RAM not shipped in ESD bag/foam/etc.?

I just bough some G SKILL RAM and it came in a clear plastic container. I’ve never seen a device with exposed PCB get shipped like this. Thankfully it worked out of the box and I overclocked it to make sure nothing was damaged. Why would they ship it like this? I currently work as an Electronics Technician working on medical devices and the occasional desktop doing component level troubleshooting/repairs. From what I have learned and experienced this is one of the worst ways to safely ship and store an exposed PCB. I’m really wondering if anybody has any good insight on why they do this?

Chances are whatever robot was packing it was grounded, and the odds of you accumulating enough charge to do something to the chips are low (since you’re constantly touching all sorts of grounded things), and you have warranty anyway, so it’s not like they have any incentive to care.

True, it just doesn’t make sense to me to risk. At least from my personal experience, but I don’t know what overhead using ESD bags would add versus the amount of warranty claims they would have to deal with.

Well… as long as it works the first time you’re probably perfectly fine. If the packaging is more expensive than the amount that gets fried while shipping it’s fine.

A lot of RAM actually comes with lifetime warranty afaik, because until the time comes it break you probably bought ddr5. And then 32gb is entry level standard because everything is either in a browser box, a docker box or a virtual box, or some combination of all of them. Lul

All of the new memory I have bought in the last 10 years has been packaged in plastic containers. This includes OCZ, Corsair, PNY, Crucial, and G.Skill.

The last DOA stick of memory I revieved was OCZ, and that has been about 10 years ago.

EDIT:clarity

ESD packaging doesn’t add much IMHO, for example imagine if you take that ram out of the bag, have a look at it after walking on carpets, put it on a desk, go do something else for 2-5 minutes come back walking over carpet, move it out of the way to make room to open your computer, don’t turn off the power to the motherboard fully or turn it off but with capacitors still holding most of their charge, start slotting in ram.

Also, with ESD in particular, minitiarization and modularization of chips now means that the manufacturers can afford to design stuff with a little bit of resilience to ESD. i.e. it’s no longer the early days of CMOS eeproms anymore, where you touch a leg of a chip and the chip is dead.

I have a feeling those bags are mostly just used as mechanical isolators these days when folks want to stack 20-50 HDDs right next to each other without padding in between for shipping. Or when you need some kind of bag to make your motherboard pins and prongs not catch on the other material in the box, and you have a choice between a fancy baggie with print or a space looking ESD bag that’s cheaper and nobody will ask questions about and you pick ESD bag.

my ram never came in ESD packaging

1 Like

@anon30801626 My last 5 sets have come in ESD bags. But I ordered mostly really high end sticks for my gaming setup or high end ECC RAM for my server. At my work all electronic components are required to be secured in an ESD bag while we are doing repairs and maintenance.

@risk I understand your point about obviously building a static charge. I do know my motherboard claims EDS resistance of up to 15,000V on the board. However the human body can build up more, though that is more of an issue of properly handling the PCB and grounding yourself prior to working on the PC. From what I have been taught at work and college is that there always a chance of ESD build up(which can vary on the situation) based on the materials it’s being shipped in and you can end up with a damaged components.

How often do you get zapped? Where do you live? I wonder if maybe I live in a climate where that’s unlikely.

Here in Dublin, Ireland, I used to get zapped at the office regularly until a couple of years back, basically the HVAC was malfunctioning in the whole building at the beginning of every heating season, and we ended up replacing the entire set of units and installing environmental sensors and individual controls for every 5 or so desks worth of area, and we haven’t had issues last couple of years.

Back when we did, I used to be scared to approach my aluminium MacBook pro, the laptop was always fine, but my fingertips used to hurt. It was never an issue for me at home for the last 10years I lived here. Probably because my humidity is always around 50 at home (I keep it there because of sinuses).

Not to often at my home. I live Florida so the humidity here is really high and really high enough to more than likely cause corrosion in a non climate controlled area than ESD. I do know at my work we can’t “afford” to have a dedicated A/C and environmental sensors for my work area. I have noticed that I can build static charge quite easily there at least compared to my home. Luckily my work has a very good ESD system in place(i.e. ESD bags, using enterprise based grounding strap systems, etc.)

1 Like

ESD is not a big issue with computers. There actually pretty hardy. Manufactures know how us crazy humans will treat tech and build it to be better than us.

Usually yes. I guess really comes down to manufacturer and the environment(consumer, professional, medical, etc). I do see on my motherboard where it is rated for 15,000V of ESD, but the human body can easily build up to 30,000V if not more in the right situation. So like you are saying not necessarily a big issue, however in my opinion, one I would recommend still taking basic cautions with.

2 Likes