Surge Protectors and Power Strips

[excalibur]

I know many of us have a lot of things hooked up at once, which means we need plenty of power outlets to connect to, plus there are good reasons to use a surge protector to help protect your hardware from surges as well. So I wanted to see which surge protectors and power strips you guys use to connect all your game consoles and other hardware to power, and if there were any specific ones you recommend.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I mostly just use Belkin and they are fine. I have some APC ones that I picked up cheap and other than having a ton of plug-ins I don't think they really offer much more in the way of protection. The power situation isn't the best where I live but it's not need a power conditioner because Texas bad and I've never had an issue despite many outages. I guess what I'm saying is that this is something that is easy to overpay for but you really shouldn't.

[nmalinoski]

For my retro stuff, I have a CyberPower CPS1215RMS, which has a ton of outlets and, importantly, a switch that I use to keep all of those wall warts unpowered not in use. For my modern stuff, I've been using two Tripplite AVBAR8 surge protectors, and I have a bunch of old APC SU1000[NET] UPS units for things like my PCs and networking equipment.

[Bratwurst]

I have all my game system power supplies tied into a Rosewill RPS-210BL which has a dedicated lighted switch for each outlet, and I connect the wall warts with 12" extension cords to keep them spaced out. This is then plugged into a surge protector that acts as a sort of master switch for the CRT power, other miscellaneous things, etc.

[DirkSwizzler]

I run my stuff through an APC LE1200 as recommended by db electronics that's always on to provide protection against power damage.

That splits off to a charging shelf that's always on. It also branches off to a Furman PL-8C power conditioner for the entire rest of my gaming rack.

I turn the PL-8C off when the rack is not in use. Retro, new, and everything in between is completely disconnected from AC most of the time.

Each shelf on the rack has a Tripp Lite TLP76MSG that lets me individually control outlets as necessary.

[RottenToTheGore]

I have my retro systems hooked up separately than my current gen stuff.

First is a furman power conditioner, with most of the stuff I would use plugged in (OSSC, Crosspoint, ect)
Then two more rack mount power strips with individual switches go into the furman, and they have everything else plugged into those.

So when I want to game I turn on the power conditioner, flip the switch for the system I want, and go.

[fernan1234]

I've been under the impression that it is not good practice to plug power strips into power conditioners, but instead power strips should be avoided and appliances should be connected directly to the conditioner (which of course probably means needing more than one conditioner for larger setups). Is this not correct?

[nmalinoski]

I've been under the impression that it is not good practice to plug power strips into power conditioners, but instead power strips should be avoided and appliances should be connected directly to the conditioner (which of course probably means needing more than one conditioner for larger setups). Is this not correct?

I believe the reason against daisy-chaining power strips, power conditioners, UPSes, and surge protectors is mainly so that you don't risk overloading the root power outlet. You don't want to have 6 refrigerators plugged into a power strip that's plugged into another power strip with 5 more refridgerators plugged into another power strip with 5 air conditioners plugged into the wall, because, if you don't end up tripping a breaker first, you'll probably overload the outlet and set one or more things on fire.

Likewise, you don't want to plug in an appliance to a power strip/etc. that has a smaller-gauge power lead, because you'll likely overload that smaller-gauge cable and set it on fire.

However, when you're talking about a selection of low-power wall warts, even with everything turned on, it's nowhere near enough current to overload the power strip or the outlet on the power conditioner it's plugged into; and there's even less risk if you're using a power strip with individually-switched outlets. I wouldn't try it with anything 7th-gen or newer, though; I used to use my first-gen PS3 as a space heater in the winter.

[fernan1234]

That makes sense. When I had a PS4 going to a power strip going to a used industrial-grade SurgeX the latter got pretty smelly and I ended up having to get rid of it.