Anti-Static Wrist Strap while repasting CPU & GPU

Hey guys, I'm repasting my laptop's components for the first time (after 2 years of use!) and I'm just checking to make sure I'm doing everything correctly. When I'm doing the repaste, do I have to use an anti-static wristband to be safe from static charges? If so, where should I ground the wristband to? I've already purchased IC Diamond thermal compound to use and I will probably be repasting both CPU and GPU ( a GT650M)

Also, if there's any other precautions I might want to take, what would they be? Thanks everyone!

 

I never had to do that just to do what your doing. What is important is the environment your doing it in are there lots of dust or things that can cause static discharge. I've used my laminate Desk to do most of my work and never had problem redoing thermal paste.

 

I bought one a few years ago but i have yet to use it, I just make sure i discharge myself to a water pipe by keep touching it, and keep off carpet and don't rub your hair or woolly jumpers anything that will cause static to build up, if you are going to do this on a regular basis it`s best to buy a strap they are only a couple of $ from china/hong-kong.

John.

 

I never did that myself.
Usually what I did was: I turned off the laptop, took out the mains cable and the battery and then pressed the power button for 5 to 10 seconds to get rid of any other potential leftover electricity.
After that I just opened the laptop and did the regular maintenance (dust cleaning, repasting, etc.).

 

I will probably work on a carpet surface, so I'm worried about the electricity. If I touch something that's made of metal, e.g. a metal lamp, it would work?

 

Only if the metal lamp has an earth wire and it is connected to the metal part that you are going to touch, it should be for simple safety regulations.

John.

 

The main thing is that you and the laptop should be at the same voltage. The proper thing to do would be to work on an anti-static mat, ground yourself to the mat, and ground the mat to earth. In general if you don't have a fancy setup like that you can ground yourself directly to something metal on your laptop (like the case).

That being said if you talk to engineers who work in consumer electronics, no one actually pays attention to ESD protection. I've manage to shock plenty of circuit boards and nothing bad's happened. Electronics are built pretty tough these days.

The most important point is what Deks brought up, and that is to make sure your laptop is completely discharged. Shocking yourself is much more dangerous than shocking your laptop.

 

No.

Where these ideas came from ... take a multimeter and measure the voltage/amps you're putting out. Compare that to whatever a modern cpu's build to handle; no contest. Think most of the 'reports' are the result of poor reassembly jobs (no die-sink contact) or overenthusiastic OC's, so the cpu fails and they blame it on 'static', rather than their own bungling. Besides, any contact with the pins themselves is redundant; lift them from the sides, same as with memory banks.

If you're unsure about the work; after application, screw down the sink and remove it again. If you've done a proper job there'll be lots of little 'peaks' of compound all over the die's surface and little or nothing going over the edge. Too much over the edge; less paste. Peaks not everywhere; more paste or screw down tighter.

All the static-stuff does make for interesting stories, though:

 

Basically, it does not really need the anti-static band etc, but it's not going to hurt if you use it. If you have it, use it, why not?

 

Follow up question. So I've just completely disassembled my lappy (HP dv6tqe-7000) and reassembled it after repasting. When I plugged in the battery, the computer immediately booted. It showed some screen saying something aroudn a "chios bios error" or something along those lines. I was really worried. However, I booted and it loaded into windows 7 and then my account perfectly fine. However, a lot of websites are giving this error:

"Your connection is not private

Chrome can't establish a private connection to us-mg6.mail.yahoo.com. This is probably because your computer's date is set incorrectly (Your computer has the date set to Jan 1, 2011.) You should refresh this page after you update your computer's date and time."

After changing my computer's time however, it seemed to be fixed.

I also have changed the mapping of the F1-12 keys. HP originally had the other, non-F1-12 functions as the primary button and the F1-12 keys could only be accessed through pressing FN + the button. I switched this in the bios so that it presses the F1-12 by default, and does sleep, volume up/down, etc. only if I press FN + whatever button. My changes seem to now be reversed; the buttons are again the default settings where I need to press FN + the button to use F1-12.

