Explain SLI to me.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

"Literally dozens" sounds like you have had the opportunity to get rid of them before their possible faults were starting to show... I'm on my fifth build/upgrade since Jan 1997, this one dating from about six years ago upgraded on the way with a new psu (preparing for future upgrades) and second hand cpu and gpu. No surge protector nor ups, and I have several times been surfing during a thunderstorm roaring within a mile. We have never lost any electric equipment here due to spikes, surge or anything else than normal aging.  Even the amount of replaced nic's can be counted with my fingers during these nine years I've been doing my techie thing inside a circle of 10 miles or so, most of the cases having been deep in the countryside.

BTW how does this help anyone understanding SLI? 

All my hardware has found a new home in the hands of friends or relatives. They've all lived a long and healthy life despite never running under UPS. The same can be said about most hardware I've handled professionally. There was a bad patch of PSUs that self destructed late 1990s but that's about it.

[Rich46yo]

Great thread. Im right at the cut off for power and to put a 2nd 580GTX in wouldnt make sense without a power upgrade as well.

So Im thinking a Corsair 1200.

[Chalenge]

A simple surge protector is enough in most cases, UPS is just overkill.

There's another comment I completely disagree with. I do not believe there is a European electrical grid that is stable enough to make that statement, nor will there be ever. Electric anything is just a failure waiting to happen. The problem with surge protectors is that they save you once, if they save you at all. Consumer grade surge protectors are not that good, and a huge percentage of them are not even good enough to save you once. And this is nothing new. This discussion has repeated itself on this very board since at least 2008. You do need to do your homework when you buy anything. Surge protectors are no exception, but the same is true for any UPS you might consider. For instance, check out this page for "waveform type"

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SUA1500

and you see that the device I chose uses "Sine wave." Some devices use "approximated sine wave," which translates to "stepped approximation of sine wave" or more correctly "stepped square wave."

When using a PFC type PSU it is highly recommended that you use a true sine wave UPS. The potential is that during the switch from wall power to battery the PFC PSU may shutdown if the switch over is not fast enough. A simulated sine wave (stepped sine wave) may not always be a problem or it may not always work.

It all just depends how far down the rabbit hole you care to go as to how much you need to know, but claiming that "simple surge protector is enough" is a complete fallacy.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

There's another comment I completely disagree with. I do not believe there is a European electrical grid that is stable enough to make that statement, nor will there be ever. Electric anything is just a failure waiting to happen. The problem with surge protectors is that they save you once, if they save you at all. Consumer grade surge protectors are not that good, and a huge percentage of them are not even good enough to save you once. And this is nothing new. This discussion has repeated itself on this very board since at least 2008. You do need to do your homework when you buy anything. Surge protectors are no exception, but the same is true for any UPS you might consider. For instance, check out this page for "waveform type"

http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=SUA1500

and you see that the device I chose uses "Sine wave." Some devices use "approximated sine wave," which translates to "stepped approximation of sine wave" or more correctly "stepped square wave."

When using a PFC type PSU it is highly recommended that you use a true sine wave UPS. The potential is that during the switch from wall power to battery the PFC PSU may shutdown if the switch over is not fast enough. A simulated sine wave (stepped sine wave) may not always be a problem or it may not always work.

It all just depends how far down the rabbit hole you care to go as to how much you need to know, but claiming that "simple surge protector is enough" is a complete fallacy.

I'm sorry but you're dead wrong. I didn't even use surge protectors for years and I never EVER had a hardware failure that could be traced to anything but a manufacturing defect. And even those were extremely rare.

So shelling the price of a new PC to a UPS? Complete nonsense. Even if your hardware does get toasted gues what? You get to UPGRADE instead of dropping your money in the bucket. Also as you pointed out the UPS may not even save your computer, the end result may be exactly that dangerous fast power on-off-on cycle when the UPS drops off network and switches to battery

UPS is necessary only for work use if you absolutely need a workstation and deal with large in-memory datasets. Those are rare unless you do CAD or work *gasp* with large Excel / Word files. If you're worried about cache you can always install a battery/flash backed controller. Many people also forget that having UPS for the computer is not enough, you need to run your monitor(s) through it also if you plan to actually do anything during the battery backed period such as save open files etc. This will boost the already expensive UPS price even more.

The reality is anyway that any power failures are extremely rare and most of them are planned so the event of power cutting right in the middle of your work is very unlikely. For gaming machine? Meh.

[Bizman]

I agree that the electrical grid is prone to failures. On today's paper I read that a mammal much bigger than a squirrel got killed by an electric shock while intruding a transformer in a closed-for-demolition office complex. The incident happened on Saturday at 2 in the early morning. It cut the power off of an apartment house area in a southern Finnish town of 250,000 inhabitants for hours.

The other man survived, alcohol may have played a role in the incident.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

I agree that the electrical grid is prone to failures. On today's paper I read that a mammal much bigger than a squirrel got killed by an electric shock while intruding a transformer in a closed-for-demolition office complex. The incident happened on Saturday at 2 in the early morning. It cut the power off of an apartment house area in a southern Finnish town of 250,000 inhabitants for hours.

The other man survived, alcohol may have played a role in the incident.

Yep but guess how many computers died due to that even though none of the consumers ran UPS for sure? I'd put my money on a round figure of zero.

My house is literally filled with all kinds of electronics which are plugged in even during thunderstorms. TVs, stereos, radios, computers, power tools, power tool loaders, light controllers, lamps, measuring instruments, household appliances etc. None have ever failed due to thunder or power loss.

So no, I'm not quite ready yet to invest to a UPS that would cost or exceed the price of any hardware it was meant to protect in my house I'll take my chances and the insurance company will cover the damages if any occur.

[Chalenge]

I'm sorry but you're dead wrong.

