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A three drive system - the sweet spot

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Jibz:
A significant percentage of home computers (and sadly an awful lot of business computers) have low quality power supplies which are plugged into outlets with inconsistent line quality and poor or nonexistent grounding. When you replace the mechanical bits of a hard drive with the purely electronic ones in a SSD it stands to reason cheap computers would have a higher failure rate than expensive ones. I'm over generalizing a bit because not every expensive computer has a quality power supply but a quality power supply usually makes for a more expensive computer.
-Vurbal (March 25, 2014, 04:28 PM)
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+1

I've had three motherboards and a graphics card toasted before I started buying quality power supplies.

mouser:
I've never really considered quality of power supply.

Does a normal consumer-grade UPS help with this kind of thing?

40hz:
A properly sized unit from a reputable name such as Corsair, Antec, Seasonic, or PC Power & Cooling are all good bets. You don't need to spring for expensive 'enterprise' grade models. Units built for workstation deployment are just fine. Put a good UPS in front of them and Bob's yer uncle.

It's the no-name Asian imports that go for <$50 you want to avoid. Figure $80 and up for a good PS depending on wattage.

Quick rule of thumb: a quality power supply for a desktop is noticeably heavier than a cheap one. Bigger transformer + more solid construction = more weight.

4wd:
I've never really considered quality of power supply.

Does a normal consumer-grade UPS help with this kind of thing?-mouser (March 26, 2014, 02:41 AM)
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I've never had an UPS and I live in an area that suffers brown-outs and power failures, (lots of trees don't go well with overhead lines).

I do, however, have very good quality surge suppression/filtering power boards and I've never lost a piece of equipment that was plugged into them yet ... and I've had them for ~20 years.

It's line noise/ripple current that is a very good killer of the inferior quality capacitors used in some switchmode PSUs.  The ripple causes the capacitors to heat up, the electrolyte dries out, the ESRw rises, current across the capacitor rises, heat increases, etc, etc, then the PSU dies ... sometimes taking whatever it's attached to.

The better you can filter the incoming AC to eliminate any noise/ripple and surges, the better it's going to be for your PSU.

Most UPS include some form of surge suppression/filtering, the quality is usually commensurate with the cost.  Almost all consumer, (not business), grade UPS are of the Stand-by type.  They don't do anything until the power fails, until then they're just a power board with surge suppression/line filtering.

Be that and all, a crap PSU is still a crap PSU, a good filter will only make it last a little longer.

+1 with @40hz about a quality PSU but I'd also throw in a good quality line filter before it.

40hz:
+1 w/4wd on the above.  :Thmbsup:

I have the most confidence in Tripp Lite's product line. I've had Belkins fail. But Tripp Lite never let me down - even in one case where there was a lightning strike. The Tripp Lite supressor itself got fried. But everything downstream in its circuit path was just fine. The Belkin across the room didn't do so well. Both it and the PC plugged into it were left inoperable.

So yes, no matter what else you get, definitely invest in a top notch surge supressor. Make it a priority purchase.
 8)

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