Additionally, a lot of notification icons are missing on my computer. For example, when I click the up arrow to view notifications, a lot of the places are blank, but there's clearly an icon there; it just isn't showing up. I've checked my hard drive and its definitely working, I can access my files. Any possible things that could've gone wrong?

Fortunately though, my temperatures so far seem quite good while running a stress test in XTU.

edit: I've also noticed in the "uninstall a program" menu, none of the programs have a date of installation anymore.

 

It happens when the bios reset. There is nothing to worry about.

 

Is there any way I could get the notification icons back? Everything else seems easily fixed but its kind of annoying to have those disappear, especially the one for steam.

Final question, did I use enough IC Diamond? An image I took is here:

http://imgur.com/6CJ7Jyy

I waited about 10 minutes between application of thermal paste and placing the heatsink on the cpu and gpu. I applied a medium amount of pressure on the center of the die which screwing the heatsink on. Also, is there a period in which thermal compound still needs to spread? I.e. it works best after a few days, or is the effect immediate? I'm asking this because I tried running Black Ops 2 for several minutes to test temps while gaming and both cpu and gpu hit 90 degrees C. (That seems quite high....)

 

I think you might have used a bit too much paste.. Also usually, you screw the heatsink on immediately once you apply the paste to prevent it from drying too much... I think you might need to repaste again.. Also, if you want to lower temps further, get a notebook cooler or raise the botoom of your laptop..

 

For a repaste I plug an anti-static mat & strap into a Grounding Plug (the PCV50064 with 2 x banana connections).

 

awesome thread. But... it was practically possible at one point to damage sectors on floppy discs with a static discharge. It's also of course technically possible to wipe a hdd with a very small voltage discharge in the right circumstances. Much lower voltage than the static discharges, which can be fairly high (1000 V?) when you physically notice them. And at least I believed it could be possible to kill cmos states and perhaps damage sdram for a while with static electricity. It's also difficult to know if certain smaller components running on low voltage, like diodes, might be possible to kill this way. And maybe some resistors somewhere wouldn't like even a 10-15volt charge.

But when I had the opportunity to actually check, it turns out that you basically need to somehow set the discharge on all the contacts on a chip at once (and even then it's not guaranteed you're going to cause any damage. The chips operate on low voltage, but it's a too high effect that actually would damage something over time. For the HDD, you would need to touch the magnetic plate directly. It's not even enough that the reading head is connected to the plate, and that it's in the process of writing, and you touch for example the chassis or even some mechanical part on the inside (even on very old drives - you just don't design for failure like that).

Anyway. What happens is that people put their sweaty fat burger-fingers on the copper contact points, and when they turn the computer on, there's a small short or the contact point corrodes. This isn't spectacular because of the infinitely low effect on any of the rails, but that's typically when the damage, if any, is done. Very thin and inexpensive goop can also contain enough water to be conductive - so if you spill enough and are lucky enough, you could stop something from working properly. But you would basically need to somehow connect the 12v rail to a capacitor or something like that to damage anything. And I don't actually think that's technically possible without a long, and very, very thin stripe of extremely conductive paint that goes all the way up to the power-supply... Of course, if you drench the chip itself in something conductive, things will not go well. But it's not like you can link contact points on the top of the chip to unlock multiplers and things like that any more - I think none of the pins on the top of your average cpu function as jumpers now. So if you connected something by accident, likely things would simply not boot, and nothing would be damaged(i.e., what might theoretically happen is that you would lock something to overdrive and burn the chip). And you could scrape off the conductive material and just start it again.

There's also the old crt monitors - it's absolutely possible to damage the cathode with static discharges. But again, you would have to open the thing up first and actually touch the specific component directly. Which then would perhaps not damage it irreversibly, but leave grease, moisture and salt that then leads current, increase resistance, etc., that then is what damages the components in the end.

If you're paranoid (and your hair is standing on edge after you've imitated Nicolai Tesla in the backyard or something), it's enough to put your finger on the metal chassis on the laptop, and touch the chassis somewhere else with the screwdriver before you start.

But what does help is to wash your hands with soap first. And then avoid touching the contact surfaces on the open contacts (like on the keyboard connector, the ram, etc).