What It Takes to Break a RAM with ESD (ft. Linus Tech Tips)

hi today i'm preparing to go meet with the great lioness from the lioness tech tips channel you know the guy from the sadliness meme make sure to subscribe to him because i'll be in his video he wants to test something we keep saying ground yourself when you want to touch bare electronics like computer parts because electrostatic discharge or esd from your body can kill them linus wants to know how easy it is to kill some ram memory modules by esd i mean we keep picking them up and they don't die is it all a conspiracy i'm going to borrow an esd gun and shock linus i mean join him for testing we will wear masks due to pandemic of course which means you can't see our mouths and i can't dub any voice over on the video you better not take our videos and make your own voiceovers hi i'm here with linus and we are going to do things hi elektra boo i love your channel you're awesome oh thanks you're awesome no you're awesomer no you're awesomest no you no you now we have done tons of testing with linus already that you can watch over in his channel linus tech tips link in the description there were laughs cries and tons of pain and suffering and damage what we do is we charge our own bodies with the esd gun to 10 000 to 25 000 volts and discharge from our finger to electronics and try to kill them and although we killed some electronics by the gun directly we couldn't quite kill them discharging through linus's fingers i'ma be real super careful that's my promise just like i promised to my sponsors to expressvpn myself what what's going on here this is my sponsor no i have a sponsor too you know my sponsor fine i'll do mine at home i keep using expressvpn because it's a reliable service that helps me get around locked content on youtube netflix and others and on top of everything it provides another layer of security for my internet communications so find out how you can get three months of expressvpn for free by visiting electro bull or clicking the link in the description so we tried our best with linus to kill our rams and our best wasn't good enough so i'm gonna see what it takes for us to kill this ram got a new victim i have a question for you is the heat spreader going to interfere with our ability to short a data line rather than a ground like it just seems to give us less access to the circuit board well with the heat spreader especially heat spreaders are connected to the ground it means that if we zap that it will definitely go to the ground and the board probably wouldn't die which what we want but these are not connected to ground i mean if they are not connected to the ground then they can jump to a random point and in that case it might be a data line and it could be to our advantage even with that on i think all the data and address lines are exposed on the side of the board here so we should be able to zap that i'm thinking i'll connect these heat spreaders to ground and then try to find the data line then and just try to kill it with your finger yeah with my fingers so this time i get to hold the gun yeah exactly the rolls are switched to make it reasonable are you changing the voltage there what don't change the voltage on me okay to make it realistic i'm going to connect the heat spreader to ground so we are assuming that it's sitting on some conductive table because it would be the worst case and then i zap it with my finger to a data or address line that would be the strongest discharge and hopefully we'll kill the ram let's do it so what linus is gonna do is to charge my my body with with what what did you do there go ahead i'm not touching any other ground it's just 12. it's just 12. i'm not good okay go ahead charge me up so now i'm trying to find a data line hopefully couch oh it was painful i told you it was painful i i feel your pain now i think that 20. oh my god no well let's try it now i think i if i'm not wrong maybe i jump to a data line let's see if it's dead or not uh the nearest one to the socket is definitely working so oh it works anyway no luck well i mean i was lucky i get to do this again now vengeance is mine now we switch sides and we think this will make the ram fail no that's not why we're doing it cable management okay you know i try to zap multiple times it's not going to kill my watch is it okay here charge me up oh my god oh yes i mean oh no that's a data line isn't it geez okay again i'm gonna diss up as many out i i think it's just jumping to the ground i'm not getting any data lines oh my god let's try it i mean how strong can this thing be there we are it's working it's working damn it it's great he was like how about for my channel we do a video where i keep trying and we definitely kill it with a finger and i'm like fill your boots i'm gonna kill it one way or another because it's not easy i know it seems like they are actually designed not to die that easily that's surprising it really does seem like i mean based on what percentage of the pins we know our data it seems like we've zapped it enough times that if it's random we should have hit one by now yeah but maybe it is something about the design of this makes it more likely