Bitcoin Forum

 So I live in Grandmas old house. I've been mining here for a while and I use an outlet in the pantry for one of my rigs because it is on another circuit. I decided to replace my Lepa 1700w Platinummax with two Corsair 1000w gold PSU. I need the 1700w for my D3.

I wired everything up, using add2psu to run dual psu. I went to plug the USB mouse and keyboard and got a shock. Pretty strong one at that. So I troubleshot the whole thing and discovered when I plug only the PSU not attached to anything it would give me a shock. I removed the electrical splitter from the outlet and it was better, only got a slight bite touching the front grill in one spot. So I figured the ground on the splitter was bad. Reran everything and went to start it and zap, shocked again. I tested the outlet, there is no voltage from hot to ground. So it looks like it was installed without ground or the ground is broken somewhere.

My question is, why should I be getting a shock if there is no ground? Until a few decades ago, there were no ground wires. Is there a short in the PSU?

I'm moving next week so I won't have a problem with old wiring anymore, but should I be concerned about the brand new PSU?

Sounds like improper ground wiring.
make sure you are using grounded outlet and both psu's share same ground, better yet, you can connect them with wire to equalize potential difference.

p.s. ground and neutral - are not the same.

I understand that there's definitely no ground. But shouldn't the current return through neutral even if there is no ground?

Yes, it should return via neutral as that is what it is designed to do. One other possibility, did you check for voltage between neutral and ground in case the outlet was wired incorrectly (i.e. the neutral is actually hot and hit is neutral)?

Some of those older outlets (often found in older homes) were not even keyed with the neutral being wider than the hot, and I have seen some even with the keying where they were wired incorrectly.

I found an outlet in the garage on the same circuit that has an active ground. Ran my heavy duty extension cord over there and problem solved. As long as its not a PSU. The house is getting rewired soon so not too concerned about it lol. Just didn't want to have to RMA a PSU from another country.

Ahh, good for you then. My money would probably be on a faulty outlet then, so yeah good thing the house is scheduled to be rewired. You should maybe mark the suspect outlet somehow too so someone doesn't come along and use it and receive a worse shock or it causes a fire.

Thanks for the help Za1n, will do. The whole house was wired in the early 70s. We got it when Grandma passed. All of the living area outlets are ungrounded, but Grandpa seemed to have put a few grounded in on the entry level to run appliances. That one ran the chest freezer, I'll make sure it's clearly marked.

If it is that old house, it might be a good idea to re-wire the house and install a new distr. box with new breakers and residual current devices.

Yeah it's got fuses. It was supposed to be done a year ago but the electrician bailed. Not staying anyways, it's getting sold soon enough.

I'm not sure where you live, but most prospective buyers of that house will get it inspected and the electrical could be a stumbling block.  They may ask you to fix it, or reduce the price to compensate.

Old houses like that are likely to be using very thin wires which can't handle constant loads of like 2-3kW without getting really hot or even causing a fire - regardless of the breaker used.

I would recommend doing what I said in the previous post before selling the house.

It will be renovated before being sold, that's already in the plan. Since my wife's parents have a stake in the house, we're waiting on an electrician that they approve of.

Ok, sounds good  :)