I'm going to be doing some PSU modding in the near future, and I need to discharge the caps as to not create a danger to myself. I was thinging of hooking a wire upto the ground of a wall socket, and touching it to one of the capacitor leads. Would this work? Assuming I'm not a complete moron and don't do it in the rain or something, are there any dangers that I should be aware of? Thanks in advance!
yaeh, if you connect the 2 pins together ith a long handled PLASTIC HANDLED screwdriver they will dischrage.
A high wattage resistor would be a better choice to dis-charge the caps. A screwdriver works (And I have done it before ) But you will create huge sparks and may destroy the solder joints.
And damage the capacitor internally. As Zap says, use a resistor with one end clipped to the metal case, a 1k will flatten them in a second or so. Any decent psu already has resistors across the big input caps, so by the time you've got the lid off they're already empty. Just make sure you unplug at the wall, ATX supplies are still hot after just a normal shut-down.
Shorting the electrolytic caps can cream cracker them so i would either follow cpemma's advice or do what i have done before and it seems to work. Instead of powering off the PC at the power switch on your case, you can just restart your system and before it hits POST (That's Power On Self Test - Not Lamp Post ) , flick it off at the wall. This drains all the stored electron thingy me-jiggies i'm sure. Please correct me if i'm wrong.
turn off, unplug, turn back on, the machine will whirr for a sec or two and then stop, chances are theye are drained.
It seems that chill-tek and cpemma's suggestions would be the easiest (and not involve me finding a high wattage resistor ) so I think I'll go that route. Thanks for all the info guys!
wouldn't just attatching a little lightbulb to it work? I like the idea of making someone lick them though...
