Shocking The Computer's Case

[Nakula]

I post to ask a question. I have, sadly, a problem with computer cases since 2000. First, it was a day in 2000 when I was going from the hardware shop to my house with my just purchased AMD k6-2 333 in its cardboard box with its two polystyrene holders. For negligence, it fell from my hands to the ground. The case was damaged but that computer lasted for five and a half years, until August 2005.

In the interim, in a 3 and ½ years journey to India, it happened again, In January 2004 I bought an old, second hand Pentium I, 200 mhz. After an upgrade of some kind, I was returning to my place and when I was about to open the door, the computer fell to the ground, this time without case or polystyrene holders to dissipate to shock. Again the computer’s case was damaged, letting it unable to close properly as it happened to me with the AMD k6-2 in 2000. Anyway, this Pentium also worked without problems for the following 4 months until I returned to my homeland.

Now, 2 weeks before, I have purchased a new computer. It is a first hand Sempron 1.6 GHz. The question is the following:

Yesterday, in a moment of negligence I have bumped the computer’s case with an empty wood drawer I was carrying by the room. The wooden drawer was empty and it was very light. The shock wasn’t severe, but anyway it happened. The computer didn’t hanged nor the hdds damaged. Anyway, I felt very much vexed by the occurrence. I have experience with computers falling to the ground and with bumping the computer and almost damaging the hard disks. In January of 2005 I have knocked the computer’s table and I almost provoked a head crash of my hdd. I know how it is when, after the shock, the hdd begun to make a strange ticking, is because you damaged (or almost damaged) the hdd provoking a head crash. But it didn’t occurred, that hdd made a single ticking noise on boot up for some time, like 3 or 4 months, but the error seemed to repair itself after these 4 months I am telling.

I write this because I felt very much downtrodden yesterday after bumping the case with the wooden drawer, but the only thing I could find on the net about bumping the computer and damaging it was about shocking the computer and causing a head crash.

This hasn’t occurred, my computer and its two hard drives are working 100% okay now, the questions are:

How much shock a computer’s case can sustain without its electronic components being damaged?

Is it possible to damage the CPU or the mobo shocking the computer’s case as I did yesterday with the wooden drawer?

The pc seems to be working properly, anyway, after a shock like yesterday’s, is it possible that the life expectancy of the computer is reduced by an occurrence like this one?

And last, but not least:

If there are some coolies working in the house next door, and if they are generating a lot of vibrations hammering with a hammer, is it possible that the vibrations damage some component of a computer situated barely 2 and ½ meters from the source of vibrations?

Well those are my questions; I hope you can throw some light onto them.
Thanking you very much in advanced,

Nakula Kedar Valsan.

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Motherboard:
CPU Type Unknown, 1600 MHz
Motherboard Name Unknown
Motherboard Chipset VIA K8M800, AMD Hammer
System Memory 192 MB (PC3200 DDR SDRAM)
BIOS Type AMI (09/09/05)
Communication Port Puerto de comunicaciones (COM1)
Communication Port Puerto de impresora ECP (LPT1)

Display:
Video Adapter VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP (64 MB)
3D Accelerator VIA/S3 UniChrome II
Monitor Monitor Plug and Play [NoDB] (HXAY638399)

Multimedia:
Audio Adapter VIA AC'97 Enhanced Audio Controller

Storage:
IDE Controller Controladora estándar PCI IDE de doble canal
IDE Controller Controladora IDE principal de bus VIA
SCSI/RAID Controller MagicISO SCSI Host Controller
Floppy Drive Unidad de disquete
Disk Drive WDC WD400BB-23JHC0 (37 GB, IDE)
Disk Drive SAMSUNG SP0802N (80 GB, 7200 RPM, Ultra-ATA/133)
Optical Drive MagicISO Virtual DVD-ROM0000
Optical Drive SONY DVD RW DW-G120A
SMART Hard Disks Status OK

Partitions:
C: (FAT32) 38152 MB (18981 MB free)
D: (FAT32) 76329 MB (3894 MB free)

Input:
Keyboard Teclado estándar de 101/102 teclas o Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse Mouse PS/2 de Microsoft

Network:
Network Adapter SpeedTouch(tm) USB ADSL RFC1483
Network Adapter WAN (PPP/SLIP) Interface

Peripherals:
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB1 Controller VIA VT83C572 PCI-USB Controller
USB2 Controller VIA USB 2.0 Enhanced Host Controller
USB Device SpeedTouch 330 ADSL Modem

 

[Marcus_X]

Hello Nakula, I noticed this is your 1st post, welcome to HWF's :D

Sorry to hear you seem to have a problem with computer cases...but on to the question,

Some (I don't know if all pc cases or which specific brand, but the better brands) have some sort form of protection which most of the time consists of a type of damper between the case and it's installed components to prevent any possible damage to them. My pc's case for instance holds the HDD's in a removable aluminium frame and has rubber dampers between the frame and the HDD's itself.

It seems disc drives and HDD's are the most suscepticle part to suffer from shock, especially when they are operating;

Bumping, dropping or shocking a drive may not cause visible damage to the outer case; however, components inside the drive may be damaged due to the shock; the four components that are most affected by shock are;

- The drives spindle motor
- Disc read heads
- Head arms
- Discs themselves

Damage to or failure of any of these components may result in data loss and reduced reliability.

As an example the above was taken from storage device manufacturer Seagate; They've developed a protection system for certain types of their disc drives models called G-Force to prevent shocking doing damage to them.

Severe shocking might actually damage the mobo I think, but the CPU less likely since its held secure in a socket. But parts might break off the mobo, I can imagine mass produced desktop pc's having lower quality mobo's equipped that are more likely to suffer from this.

The vibrations from people next door might (Coolies?) be strong enough to affect your pc, maybe your case has rubber legs to absorb shocking? Or you could buy some from a pc hardware store.

I cannot tell you what force exactly would be needed to really see components getting damage though....

This might be a case (not liek a computer case case) for programs like Mythbusters or Brainiac (Brittish) I might be taking this a bit far with what I just said but you could give it a try right?

I hope this helped a little,

Greetings,

Marcus