TBH I’ve never even thought about it since the last time I was poking around inside a “traditional” tower unit switching out a 20GB harddrive for a 40GB one… yeah, at least a decade and a half ago.

Have done numerous other things since then that I *should* have technically grounded myself for - laptop repairs/RAM upgrades, mobile phone repairs etc… but completely slipped my mind and no resulting boom/zap/magic smoke so I guess it’s no big deal. The way I figure it, a lot of devices are made to be portable these days, and they’re bound to pick up static from simply being handled - how many times a day do you take your mobile phone in and out of pockets, tap the screen after walking on carpet etc?

To be fair even back in the day (and we’re going even further back in time here…) how many people would change a game cartridge in a SNES or Mega Drive and not even cast a thought to touching the bare edge connector of the PCB inside while doing so? Let alone blowing on them when they didn’t load, which only later in life did we get told this was a cause of corrosion.

I asked an Electronics Engineer and they said in practice there’s usually no issue.

May have been more commonly an issue of the past.

It’s worth noting that dealing with raw components and smaller ratings will carry more risk than dealing with integrated components or raw components of higher ratings.