Silverstone case just gave me mains electric shock!

Dangerous_Dave

Dangerous_Dave

Dangerous_Dave

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I'm frankly shocked (pun intended) that my Silverstone SG07 has completely unsheathed live mains contacts just sticking out inside it! I have just found out the hard way that this is the case (pun intended), as it's just given me an enormous electric shock in my right hand.

For anyone who might be tempted to comment "you shouldn't go rooting around in a case with the power on", first of all I would say that the PC wasn't on, and the switch on the PSU was in the off position. This was the case itself trying to assassinate me before it even fed the power to the PSU. And besides, this isn't like rooting around inside a hairdryer with the power on: aftermarket PC cases are made for people to use, inside and out. The insides should be completely user safe (no razor blade edges, no finger crushing clamping devices and ESPECIALLY no live electrical terminals just sticking out). TBH Silverstone have gone down in my estimation big time now: build quality is one thing but safety should come before all else.
 
At the back, on the inside of the module that the external power lead plugs into. It's not even particularly space critical there - they could easily have added another half inch on to the inside of that module to fully enclose the connection. Inexcusable design really.
 
Odd you got a shock with the power off at the switch. Must have been a capacitor discharging or something.

I'd drop silverstone an e-mail about it. Companies usually appreciate feedback like this IME.
 
Sounds very strange to me, the PSU should not be able to make a contact between the live mains side and the case at all, tho theoretically the DC side could do and would potentially give a nasty shock as its quite capable of fairly hefty current.

If the PSU switch was in the off position and you still got a shock something is very wrong with that PSU and I would suggest it was maliciously wrong rather than a fault.
 
I should explain: the design of the case is such that the PSU sits at the front and there is a cable running inside the case from the PSU to a further plug near the back, which the external lead was plugged into. The PSU switch was off, but the mains switch at the wall was on. I got my shock from the inside of the module that receives the external cable, which (it turns out) has unsheathed wires carrying live current sticking out of it.
 
Thats baaad, mkay. /Mr Mackey

I have heard people complain about that on the FT03 as well. Something is not very good at Silverstone QA which is pretty bad on such a dangerous part.

I would email them you may get free stuff ;)

Also everyone should check their case. I know I will be checking this as soon as my case arrives.
 
It looks like that's how it's designed to be. Thing is, most PC tinkerers are used to the idea that it's ok to work in the case if the PC is off and the PSU switch is set to the off position. If you do that in this case you could potentially end up dead. I'm just glad it wasn't my left hand (path to ground would then have been through left side of torso).
 
Is it possible you could post a picture of the dangerous wires / area. I'm not so interested in the particular case, however as someone who often opens up and works in PCs I'm very interested to see what's happened, if anything just to avoid similar in the future.
 
This sounds rather dodgy to say the least, so what you are saying is that you took a 230v AC mains shock from it, not a dc shock from the psu it's self. This sounded odd to me so I took a quick look at silverstone's website and while their pictures of the internals weren't great it did show how this could have happened. It seems there is a C14 kettle lead connector on the back of the case, with some cable extending the power lead inside the case to the psu at the front and coupling to that via an angled plug.

So clearly the fault is in that extension somewhere, probably on the C14 receiver end at the back of the case would be my bet, as the rest of it is just a cable with another plug and is highly unlikely to be at fault ...unless the insulation has been cut somewhere.

You can fix it yourself easily enough (do disconnect it completely at both the wall and psu end though :p ) ...however this should never have happened in the first place and you should indeed have some stern words with Silverstone about this. Imagine if you had a heart problem, a mains shock could have killed you then.
 
It could have been from the PSU discharging a capacitor. The Jonny Guru review of the case did cite the PSU having no insulation on the bottom from the case as potentially quite dangerous so it could have been from that. I would check the PSU as well as contacting SS.
 
Dangerous_Dave said:
Picture as promised:

deathcase.jpg

It's about the last few milimetres of the where the wires go into that plug which are unsheathed. Unfortunately these are the few milimetres that stick out the most. But as you can see there's nothing at all behind it so it would have been a simple matter to enclose the whole connection in plastic.
Click to expand...

lol love the pic name.

Yeah that looks fairly dodgy, poor show Silverstone. I think I will be doing my own job on this before I build mine up.
 
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