to jump to a ground pin i don't know but i didn't expect it to be that good okay what do we do now well it's not exactly through a finger yeah that's cheating that's not a finger at all that's a much smaller no you will still charge me but it will go through the so we're assuming that you've got a metal freaking spatula that you're working on your computer with i don't know man well i just want to be more accurate so i know that this edge jumps directly to the fine i'll do it with my finger i just want to make sure that we zap the data line for sure this is way more fun i can see i can see why you were having so much fun in my video exactly i hold all the power it's like oh yeah got that big power energy ah okay so i'm gonna continue zapping like there seems to be a bunch of data address lines there charge me up we are gonna kill it one way or another oh where's the ground the ground you had to know that was happening come on sometimes forget oh my god okay where is that date line i was looking at that one ouch my god why do we have to do this well we don't have to but we have the opportunity did you get it could you tell like are you trying to watch exactly which one arcs i'm shaking so much i don't know where i'm it's zapping oh let's try it [Music] you're gonna have to press the button there this is a fun toy oh yeah it's working it's alive why don't these just die this is the same question i was asking myself for the last two hours especially because the first one was so easy to kill like remember one shot i think we directly zapped it with the gun though right maybe they designed the gun stronger so with the margin so that if the gun passes for sure a human body will pass too if we have a curved blunt object even if the very very tip is closest to a data pin it could easily jump out somewhere else if the ground pin is a path of least resistance correct yeah that's why they spread out all the ground pins it makes sense uh maybe maybe if i just connect it directly to a ground pin if you connect it directly to a ground pin so it's assuming that the the thing is already plugged into a computer so it's connected to the ground and then i'm gonna touch it in my hand what do you say is that cheating or do you want to complain about that too uh as long as you're sure it's on a ground pin how can i convince you that i'm doing it properly one thing we can do we can scratch the surface of the ground that would work that way we are sure that we are connected to the ground as we mentioned in the video over on the linus tech tips channel by having the module grounded there it's a it's a stronger shock that goes through it basically is that fair to say yeah exactly yeah if it is not connected to the ground only the little charge on the board is misplaced but connected to the ground the whole ground moves around so okay let's hope it's connected to the ground now i scraped that so that hopefully the ground is connected better only to the ground now now i'm gonna do this i'm gonna leave it at the edge of the table right so i'm gonna grab it like this oh i see just a bunch of fingers just grab everything i'll just go right here right now i'm going ouch that was painful but wait okay okay let's pick it up well pitch it up pick it up not pitch it up listen to what i'm saying okay hey if it dies from falling on the ground that's cheating now we won't know what killed it if it's dead i i expect it it could be the fall ready nope it's like it's alive what else can i do just to ramp up the voltage i mean you can do anything you want i can help you with that what's a good voltage nowadays uh i did 20. sure let's do 20. you know what else we could do i mean we were reading about this before we worked on the first video and as little as 10 volts should theoretically be enough so maybe what we should do is like 1000 volts but like hold it for a long time like really manhandle it like touch every single contact just have your finger just like here yeah let's try that you can put it on a bigger frequency too like 10 hertz sure 1000 volts of course this 1000 volts is pulsed so it's not a continuous dc 1000 volts otherwise i would be fried right now is 1000 volts it's a thousand volts it's two thousand volts right okay yeah okay now i'm gonna just touch the hole oh the voltage is way more not sad i don't feel anything at all yeah it's definitely going is it yeah so in this way static electricity can absolutely be like a silent killer you might not even realize you zapped your hardware yeah it's a thousand volts at 10 hertz and i don't feel anything at all let's see if a thousand volts more continuous discharge killed it the problem is that with my finger being on so many pins the energy might spread and not kill it would be funny if it actually killed it it didn't didn't it's even funnier if it didn't because now we get to turn the voltage back up let's set it to a more tolerable voltage so i can just go like six kilowatt so we are doing six kilo volts but we are doing it at 10 hertz and more continuously okay let's go okay it's still probably going to hurt hopefully not as much ouch it is hurting damn it oh oh oh come on you better kill it ow no i hope it's