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Good line cleaner?

C

Craftish

Gawd
Joined
Jul 24, 2002
Messages
675
I suspect the power in my apartment is really dirty, as often my monitor will be somewhat jittery, and so I would like to purchase a UPS with a line cleaner to protect my expensive electronics. What would everyone recommend? I'm looking to spend no more than $150, and the line cleaning is the important part; I don't really need temporary battery backup in case of a power failure (although it seems to me most units with line cleaning have this feature).
 
I got an APC UPS 350 From Dell for 29.00 shipped.. :p I like it.. has backup battery.. ;)

Craftish said:
I suspect the power in my apartment is really dirty, as often my monitor will be somewhat jittery, and so I would like to purchase a UPS with a line cleaner to protect my expensive electronics. What would everyone recommend? I'm looking to spend no more than $150, and the line cleaning is the important part; I don't really need temporary battery backup in case of a power failure (although it seems to me most units with line cleaning have this feature).
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again very likely an MOV solution
which by design is sacraficial

gee said:
Ice Czar said:
what I dont know is the typical surge suppression scheme of a common SPS
but Im now looking for it :p
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AC input -> fuse -> MOVs connected across input -> line filter -> rectifier -> ....

MOV's are "metal oxide varistors" - they're sort of like a zener diode, but bidirectional. They act as an open circuit across the AC line until the voltage reaches a certain point, then when that happens they basically short out the line. So If a power surge occurs, the MOVs will conduct at the higher surge voltage and blow the fuse.

"Surge supressor" power bars just contain a bunch of MOVs. Decent ones have a circuit breaker before the MOVs which will trip with the high current, but cheap ones just rely on your house's circuit breaker to trip.

There's no super-extra-high-advanced technology inside Monster power strips or anything. This stuff has been around since the 60's. :D
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(gee is our local electrical engineer BTW )

Power Conditioning 101
Surge Suppressors @ Howstuffworks
MOV Scraficial by Design



Dangers of MOVs with grounds currents in networked components

BRICK WALL SURGE PROTECTORS WILL NOT Divert Surge Current to Ground
Almost all manufacturers of shunt mode surge protectors (those utilizing MOV’s) design their products to divert surge current equally between the ground and neutral wires. A surge protector should not divert surge current to the ground wire.

DATA LINE PROTECTION?
Our sales staff repeatedly hears this same story: It seems a company has experienced considerable surge damage to electronic equipment. The shunt mode surge protectors would appear to have done their job by protecting the loads from the front end (power line). The damage, in their estimation, resulted from surge current that traveled down the data lines. How do they know this? All the damage appears to have originated at the data ports, hence they conclude that the surge must have traveled this route. Their solution: They need data line surge protectors.
They are right in as much as the damaging current did propagate through the data lines. However, damaging surges do not originate in dataline circuits.

Their systems do not need data line surge protectors. Interconnected systems need powerline surge protectors that do not divert surge current to the ground wire.

INTERCONNECTED SYSTEMS AND GROUND LOOP CONTAMINATION
Interconnected (networked) systems, so prevalent in today’s commercial/industrial world, have made shunt mode technology used in most surge protectors (origins 1972) inappropriate. Equipment sharing common power and data lines form circuits between themselves via the ground wire (both referenced at the load). What does current do in a closed circuit? It flows. A powerline surge diverted to the ground wire by a shunt mode surge protector will make its way to the chassis, through the motherboard (which is also grounded at the chassis), onto and through the data lines (which use the powerline ground as a voltage reference and are also connected at the motherboard) and to the data ports of the rest of the connected system. This is how most data line surges originate.

DATA LINE NOISE
Smaller surges diverted to ground wires by a shunt mode surge protector may not immediately damage equipment (though the cumulative effect can eventually cause failures). On the other hand, low level surge current diverted to the data lines by a shunt mode surge protector (via the ground wire) can immediately scramble data, slow down data transfer and cause mis-operations or lock-ups as a consequence of its effect as system noise (unwanted current on the data lines).

BRICK WALL SURGE PROTECTOR SERIES MODE TECHNOLOGY
Brick Wall surge protector products are based on the current (hence voltage) limiting of a massive inductor. Residual energy that leaks through is captured by a series of electrolytic capacitors. There it is slowly leaked back to the neutral at a harmless level. Outside of trivial amounts of parasitic capacitance our Series Mode surge protectors do not put any surge current on the ground of your systems. Engineers of an MOV based surge protector face the dilemma of what to do with potentially large amounts of surge current. They don’t want to overload the neutral and want to prolong the life of the MOV. Using two MOV's and diverting equally between the ground and neutral wire prolongs MOV life and prevents overcurrent on the neutral. Series Mode surge protector technology presents no such dilemma.
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not to pimp them with an ad, but there is considerable amount of real information available on their site ;)

In a true UPS, there is no need for a surge protector, as the power is always drawn off the batteries and converted through an inverter but they are rare and expensive, interactive UPSs (SPS) however, may need better surge protection, and then there is there grounding problem

sort of depends on your paranoia level
and I have tinfoil underwear :p
 
I tried the tinfoil underwear; it chaffed and makes funny noises when I walk. It’s especially noticeable and more annoying if wearing corduroy pants.

On a side note, gee should look inside of some of the newer Monster AC line noise products. They have made significant changes in the past few years.

Having looked inside Belkins’s best as well as Triplite it’s shocking (no pun intended) in the build quality difference between the different products.

Just some food for thought, things do change ;)
 
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