MindBender
Explorer
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2015
- Messages
- 67
Gentlemen,
I am currently building a new FreeNAS based storage server and I decided not to be stingy with memory, so I ordered 2 Samsung DDR4 RDIMMs of 32GiB each, exactly the type that was tested, acoording to mainboard manual. I was/am still hesitating if I should max the board out with 4 of them, but at round 250 Euro each, RAM has a history of being a bad investment.
Anyway, when I received the parcel by mail, it was well coushioned on the inside with the usual air bags. But much to my surprise, the two RDIMMs were just packaged in plastic bags: The two of them were together, loose in a pink translucent plastic ziplock bag, and this pink bag was in a regular plastic bag. The bags even had inprints in them with the shape of the DIMMs.
Should I be worried?
I think I should be, because the well-known pink translucent plastic is ESD safe, but it is NOT an ESD shield. It doesn't cause charge build-up itself, but it doesn't protect against discharges from other sources, such as outer packaging, handling without proper wrist strap, etc. Only the well known silver coloured metal coated plastic bags offer real protection, and so do the black plastic shell wrappings used by major memory brands, albeit to a lesser degree. Now I haven't ordered computer parts for a long time, but I do order semiconductor components every week at Element14 and those are without exception always packaged in proper shielding, even if it's just a two dollar integrated circuit.
Have I become too anal about this?
I'm trying to get everything right with this NAS, because it will contain everything I have. But the nature of ESD damage is that semiconductors don't immediately fail. They just get unreliable, after some time. And there's no way to test that (aside from etching them open and inspect them under a scanning electron microscope).
How do you guys deal with that?
I'm in embedded software engineering, and usually I'm not too careful when it comes to ESD. Components turn out to be very robust, even when receiving direct discharges. But this is high-tech top-of-the-line memory we're talking about, so it may not be as robust. And I do have a conducting floor in my home offic, grounded ESD safe work mats and wrist straps. So I use that, because it's there, but if nobody in the supply chain before me cared about ESD, I feel being a bit of a fool for doing so.
Of course the web shop says they did well with their pink plastic bag...
I am currently building a new FreeNAS based storage server and I decided not to be stingy with memory, so I ordered 2 Samsung DDR4 RDIMMs of 32GiB each, exactly the type that was tested, acoording to mainboard manual. I was/am still hesitating if I should max the board out with 4 of them, but at round 250 Euro each, RAM has a history of being a bad investment.
Anyway, when I received the parcel by mail, it was well coushioned on the inside with the usual air bags. But much to my surprise, the two RDIMMs were just packaged in plastic bags: The two of them were together, loose in a pink translucent plastic ziplock bag, and this pink bag was in a regular plastic bag. The bags even had inprints in them with the shape of the DIMMs.
Should I be worried?
I think I should be, because the well-known pink translucent plastic is ESD safe, but it is NOT an ESD shield. It doesn't cause charge build-up itself, but it doesn't protect against discharges from other sources, such as outer packaging, handling without proper wrist strap, etc. Only the well known silver coloured metal coated plastic bags offer real protection, and so do the black plastic shell wrappings used by major memory brands, albeit to a lesser degree. Now I haven't ordered computer parts for a long time, but I do order semiconductor components every week at Element14 and those are without exception always packaged in proper shielding, even if it's just a two dollar integrated circuit.
Have I become too anal about this?
I'm trying to get everything right with this NAS, because it will contain everything I have. But the nature of ESD damage is that semiconductors don't immediately fail. They just get unreliable, after some time. And there's no way to test that (aside from etching them open and inspect them under a scanning electron microscope).
How do you guys deal with that?
I'm in embedded software engineering, and usually I'm not too careful when it comes to ESD. Components turn out to be very robust, even when receiving direct discharges. But this is high-tech top-of-the-line memory we're talking about, so it may not be as robust. And I do have a conducting floor in my home offic, grounded ESD safe work mats and wrist straps. So I use that, because it's there, but if nobody in the supply chain before me cared about ESD, I feel being a bit of a fool for doing so.
Of course the web shop says they did well with their pink plastic bag...
