Best protection: UPS vs. power conditioner?

obieone

Since that double lightning strike 1.5 years ago, I've started upgrading again, and don't want to lose any more components. Soooo, which would be better for protection, a UPS or power conditioner.
I understand there are additional benefits to a p.c., but I REALLY am more concerned with protection:sad:

TIA

Face

I believe it depends more on the specific model of each. Regardless, a UPS would be more handy during brown outs and power outages.

SolidSqual

A lot of excellent power conditioners have excellent surge protection as well. For example, my BPT is considered a very solid product as far as conditioning goes, but it also provides excellent protection from lightening strikes as well thanks to some choice upgrades using tech from Environmental Potentials.

Environmental Potentials also makes some stand alone power protection products that are considered very reliable. My Dad actually has some kind of whole house protection that uses their technology. He lives on the lake and is in danger of lightening strikes regularly as storms roll in.

disneyjoe7

I have considered doing an UPS first, then a PC. My thinking is that an UPS has a relay to normal power output, then the PC can clean up the AC power. So a Win, Win to me.

Syndil

You can have both in one device. I have one of these:

http://www.apc.com/products/apcav/products/index.cfm?action=detail&base_sku=J25B

Actually use it for my PC instead of HT however.

decal

Neither will protect from direct strikes. Always unplug your equipment during lightning if you want to be safe.

obieone

disneyjoe7 wrote: »

I have considered doing an UPS first, then a PC. My thinking is that an UPS has a relay to normal power output, then the PC can clean up the AC power. So a Win, Win to me.

I was told, several years ago, NOT to do that. Never really explained why, just not to do surge protection in series?

SolidSqual

obieone wrote: »

I was told, several years ago, NOT to do that. Never really explained why, just not to do surge protection in series?

Yeah because it kills dynamics. I did this once and it was like negative EQing everything in my system.

SolidSqual

decal wrote: »

Neither will protect from direct strikes. Always unplug your equipment during lightning if you want to be safe.

Yeah, there is no perfect protection when lightening is involved. You can only get lucky. Unplugging is always the best option.

Jstas

SolidSqual wrote: »

Yeah, there is no perfect protection when lightening is involved. You can only get lucky. Unplugging is always the best option.

Whole house surge protector. I have one. Actually, on my second one. Last hurricane to roll through blew the old one. $200 to save me several thousand? Yeah, no brainer.

As far as the original post, I have a UPS from Tripp-Lite.

It's an older model of this: http://www.tripplite.com/en/products/model.cfm?txtSeriesID=749&txtModelID=4147



A UPS system has built in surge protection and line conditioning by default because there is a physical disconnect from the outlet source inside the UPS. The battery backup is just icing on the cake. It beeps like crazy when the power goes out until you shut everything down but for what I paid for it, it's cheap insurance.

Jstas

obieone wrote: »

I was told, several years ago, NOT to do that. Never really explained why, just not to do surge protection in series?

No, it has to do with circuit load. If you have a UPS with a power strip or power conditioner plugged in to it, you can send the UPS in to an overload state in a power failure since the voltage drops and the line conditioner kicks it's surge protection in. It can send feedback down the line and cause an "infinite load" which will break the UPS and possibly damage the battery, sometimes catastrophically.

Also, if you have a 15 amp outlet on the wall and plug a UPS in then the UPS is drawing on that 15 amps to charge plus power whatever else is plugged in to it. If you plug the line conditioner in then you are basically plugging the LC in to what it thinks is a 15 amp wall outlet. It will try to condition it and present 15 amps to everything else plugged in to it. You can quickly overload a circuit in normal operation that way.

Besides all that, it gives you no benefit because with an LC plugged in to a UPS, you are feeding the LC an already conditioned power feed. So the LC has nothing to do and you're just drawing extra power from the circuit for absolutely no benefit. Also, it's a bottleneck and can hurt the performance of your equipment because the equipment can't get the necessary power levels needed to support the designed performance level.

obieone

SolidSqual wrote: »

Yeah because it kills dynamics. I did this once and it was like negative EQing everything in my system.

THANK YOU! No one explained in my thread 4 years ago why. Now I know.
And thanks for the EP recommendation. Their outlet adaptors look good for my STS subs.

Thanks for all the feedback folks, time to start shopping.

tonyb

SolidSqual wrote: »

Yeah, there is no perfect protection when lightening is involved. You can only get lucky. Unplugging is always the best option.

Amen to that. One lightning strike a hundred feet away fried my Monster 5100, a cable box, and half my massage chair. Yet the amp, receiver and TV lived. So yeah, they are worth it, even if it only survives one hit, because thats all it takes to wipe you out.

DMara

I'm running an APC S15blk AV 1.5kVA S Type Power Conditioner with Battery Backup. The cool thing about it was my music won't stop during brown-outs / power outages. I happened to play some music during a couple of those times, and it made me smile that I could hear the fridge stopped running al of a sudden but music still went on I also bought an APC Smart-UPS 1500VA for the NAS/DSL modem/wireless router/network switch to keep the internet on without any hiccup. Other than that, I don't think there are a lot of devices that can save anything from a direct lightning hit. They can advertise blah blah blah this and that, but when one of those bad boys hit your house, gone.

Jstas

obieone wrote: »

THANK YOU! No one explained in my thread 4 years ago why. Now I know.
And thanks for the EP recommendation. Their outlet adaptors look good for my STS subs.

Thanks for all the feedback folks, time to start shopping.

More info on whole house surge protectors.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?103116-I-have-the-power!/page2&highlight=house+surge+protector

Totally worth the cost. Seriously. For a couple hundred bucks, it'd be dumb not to do it.

Drenis

Jstas wrote: »

More info on whole house surge protectors.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?103116-I-have-the-power!/page2&highlight=house+surge+protector

Totally worth the cost. Seriously. For a couple hundred bucks, it'd be dumb not to do it.

The only drawback is if you live in an apartment or rent a home. You just can't have them. I've tried for the past year to pay to have one installed and the answer is always no.

obieone

Jstas wrote: »

More info on whole house surge protectors.

http://www.polkaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?103116-I-have-the-power!/page2&highlight=house+surge+protector

Totally worth the cost. Seriously. For a couple hundred bucks, it'd be dumb not to do it.

Thanks for the info. I tried to find these a couple of years ago, and the local supply houses were clueless.

Jstas

obieone wrote: »

Thanks for the info. I tried to find these a couple of years ago, and the local supply houses were clueless.

Well now you have part numbers so they can look it up and get a clue.

But it you call up a local electrician, he/she will know exactly what you are talking about. Just call it a "surge suppressor" and not a "surge protector".