Originally posted by: Devistater
Originally posted by: mindless1
Originally posted by: DevistaterYeah well this is the $15 350va cheap Conext brand compusa crap. You contradict yourself by saying its impossible in once sentance, then say in next that the UPS could have sent out "bad power." Which is it?
I'm sorry for your loss but you're blaming an innocent part here. It might not be the best UPS money can buy but that doesn't make it suspect in this kind of failure.
Its probably the worst UPS you can buy. You aren't going to get much worse than $15.
You have insufficient power supply/electronics experience to make that call, unless you have already opened up this ups, pulled part #s and attained specs on it's output stage to determine that, that is actually a lower capacity than any other consumer grade 500VA UPS. Output stage on such units is no different with APC or any other beyond the rating, and IF your contention were true, it would be a matter of that stage.
Its quite possibly partly the fault of the PSU as well, it was a cheap "maddog" brand from compusa.
However, had I not had it plugged into that cheap UPS at the time, but instead one of the better APC ones that I had, it would have been fine.
"Quite possibly"? Who are you trying to kid? Low-end junk PSUs are avoided for these kinds of reasons. There is no reason to think that an APC UPS of similar (Consumer grade) would have prevented this.
You don't even know if a surge came in on the protected AC.
I know this because I've seen far worse power events that my APC smartups has protected me from.
An "event" is not only classified by duration, it's also where it came in and thus the path it took to earth ground, as well as the actual voltage.
For instance, twice in a couple weeks there was the worst surge I've ever seen in my life happen. It was fortunate that it was during the middle of the night when most of our stuff was off, and that the only computer running was on an APC UPS. The lights all started getting brighter, and the ceiling fan started spinning up faster, and the HEPA filter in the next room for a family member started spinning up like crazy. My estimate based on how much brighter all the incandescense lights got is that there was something like 50% more voltage than normal. And it lasted for over 10 seconds each time. That is an incredible bad extended surge. Thats the kinda stuff that will destroy anything and everything electrical in your house if it goes on too long.
No. Even your cheap PSU would've likely survived that, as well as many applicances. 50% overvoltage is nothing, it didn't even kick your breakers right away or shut down the power grid. Surges have the potential to be orders of magnitude higher, and it is not duration that matters as they couldn't have a long duration, it's that first moment the surge gets through, hundreds of volts or more and it fries circuit paths till it hits earth ground.
And my computer was just fine. Why? Because it was plugged into a quality APC smartups system that could handle it, rather than a cheap piece of crap compusa UPS.
Nobody said you had to like this UPS, but frankly you do not have a basic understanding of surge protection, or even the role of an UPS in such an event. Did you even realize that many pieces of equipment are MORE likely to be damaged if they're connected through an UPS (a good one) than without an UPS? An UPS is NOT effective surge protection. AVR types can handle
mild over or under voltage conditions on incoming AC line only, but the protection from surges comes from a more basic yet more manditory type of protection, a low-impedance path to
earth ground at all possibly entry points, else the surge takes other (destructive paths) towards lower potential. No UPS you only plug into a wall outlet provides this and therefore none will protect against the typical high-surge events.
Summary- No, this UPS didn't cause your damage.
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