I recently purchased a cisco 48 port poe switch and a 4 port 10gb fiber network card for it, separate ebay purchases, and neither had anti static bags. They were both wrapped in bubble wrap but the switch came within Styrofoam packing peanuts. The styrofoam packing peanuts always have a great deal of static buildup.
What are your thoughts on this? Am I just being paranoid about potential static discharge with items being wrapped in bubble wrap only and no anti static bag?
I look forward to everyone else’s thoughts. Hoping I’m just being paranoid and that it’s perfectly fine.
Note: the items booted up fine.
Thanks
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I used to be concerned, and then I saw this video which made it apparent it’s extremely unlikely and difficult for ESD to kill modern electronics
Almost everything I have purchased is in anti static material (pink bubble wrap, pink bags, or grey bags). Anything I send out also is. I have gotten one card loose in a box, no wrap at all, and it worked fine. It’s more of a rare occurrence, but it’s certainly not a guarantee it’ll get damaged. Just test them out and make sure everything works and don’t worry about it further. Anything in a case (switch, server, etc) isn’t an issue, it’s just boards with exposed PCBs.
Honestly, i don’t think it’s really an issue. I’ve also had stuff shipped like that. Not just network devices, but servers, ssds, hdds, memory, etc. Never had anything doa with that kind of packing. I did get 5 hdds once in antistatic bags with no other packaging in the box. 2 doa, 2 more died eventually.
The one time I didn’t package a box of drives myself, I put them in antistatic with whatever bubble wrap I had. I told UPS exactly how I wanted it packed, they did the bare minimum then threw it into a way too big box with no filler.
That’s the last time I allowed UPS to package anything for me. Thankfully they still worked and lived a hopefully long life, but I was PISSED.
I can’t say I’ve ever had second hand electronic devices (devices like a switch…not components like RAM, HDDs, GPU) shipped wrapped in anti-static bags. Completely unnecessary imo. The card, as it’s a component, may have been nice to have in a bag, but if it was cheap-ish, I wouldn’t really care.
Anecdotally, I’ve been working with electronics for decades, never using any of those grounding bracelets, or anti static mats. And never once had a problem. Could static cause damage…yeah, probably, but there is a far far greater risk of physical damage than from static.
A while back a bought a UNVR-PRO second hand and the idiot seller shipped it in a 1U Unifi network switch box with a few scraps of cardboard but plenty of room to bounce around. I was vocal about how terrible the packaging was, but ultimately ended up keeping it as somehow there were no signs of damage. Fast forward almost a year and the device bricked up. Was investigating the issue by asking questions on the Ubiquiti Discord and a UI employee reached out and told me to RMA it. Told me to hang onto it until they had one to ship out. Had to wait about a month and they sent me a new one, but never asked for the old one back. Sat on the broken one for a few months. Opened it up but there wasn’t anything obviously broken, took some photos, and put it on ebay for parts. Couldn’t believe how fast it sold. So while my initial packaging experience was terrible it worked out to me owing a UNVR-PRO for a net investment of about $150. Can’t complain too much.
LTT did a great video with Electroboom where they tried to deliberately destroy electronics with static and they failed.
This matches my own anecdotal experiences. I think it’s an over-hyped issue.
Unrelated to the question, but what models were the switch and network card? I looked a long time for an affordable secondhand Cisco switch with more than 2 SFP+ slots before I bought my jet engine pretending to be a ProCurve 6600, and I’d like to know which one I missed.
Cisco WS-C3850-12X48U-S and the C3850-NM-4-10G card
Super stoked to set this thing up. Also puchased a second psu for it for 21 bucks on ebay
12 ports are 10gb ethernet and the rest are 1gb. All are UPOE
Ooh, that’s a nice switch. Still going for a bit more than the ProCurve, though, especially with the network module, so I guess I’ll try to be happy with what I’ve got.
Thanks!