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Help settle this debate.

F

Fee

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 10, 2005
Messages
116
My friend just bought a fancy new surge protector, he said it can take a direct hit form lighting strike to his powerlines. To me that hard to believe that any $30 dollar surge protector can stop lighting. Is there one on the market that can do that?
 
A 10 cent fuse can stop lightning ;)
That is true, any decent surge protector can do that.
 
Yes and no. You can never really tell. Nature is funny like that. I've seen $3.00 surge protectors melt down but stop the surge as advertised, and I've seen $500 UPS's melt down and take out hardware with them.

The fact is that cheap ass surge protectors are exactly that. They employ a fuse to stop the surge. Once that fuse is broken, the connection is severed and there is no way for that energy to reach your hardware. However I've seen the fuses blow too late and you still lose hardware. Nicer surge protectors provide more consistent results accross the board. You also need to look at how many joules each surge protector is rated for. You'll notice that some are 300 joules and some are closer to 800 joules or more. In any case an actual lightning strike is more powerful than 800 joules so you can probably guess just how accurate your buddy's statement is.
 
Oklahoma Wolf said:
There's nothing I'm aware of that can take a dead on hit from lightning. That's why I still unplug stuff when severe weather comes up.
Click to expand...

I don't, I have faith in my UPSes. Sure they could fail and a surge could destroy all of my hardware, or at least the PSUs, but the odds are pretty good that everything will be fine, so I don't worry about it too much.
 
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