Nope. Furthermore, for you to continue to encourage people to run their systems without protection is a sure sign of negligence.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/327183-28-after-power-outage-dead

http://superuser.com/questions/290487/computer-does-not-switch-on-after-power-outage

http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/pc-hardware/threads/67210/computer-wont-start-after-power-outage

And I could go on all day. Many of these people use surge protectors. There are thousands of such posts online. Electronics are sensitive equipment, yet somehow you think they are protected by magic somehow. Nope.

[Chalenge]

One reason you have been led astray is your geological position. You just don't see the same problems that we do from lightning storms, as one source of problems. Finland is not even on the scale of registered lightning events, because you just don't see storms up there. Lightning is more tropical, and Central Africa would be one place you probably would not want to set up a data center. Still, this lack of electrical experience on your part (Ripley) has led you into a false sense of security. Where I am, and where I have lived previously (South Florida) has led me to become very familiar with the issue. In Europe you almost never have to deal with it, by comparison. This has actually led to a situation where your electrical grid is very much less forgiving, even though you will probably never see an event that would bring that to your attention. Sun spots, or maybe a pulse weapon would probably shut you down, but it won't be an electrical storm.

But to take the extraordinary step of claiming that electronics are not sensitive to variation is a leap I doubt even lemmings would take.

http://geology.com/articles/lightning-map.shtml

[Bizman]

Before this gets nasty, couldn't we just accept that there are differences in grids in different countries? We don't have electric light bulbs which have been almost constantly on for 111 years. Although we've played with electricity since late 1870's, there were quite a lot of households totally without it in 1960's in densely populated countryside areas. We also lost one third of our water power capacity in WW2. What I'm trying to say, is that although we've had the know how since Edison built the lights to Finlayson's weavery, our grid is quite new compared to e.g. USA where there has been no massive bomb raids against energy strategic targets ever. I believe it makes a difference if parts of the grid have been in use for over a hundred years or only one third of that. Not to mention the different climate as you mentioned. Our main concern has been trees falling over the lines due to snow in wintertime and even that is slowly becoming obsolete when they put the wires underground.

[Chalenge]

Oh absolutely! You should see all that our country has to face when it comes to the power grid. It's actually quite nasty! I wouldn't want to live in California (for any reason really) because I think that next to Papua New Guinea, or Guam it's probably the least stable electrical grid in the world.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

Nope. Furthermore, for you to continue to encourage people to run their systems without protection is a sure sign of negligence.

http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/327183-28-after-power-outage-dead

http://superuser.com/questions/290487/computer-does-not-switch-on-after-power-outage

http://www.daniweb.com/hardware-and-software/pc-hardware/threads/67210/computer-wont-start-after-power-outage

And I could go on all day. Many of these people use surge protectors. There are thousands of such posts online. Electronics are sensitive equipment, yet somehow you think they are protected by magic somehow. Nope.

It's far more cost effective to replace the dead hardware with a new and faster one than investing to an UPS IF the hardware dies in the first place. Which it doesn't. You can dig 0.001% cases as much as you want using Google and I can show you a million opposite cases for each one you find.

For sure 99% of AH user base never runs UPS or even surge protectors and they're chugging along nicely all these years.

[Chalenge]

No you can't. When lightning strikes and no equipment is lost the complaints are zero. You are just trying to justify an untenable opinion. This is all anyone here needs to see:

Challenge is quite correct about this.  Brief power interruptions (on-off-on) can cause massive amounts of damage to electronic devices.  None of them are designed for an open ended surge of power.  Mobile devices are even more susceptible to damage.

[MrRiplEy[H]]

No you can't. When lightning strikes and no equipment is lost the complaints are zero. You are just trying to justify an untenable opinion. This is all anyone here needs to see:

Nope. I just explained to you that the power cycle is by default prevented in most motherboards so at most your PSU is going to see the turnaround. Further more my insurance covers lightning strikes. Nobodys going to invest a price of a second PC to an UPS just in case something, sometime might happen. I prefer to buy a faster new PC for the same money if the old one should accidentally break.

I've handled dozens of workstations, home computers and gazillion of other devices over the years which were not protected in any way. Yet they've all survived. Believe it or not. If an UPS would have been purchased for all those devices along the years the hardware costs would have doubled or tripled with zero returns

[Chalenge]

You're stretching the cost of a UPS a bit there Ripley. I bought two UPS devices for system for less than I paid for a single graphics card. You will never be able to buy an entire system for that same price. Furthermore, an adequate surge protector will cost you half of the price of a single UPS, and the UPS provides surge protection also!

Then you speak about a PSU preventing power cycling? Sorry, but that's just untrue. Also, why are you concentrating on surges? The most common issue is sags. Sags damage equipment slowly over time. You claim that you have never known of a PC failure because of electricity, yet there are thousands cited via Google including many that were not saved by surge protection.

The one instance I cited where I lost a motherboard came through across the network line, not through the UPS. On the system that lost the UPS it was battery failure, and the motherboard survived.

So the only thing your posts have accomplished is demonstrated your lack of knowledge concerning electricity, and your inability to understand the written word.

Just last February I recall reading a story where a German forensic team had determined the precise moment a recording had been made because of the electric hum from appliances in nearby sockets. So, I know your electric grid suffers the same issues as anyone else. The only thing saving you so far has been the fact that lightning storms are less frequent. Ignorance is bliss as they say.

[Rich46yo]

Back to cards, I just ordered a GTX780. If anyone is interested in my 580 it will be for sale in a week or two, "I havnt really done much gaming in it". When lightening is around I shut down. I dont even want to take a chance. Last summer I saved myself from a bad hit by shutting down during a storm that knocked us out of electric and cable for two days. Other then that our power is very stable.