So with Sydney's storms yesterday afternoon, we had a blackout. Power comes back on, everything comes back on, except for my wife's gaming PC… Which blows the guts out of the power supply (and hopefully nothing else… we will see later today). Apparently it was a good one too with lots of popping, smoke, and it flipped the breaker.
Normally I'd chalk this one up to lightning damage except it's probably not. Every time we have a blackout, that PC blows it's power supply up (and thankfully nothing else). The blackout could be because a power line falls down, too many people turn on their aircons, etc. Everything else survives (incl TV and entertainment stuff, my game laptop, fridge, router, piano, aircon, dyson portable vac, and even my abused raspberry pi). Oh and the surge protectors are still working..
I've replaced about 5 or 6 power supplies from that bloody computer over the last few years, getting progressively better quality etc. I'm sick of it! lol
So has anyone else (preferably someone with a similar experience) had success with protecting their PC's power supply with a UPS?
http://stormhighway.com/surge_protectors_ups_lightning_prote…
Just so you know, a UPS isn't designed protect you from surges, it's main use is to protect you from outages. However most UPS's have surge protector built right in and it's usually the very same $2 dollar component that you find in an ordinary surge protector, and that's usually what gives the UPS a marketable surge protection feature.