dead really if you guys were wondering it's even better in person than on youtube and the pain is not hammed up for the camera it hurts exactly as much as he says it hurts it's not it's not dead what do we do now amp it up again uh okay technically that's not amping it up is it holding it up oh i got one yeah you're right one extra point for you why doesn't it die that's very strange i can't think of why you know how much i've done esd testing in my life and how easily i've killed boards before and this thing with no protection is withstanding all that discharge is just annoying just pick the voltage you enjoy the voltage i enjoy 69. six doesn't dwell it doesn't go over 25 sorry all right i i i can't i don't i don't have it in me to send it to a higher one you said it okay you're gonna do 20 okay we are done being reasonable this is 20 kilovolts one hertz are you ready hope it doesn't hurt let's hit it again well let's see if it's dead hopefully it's dead i don't want to try that again for the love of god be dead please have some mercy it's alive i don't think it's gonna die the protection is just too good it's almost like the engineers who design computers like do it for a living we're gonna remove the heat spreader and get to the signals better so you know the heat spreader is actually helping this thing because it's covering most of the signals and chips and if you touch it it is less likely to touch a sensitive area and will most likely will jump to ground but without the heat spreader maybe my finger can glow get close to it like a sensitive signal and kill it the only trick is when you remove the heat spreader you got to make sure you don't pop off a memory chip oh damn it i popped a memory chip see esd killed our ram as you can clearly see all right did you pull it off yeah pulled off most of them actually so far we have been unsuccessful in killing the ram i was expecting it to be much easier but no but don't raise your hopes you always ground yourself to make sure you're not charged on your body because if you touch electronics with it you will very likely well apparently not very likely but you may end up killing it and it will be an expensive death yeah and likely in sort of the word i would not i'm going to knock it apparently from our experience it's not likely to kill it at least i don't know anyway yeah with the setup we have gun connected to my body and my body jumping to the ram it's not killing it but the gun directly jumping to the ram it's much easier to kill the ram now we can see my beautiful assistance here is trying to remove the heat spreader by heating the heat spreader and the glue will come off without raising all the chips with it yay well let's make sure it still works i'm not going to let you cheat this poor memory oh it's a lie manchester what you're doing you're not planning any evil deeds are you i would never plan any evil deeds well let's do 12 now that everything is exposed maybe you are in a better shape you kill it in a more reasonable way there's no way you're going to be able to hit that like that it's not so blunt why no i was zapping this pull-up resistor there just one discharge one and a half actually let's see no i think it's just probably not enough voltage that's not problems oh okay put it on 20k you want 20k i'm sure okay your wish is my command okay ready okay is it 20 now it is what is it jumping to what's going on you have your hand on the table oh i was charging the table ouch okay that was a good shot that was a good shot let's try another one are you not done yet no no i'm gonna kill it no matter what [Music] okay that's it all right i want to get in on this action too no no don't press it before you hit me oh you're right you're right okay i was always doing that yeah it was totally unnecessary okay i don't think it's dead i don't know what i would do if it's not dead now it's dead it's yes all we need to do is to raise the voltage to 20 kilovolts and zap it like eight times yes yeah so that is theoretically possible to do in the real world yes it is so touching say computer parts without esd protection is like playing russian roulette with them it might not be very likely but it can kill them so at least discharge your body touching ground before touching them yes they will kill your ram you saw it here first yes brought to you by uh some random companies no it's expressvpn it's mine it was a very fun day with linus he's such a great guy and has a great team make sure to watch his side of the video and subscribe to his channel for awesome 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Channel: ElectroBOOM

Views: 1,994,913

Keywords: educational, electrical, ElectroBOOM, science, electronics, engineering, entertainment, equipment, measurement, experiment, mehdi, mehdi sadaghdar, arc, mishap, physics, Sadaghdar, test, tools, circuit, funny, learn, shock, spark, discharge, high voltage, electrostatic discharge, esd, RAM, computer parts, esd protection, handling, grounding

Id: 4SjOv_szzVM

Length: 18min 49sec (1129 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 22 2020

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This a a collab I didn't know I needed lol