heavy usage of Windows and Linux. Unfortunately for the last one month, after being in storage for about two months earlier without any usage, it started to act a bit weird. A number of kernel panics in Linux and BSODs in Windows 7 x64 with low level errors are almost usual these days. For my part, I did remove all the components from my cabinet, cleaned it and reinstalled all of them with care. Sadly, that didn’t seem to stop the errors and the PC gets screwed up while doing system intensive tasks like high-end gaming. Memtest86 threw a few errors once while the RAM sticks were on dual channel but couldn’t reproduce the error afterwards.

In the meantime, I also discovered that there are some pretty serious grounding issues with my machine. So I decided to remove all the components again to check which part is behind the fault. In the process, I removed my power supply from the cabinet and put it just outside without any cables coming out of it touching my CPU box. Out of curiosity, I plugged in my power cord to wall socket without switching it on to check if any grounding issues were there. As I expected there were some residual charges on the SMPS metallic body not covered with paint. And then I checked the cabinet with tester, only to be amazed by the fact that it also contained some charges! It sounds quite crazy if one understands the situation – there were no cords or anything that carries current were connected to cabinet and SMPS was completely removed from it. Also the PSU was almost one foot away from my cabinet but still the body of cab was charged! Being inquisitive, I slowly increased the distance between two and the charge intensity started to decrease and finally there was no charge when I put the PSU one meter apart.

Too much for the conduction of electrical charge part of Physics, I never thought it would happen in such a way. How can charges transmit between two places when there are not direct connections between them and they are pretty much surrounded by insulators like air and bed-sheet?! I may have an explanation for the situation as there might be a electromagnetic field generated by my PSU which caused a small current in the case, acting as a inductor. That also explains why the the current faded while PSU was moved away. I am doubtful about it though, but couldn’t find any other cause that makes sense. I would love to hear from my readers if they have something to share.