Seven years of yanking RAM sticks before unplugging the tower, and one spark finally told me

Karen Campbell · 2026-10-21T04:45:04.284209+00:00

Last Tuesday I was swapping a bad stick of DDR4 in a customer's Dell tower at my bench in Akron, and I felt a little tingle in my fingers when I pulled it out. The tower was still plugged in, and I had been doing that on almost every bench job for years without thinking twice. The customer's surge protector had a bad ground, so the case was carrying voltage that I never noticed until my hand brushed the frame. Now I unplug and hit the power button to drain it first, and I feel dumb it took a small buzz to teach me. How many of you still leave the cord in when you pop sticks, or am I the only one who got lucky this long?

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Seven years of yanking RAM sticks before unplugging the tower, and one spark finally told me | Computer Technicians - Free To Speak