BeginnerGuy wrote:[...]
Modern hardware is quite esd resistant.
Er no, vulnerability to ESD depends mainly on how closely packed the components are, the smaller the more vulnerable, as it's all about the breakdown voltage for arcing, which increases with distance. Additionally, the delta between operating voltage and static spikes plays a part, although as static discharges are generally hundreds or even thousands of volts, the difference between a 5V part and a 1.2V part is negligible.
The reason old hardware seems more vulnerable is that the damage is cumulative. Decades of unsafe handling will lead to more failures than a short period, even if the new stuff is fundamentally more easily damaged.
As for actually seeing ESD damage in action... the problem is that anything short of instantaneously catastrophic ESD just weakens further whatever point is electrically the weakest in a component. Something that might otherwise fail in decades is set up to fail in years instead. So chances are that that RAM chip that suddenly dies on a video card was hit by ESD, just not necessarily recently. I have seen hundreds of cases that can't be explained other than by ESD, but I can't establish an exact cause-effect relationship to any one incident of mishandling.
However the SEM micrographs of what the damage looks like are enough to convince me to do my best to be careful:
In practice I'd say it's about the same as STDs - if you are sexually very active with multiple partners and don't take precautions, odds are sooner or later you end up with something undesirable. Does that mean that any given intercourse is very likely to infect you? Nope. But it makes sense to take precautions all the time regardless.
Really doing the whole official ESD-safe stuff is excessive, but you can reduce risk massively with a few simple precautions:
- always wear non-static (cotton/linen) clothes when messing with computers. Jeans & t-shirt are fine.
- work on a surface that is very, very weakly conductive, such as an unopened newspaper. It won't short-circuit anything, but will bleed away static charges.
- touch non-sensitive parts of systems or components before handling (hand on metal case), so as to equalize charges.
That won't be 100% safe, but beats the hell out of messing around with components on a synthetic carpet wearing a woolly jumper 😉