Re:sorta OT: Advice on power conditioner
2013/01/30 23:47:09
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Waste of money, Randy. When you're looking at so-called "power conditioners", read the fine print, specifically the phrase "varistor protected".
Varistors are resistors whose resistance is inversely proportional to the voltage across them. That means that if the voltage spikes, as would happen if lightning struck nearby, the varistor assumes a low resistance, shunting the excess energy to ground. Unfortunately, that high current usually also destroys the varistor. That means it only works once, and most cheap varistor-equipped devices do not give any indication that the protection is no longer working. Furthermore, varistors are not fast enough to respond to fast transients, so they may have given their lives for nothing because your gear its already destroyed.
What you really want is an isolation transformer with a real surge protector. That will protect your equipment, prevent ground loop hum and filter out RFI/EMI noise. But you won't get one for $70. More like $400.
Next-best is an inductor-based line filter. Still not $70, but cheaper than an isolation transformer.
(BTW, in a previous life I was tech support for a division that sold and installed power-conditioning gear and uninterruptible power supplies for computer rooms.)
All else is in doubt, so this is the truth I cling to.
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