Author: James Courtier-Dutton Date: To: Hampshire LUG Discussion List Subject: Re: [Hampshire] [OT] Surge protectors / UPS
On 2 February 2011 20:57, Rob Malpass <linux@???> wrote: > Hi all
>
>
>
> Need a bit of advice re surge protectors. Does anyone know of a truly good
> one?
>
>
>
> What I've seen in local high st shops are power bricks which have 2 lights -
> one for on/off and the surge protector located usually right next door to
> it. 2 problems:
>
> 1) unless I look under the desk - I don't see if the surge protection light
> is off
>
> 2) if located right next to the power - it's quite usual (with my eyes) for
> it not to be at all clear whether any of the on-off LED's light is in fact
> illuminating the casing for the surge protected light and "fooling" me into
> thinking everything's well.
>
>
>
> Most of these are (it's been 20+ years since my electronics GCSE!) simple
> smoothing capacitors which, once burnt out by a surge are the same as any
> other power brick i.e. one surge and it's useless.
>
>
>
> So this got me thinking.... UPS devices do the opposite - they give you a
> bit of life after a power outage and I have heard some act as surge
> protectors too - but are there any out there that meet these requirements?
>
>
I have used surge protectors in the past. The Surge protection
components should be able to survive more than one surge.
But, in practice, even with 3 in series, I have still had cases of my
PSU getting destroyed by a surge.
I think the only real protection is a UPS.
This is not scientific though. For all I know, the surge protectors
might have helped. The problem is you never really know when surges
happen so you don't know if you were protected from them or not.
At least UPS monitor surges and some of them log each event too.
