Running gaming PC w/o grounded outlet

[TechBoyJK]

A friend of mine lives in an old house, and his outlets are 2 prong, non-grounded.

About a month ago, he started getting random reboots that kept happening until the PC eventually failed. When he'd bring the PC to my house (with grounded outlets) the PC would struggle at first, but then would eventually start working normally. Like, upon first boot after bringing it over, it'd fail memtest in 10 minutes. Leave it sit for a while, then it runs memtest fine for a few hours. Rinse Repeat, it ran memtest for 10+ hours just fine.

He takes it back home. It runs fine for a while, then starts rebooting and blue screening again. Brings it back over, it clears up after a while. However, this time around it hard locks and the video card shits the bed.

We've replaced the PS (original failed tests). Still has issues rebooting. Replaced vid card, still has issues. Replaced hdd with SSD (samsung). Still has issues.

However, the thing runs fine at my house. Only at his house does he have problems. The last time it was over at my house, it ran Prime95 in most stressful mode for 4 hours straight. No problems.

My only guess is that his ungrounded outlets are causing static electricity to build up in his PC until it freaks out and shuts off. As soon as it's plugged into my outlets, it discharges and returns to normal.

Thoughts?

 

[piasabird]

So how do you know it isn't brown outs brought to you by the power company? If the house is older when the Refrigerator kicks in, or the Heater fan, or the Air Conditioner comes on, it could be stressing out the circuit.

Might try a UPS?

What makes you think the outlets or the conduit is not grounded. He could ground the circuit he is using. Depends how the house is set up. If it is an old house probably some pipe goes into the ground like a water supply pipe. Probably has copper pipes. Or take grounding rod and put it in the ground like a stake. Then connect the grounded rod to a new 3 prong socket. Short of doing something like this you could just rewire the sockets.

One house I lived in had only 2 30 amp circuits.

 

[sm625]

You need to ground the psu. If its not grounded through the psu then it will find a ground via the ethernet cable, the monitor, or through you. As long as it has no ground it will run fine. But it will eventually find ground somehow, and thats probably what kills it. So it needs to be grounded at the PSU.

Think about it like this: you have a system with several precision voltages, +12V, +5V, +3.3V, +2.5V, etc. All of these must be referenced to ground. If they are not, then they float. Eventually you end up with a 12V supply that is actually 36V or 50V or even 100V, referenced to a floating ground that is 12V below it, but could be dozens of volts above actual earth ground. When the voltage gets high enough with respect to the nearest earth ground, it will arc to bleed off that voltage differential. When that happens, your supplies lose regulation and/or you get catastrophic power supply spikes.

 

[HilbertSpace]

Just because there are two prongs doesn't mean it isn't grounded. It's grounded, wouldn't work otherwise (or very briefly . I think the problem lies elsewhere. (http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/everyday-tech/question110.htm)

 

[TechBoyJK]

I should say 'properly' grounded.