Aaaaarrrrrrggggghhh!!!!!

[denny]

So as my main mood-lifter of the weekend was getting the three screen set-up working on my home PC, obviously the gods sent a power surge to fry my motherboard while I was out yesterday evening. At least, I'm assuming that's what's fried... the machine powers up as far as the 'Press DEL to enter setup' screen, identifies the CPU but doesn't get as far as mentioning the RAM or disks. Holding down the delete key as it boots will get you the 'Entering setup' message instead of the 'Press DEL' message, but other than that it doesn't make any difference. Argh.

Incidentally, the machine was plugged into a surge-protector extension lead - a Belkin SurgeMaster II - which I can't say that I'm currently inclined to recommend. It theoretically has a warranty on it which will pay for any equipment damaged due to failure of the surge protector, but I'm guessing it has sufficient weasel words to let them slide out of it one way or another*.

simont recently had a machine fried while it was attached to a surge protector as well - does anybody else have any reports of brands to avoid? Is there any way anyone can recommend a protector - it's pretty obvious when they fail, but how do you know when they're working?


* having read it, you need the receipt for the extension lead. Which obviously I threw away several years ago. Nice lifetime guarantee there.

Comments

UPS

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

I have all my fragile electronics (which includes the TiVo :) ) plugged into UPS, both to catch surges and to avoid them getting flipped off and on rapidly if the power company decide it's time to play around with the power supply. I trust an actual UPS to do a lot more surge protection than a simple "Surge protector" which is mainly there to catch large things like lightning strikes.
Second-hand units from APC in the 1kVA range are pretty cheap. You may need to replace the batteries, but that's not hard. They cost 30-50 quid (depending on size) from Maplins, last I looked. The basic electronics on the APC SmartUPS appear to last forever.

Re: UPS

[simont]

a simple "Surge protector" which is mainly there to catch large things like lightning strikes

... and many of which apparently can't even do that reliably. :-/

Re: UPS

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

All that happened at my place was that the electricity to the entire building went off for an hour or two - it must have spiked when it came back on. Seems quite thoroughly pathetic for a surge protector not to handle that.

Re: UPS

[http://users.livejournal.com/_nicolai_/]

Have you checked the CPU and graphics cooling are working OK? "Runs for a few seconds" can be a symptom of "CPU takes a few seconds to overheat from cold because the fan is bust"

I'm never impressed by the specs of cheaper surge arresters; they're typically only good for one serious surge, and their lower cutoff voltage is a discouraging amount over 340V peak, while the amount of energy they can absorb will not deal with an actual nearby lighting strike. Nearby lightning might kill my UPS, but I'm betting it will die and not conduct, rather than absorb some of the energy and pass on the rest...

Re: UPS

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Hrm, good point - I'll have a look. Although, I was out when this happened, so if the CPU fan is dead then it was potentially running without it for hours :-\

Re: UPS

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Fans all still twirling. Oh well, it was a nice idea.