Surge Suppressors & UPS

[Radd]

This came up briefly in another thread and had me concerned and thinking.
I've been researching it but its confusing as to what I should use.

What do you use?
What do you recommend?

 

[Pot]

Surge Suppressors cut the peaks on electrical current not allowing it to pass through the equippment, they have a fuse that "blows up" when such event happens, and therefore protects your equippment from electric "blasts". I have 2 of them made by BELKIN.

UPS can act like the above but they store power so you can continue your work when electric power fails, it´s kind of a battery and their storage capacity depends upon the price u pay for one.

 

[egan.]

Get high quality surge protector(s) for your electronic gear w/ at least a 15a breaker...preferably one w/ an rf filter of some kind. If you really want to get serious get a voltage regulator w/ enough amperage to support your whole operation. ETA, Furman, and monster are probably the most common brands.
Run your computer gear and HD's off of a UPS that will also float the voltage in the case of voltage sags etc. You don't need a huge battery life, just enough to save and shutdown.

 

[Metaltastic]

Speaking of which, if you already have a power conditioner, and want to get a UPS, should you plug the power conditioner in it, so that you can still get the benefits of both surge/line filtering as well as UPS?

 

[Radd]

Thanks for the replies.

I only have a few rack gear, one of them being the basic Furman power conditioner Merit Series M-8 model. I do have a pair of active monitors, a TFT monitor (with plans to get another), a stereo receiver, a dvd player and a large screen projection TV that I'd like to protect along with my G5 (I'm still unsure of how many watts or amps that is) and an external HD that I also plan on getting.

Egan - The ETA PD racks look pretty good. I was also looking at the Zero Surge surge protectors but they don't appear to have RF filters. Are you saying that I should get both a surge protector AND a UPS and just use the UPS for the G5 And EHD and use the SP for everything else? Those ETA PDs claim to have a "soft" shutdown as apposed to a "hard" shut down. Not quite sure what that means though. With a SP, if there is a sudden shut down, I know I'll lose any data not saved but how bad could it be for the G5 and EHD? I mean the SP will stop the surge from reaching them but yet they still will be shut down improperly. I can't imagine that that would be a huge deal.

I'm wondering if I should get 2 of those ETA PDs and leave it at that...
I'm weary about UPSs after reading this interesting thread from AVS:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?postid=2421176#post2421176

Metaltastic - Halfway down page 10 and 3/4 down page 7. Probably not a good idea to do that.

 

[Metaltastic]

Metaltastic - Halfway down page 10 and 3/4 down page 7.

...what?

 

[egan.]

Egan - The ETA PD racks look pretty good. I was also looking at the Zero Surge surge protectors but they don't appear to have RF filters. Are you saying that I should get both a surge protector AND a UPS and just use the UPS for the G5 And EHD and use the SP for everything else? Those ETA PDs claim to have a "soft" shutdown as apposed to a "hard" shut down. Not quite sure what that means though. With a SP, if there is a sudden shut down, I know I'll lose any data not saved but how bad could it be for the G5 and EHD? I mean the SP will stop the surge from reaching them but yet they still will be shut down improperly. I can't imagine that that would be a huge deal.

A couple of things...if you are running everything off of a couple of wall outlets in your home you are probably under 15amps total in the US.
You can definitely ruin harddrives and corrupt data w/ sudden power failures which is why the UPS is a good idea. I wouldn't try to power an entire rack of gear off of a UPS which is why I suggested both. That said plenty of UPS boxes have non-battery powered outlets.

 

[Radd]

...what?

From page 10:
"You could plug a power conditioner or regenerator into the UPS, but they will be working very hard, and some units that are weaker, like the PS Audio P300 just won't be able to handle it."


From page 7:
"I did this:

Wall-->Brickwall Surge Suppressor-->Belkin Universal UPS-->PS Audio P300-->Samsung HLN467W + HTPC.

Not recommended, though. The P300 got blazing hot. But man O man, did the picture look good. Especially HDTV through the PC (VGA) input.

Power conditioning/filtering is less noticeable with all digital paths, though. So if you use DVI, it will be more subtle.

Now my setup is this:

Wall-->Brickwall Surge Suppressor-->Belkin Universal UPS-->Samsung HLN467W + HTPC.

-Ed"

 

[Metaltastic]

Oh oh oh, pages 7 and 10 from that link you posted...right, thank you

 

[Radd]

A couple of things...if you are running everything off of a couple of wall outlets in your home you are probably under 15amps total in the US.
You can definitely ruin harddrives and corrupt data w/ sudden power failures which is why the UPS is a good idea. I wouldn't try to power an entire rack of gear off of a UPS which is why I suggested both. That said plenty of UPS boxes have non-battery powered outlets.

Ok. Cool. Thanks for the info. I haven't been able to find much info on those non-battery UPSs. All I found were expensive industrial sized ones and the Minuteman line which still uses a battery I guess. I don't quite get it.

http://www.rackmountsolutions.net/Minuteman_Pro1500e_UPS.asp

As far as a battery UPS, I originally was looking at this:

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1500&total_watts=200

Although it has plenty of good reviews, its also got some VERY bad reviews, plus that AVS thread has me weary like I said.

I guess now I'm just trying to find out if there is anything better and more reliable in that capacity and price range.

 

[Radd]

No one else protects their gear?

 

[egan.]

I haven't been able to find much info on those non-battery UPSs.
As far as a battery UPS, I originally was looking at this:

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BR1500&total_watts=200

The APC you linked to has 2 outlets (the top 2) which are surge protected only. Look really close at the pic. That's all I meant-- that some UPS boxes have non-UPS outlets so the battery wouldn't have to try to power everything.

 

[Radd]

The APC you linked to has 2 outlets (the top 2) which are surge protected only. Look really close at the pic. That's all I meant-- that some UPS boxes have non-UPS outlets so the battery wouldn't have to try to power everything.

Oh. Yeah. Ok. I misunderstood. Thanks for clearing that up Egan.