Daisey Chaining Surge Protectors?

Posted:
in General Discussion edited January 2014
Hello.

I currently use one of the APC brand of Uninteruptable Power Supply surge protectors. It seems adequate enough for surge protection, but than I got this harebrained idea to buy another one, a MONSTER brand surge protector this time, to add extra safety.



1)

Does this make sense at all? Can one gain from having two surge protectors daisy chained off of each other to protect their computer system? Is it like having an extra line of defense? Like one surge protector might burn out from lightning but the second one save the day?



The MONSTER protector made me buy it on an impulse because it is one of those super ones that clean the power to reduce audio/video noise.



2)

Does it make sense to use both just to gain the features of each? If so, in which order do you think I should set them up? The MONSTER before the battery? Or would the battery just add more noise after it was just cleaned?



3)

Is it safe to daisy chain? I feel like I have heard of fires starting from too many electronics stemmed from one outlet, but what if I only plugged things into the 2nd surge protector, using the first one ONLY to have the second one plugged into it? Everything cool then? Or should that not be an issue?





Thanks! I havent opened the MONSTER one yet but I only have a couple days left to return it. Hmm what should I doooooo . . .

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 7
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Short answer: I the power conditioner should go before your battery backup.

    Note that surge protection is built into both devices, but in the event of a surge, the monster would trip leaving your battery backup operational.



    What? You aren't supposed to plug power strips into power strips? Woops!

    Anyways, the Furman power conditioner has a built-in ammeter so I know how much current my system is sucking. The yellow $0.00 Fry's power strip is there to take the brunt of serious power spikes if it can.



    Lets take a peek behind my desk:



    Most of my electronics are on normal conditioned power (blue) like VCR's, Amps, speakers, scanner, lights, printers etc. Red represents battery backup power to my computer, hard drives, RAID, screen, and lots of little networking gadgets like switches. Most ports are occupied, but keep in mind wall warts where not all are accessible. Still, I can plug in a great many things.
  • Reply 2 of 7
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    First off, take back the Monster-Power unless you have mountains of cash and your time is worth more than the cost of the product.



    Monster products are biggest pieces of overpriced nonsense I'm aware of. Monster capitalizes on the fact that nine out of ten audiophiles don't actually know anything about electronics. Just go and get a decent surge strip: there's very little that ANYTHING can do to condition power without dissipating a lot of power in the process. In the Stargate TV-show they have a substance that can condition power without dissipating power, but we do not. Furthermore, since your equipment is largely digital, it all goes to DC anyway, and it's more important to have the right voltage levels than it is to have a clean AC waveform.



    Consider for a second that expensive UPS systems have atrociously sharp AC waveforms, and everything works fine. using a Monster-Power with a UPS, for example, is like putting caviar on a hot dog.



    As for daisy chaining power strips, you mostly have to worry about the max current rating of the wiring. Usually, the power-strip wires can take 20A, at which point most circuit breakers will trip anyway. So there's not much to worry about there.



    One last thing: the $100 HDMI cable is the biggest racket of all. It's a digital signal, so the additive noise on 3ft of cable is a non-issue. Get one from RadioShack or, if you can muster it, Digikey.com.
  • Reply 3 of 7
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    Oh yea, forgot to mention the monster thing is redundant. You don't really need it at all.



    However, since it is built for home theaters, some versions have large capacitors that can buffer current you turn something big on. This can help your other devices hooked up. I wouldn't worry about this since you probably are not sucking nearly enough amps to use this technology.



    As for HDMI... I assume that was from another thread.
  • Reply 4 of 7
    splinemodelsplinemodel Posts: 7,311member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    Oh yea, forgot to mention the monster thing is redundant. You don't really need it at all.



    However, since it is built for home theaters, some versions have large capacitors that can buffer current you turn something big on. This can help your other devices hooked up. I wouldn't worry about this since you probably are not sucking nearly enough amps to use this technology.



    As for HDMI... I assume that was from another thread.




    Technically speaking, capacitors "buffer" voltage, not current.
  • Reply 5 of 7
    ebbyebby Posts: 3,110member
    When I'm done with it, its gunna buffer whatever the darn hell I want it too!



  • Reply 6 of 7
    rokrok Posts: 3,519member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Ebby

    What? You aren't supposed to plug power strips into power strips? Woops!





    nope. and i recall when, after having endured many, MANY crashes and random lockups in our studio, even after doing full reinstalls over and over again, and cleaning all fonts, etc., i decided to look UNDER the desks.



    i swear, it was like the scene from aliens, where they know the aliens are practically on top of them, but no one sees them, UNTIL they peek up in the ceiling...



    no joke, they had FIVE powerstrips daisy chained to ONE outlet that supplied power for FOUR G4 towers and one generic windows machine, their accompanying 19 or 21 inch displays, table lamps, external hard drives, AND a tek phaser 780... all from ONE PLUG. suddenly, it all made sense, and i could FINALLY reproduce the problem. whenever someone printed to the phaser, and the fuser warmed up, someone crashed/locked up.



    to this day, i shudder to think how much damage was done to the innards of those machines because of that mess.
  • Reply 7 of 7
    Wow, thanks everyone! This has been a very informational thread and I am delighted that each of my queries were replied to! Awesome! I am sending this mo-fo back to where it came from! =)



    Thanks again for posting your experiences, everyone. It has been very helpful. I am going to stick with my $80 APC UPC unit.



    You guys rock!
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