A lightning strike has reportedly turned an internet connection into a destructive pathway for thousands of volts, leaving behind a damaged router and PC motherboard. The rare incident was shared on Reddit by user u/Greatfulx, who claims that during a recent thunderstorm, lightning entered their apartment complex through its coaxial cable infrastructure before damaging their network equipment and desktop PC.

According to the shared photos, the Ethernet port on their PC appears to have suffered extensive damage, leading them to believe the surge traveled from the router into the PC via the Ethernet cable. Notably, the damage on the motherboard appears to be concentrated around the Ethernet port rather than the entire board. While most modern Ethernet ports include surge protection designed to shield devices from electrical faults, an extremely high voltage power surge can potentially overload such safeguards. Additionally, the photos showcase the damaged router alongside large burn marks on nearby walls and the coaxial cable outside the apartment.

Router Blewup Motherboard from r/pcmasterrace

"Recent lighting storm struck my complex and traveled down my coaxial cable and into my apartment. Blew up in the middle of the night, so that was scary," the user wrote. "Thought I’d share, not in the position to rebuild so there that I guess!" The user told onlookers in the comments they were chasing up parties over possible negligence after one user pointed out a grounding/earthing attachment outside the building didn't appear to be connected properly.

The incident draws parallels to similar lightning-related hardware damage stories shared on Reddit. In one case, a user reportedly lost internet connectivity after a loud thunderstorm and initially assumed the issue was limited to their network connection. After some inspection, they discovered that the motherboard's dedicated LAN protection component, branded as "LAN Guard," had reportedly detached from the board. The user claimed that a surge possibly traveled through the Ethernet connection and was absorbed by the protective circuitry, potentially preventing more extensive damage to the rest of the PC. A similar lightning-related incident was shared by a user on Reddit who reported that a thunderstorm damaged their PlayStation 5’s Ethernet port while the console was connected via a wired network connection

Such incidents highlight a common vulnerability that is overlooked in most home electronic setups. While many users protect computers and other components with surge-protected power strips or uninterruptible power supplies (UPS), surges can enter through network and communication lines as well. If a lightning strike enters through a coaxial cable, modem, router, or switch, the resulting electrical energy may bypass protections designed primarily for AC power outlets.

Although no consumer-grade protection device can guarantee safeguard against a direct lightning strike, it is highly recommended that coaxial lines are properly grounded and that the use of surge protection for both power and data connections is used where possible.

The Thermaltake GF3 with 850W max power offers good performance, but not high enough for it to make our list of the best PSUs. Nonetheless, it has high build quality and is one of the first 850W PSUs offering ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 compatibility. The Corsair RM850x and the EVGA 850 G7, which achieve notably higher performance, are not ATX 3.0 ready and do not have 12VHPWR connectors. 

Thermaltake recently introduced the GF3 line, which consists of ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 ready PSUs. In this review, we will look at the model with 850W capacity, equipped with a 300W 12VHPWR connector, on paper at least, because in reality, the connector's sense pins are set for a max load of 600W. Channel Well Technology provides the platforms for all GF3 models but the 1350W and 1650W ones. 

The GF3 850 is rated Gold by 80 Plus and Cybenetics and has a Cybenetics A- noise rating. The fully modular cable design is a must in this price range ($120-130) and it uses a fluid dynamic bearing fan to ensure the absence of problems during the extended, ten-year warranty. Lastly, its dimensions are normal, with a 160 mm depth. 

Specifications

Power Specifications

Cables & Connectors

There are enough cables and connectors to cover the unit's maximum power efficiently. The single 12VHPWR connector makes the difference compared to the existing 850W units. This type of connector is new, but soon enough, every PSU with over 450W capacity will have one. 

Component Analysis

We strongly encourage you to have a look at our PSUs 101 article, which provides valuable information about PSUs and their operation, allowing you to better understand the components we're about to discuss.

CWT provides the platform, and its code name is CSZ. This is not a brand-new platform, but rather a modified design to offer the desired ATX 3.0 compatibility and a 12VHPWR connector. The parts that CWT used, after TT's instructions, are of high quality. The PCB is large enough to allow for good airflow, but typically CWT used small heat sinks, with the secondary side without any. With the proper fan speed profile, this won't affect the platform's reliability. 

The transient/EMI filter is complete and does a fair job. Surge protection is offered through an MOV, and inrush protection is handled by an NTC thermistor and bypass relay combo. 

The pair of bridge rectifiers can rectify up to 30A. 

The APFC converter uses two STMicroelectronics FETs and an On Semiconductor boost diode. The bulk cap is by Rubycon, and its capacity is barely enough to allow for more than 17 ms hold-up time. 

The main FETs are installed in a half-bridge topology. An LLC resonant converter is also used for higher efficiency. 

The 12V FETs are installed on a vertical board next to the main transformer for lower power losses. The minor rails are generated through a pair of DC-DC converters. 

The electrolytic filtering caps are of high quality. Most polymer caps are by lower-cost brands, but these caps are highly tolerant to harsh conditions. 

The standby PWM controller is an On-Bright OB2365T. 

We find several polymer caps on the modular PCB, for ripple filtering purposes. 

The main supervisor IC is a Weltrend WT7502R. It is installed on the same board with a Microchip PIC16F1503, which controls the fan's speed. 

Soldering quality is typical CWT, that is good. 

The cooling fan is by Hong Hua and it uses a fluid dynamic bearing, so it should work for a nice, long time.

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To learn more about our PSU tests and methodology, please check out How We Test Power Supply Units. 

Primary Rails And 5VSB Load Regulation

The following charts show the main rails' voltage values recorded between a range of 40W up to the PSU's maximum specified load, along with the deviation (in percent). Tight regulation is an important consideration every time we review a power supply because it facilitates constant voltage levels despite varying loads. Tight load regulation also, among other factors, improves the system’s stability, especially under overclocked conditions and, at the same time, it applies less stress to the DC-DC converters that many system components utilize.

The 12V rail starts low and increases its voltage with more than 60W load. Since we consider the minimum and maximum voltage deviations on all rails, sudden voltage increases affect load regulation. 

Hold-Up Time

Put simply, hold-up time is the amount of time that the system can continue to run without shutting down or rebooting during a power interruption.

The hold-up time is longer than 17 ms, but the power ok signal's hold-up time is lower than 16ms, which is the minimum that the ATX spec requires. 

Inrush Current

Inrush current, or switch-on surge, refers to the maximum, instantaneous input current drawn by an electrical device when it is first turned on. A large enough inrush current can cause circuit breakers and fuses to trip. It can also damage switches, relays, and bridge rectifiers. As a result, the lower the inrush current of a PSU right as it is turned on, the better.

Inrush current is low with 115V and on the high side with 230V. 

Leakage Current

In layman's terms, leakage current is the unwanted transfer of energy from one circuit to another. In power supplies, it is the current flowing from the primary side to the ground or the chassis, which in the majority of cases is connected to the ground. For measuring leakage current, we use a GW Instek GPT-9904 electrical safety tester instrument.

The leakage current test is conducted at 110% of the DUT's rated voltage input (so for a 230-240V device, we should conduct the test with 253-264V input). The maximum acceptable limit of a leakage current is 3.5 mA and it is defined by the IEC-60950-1 regulation, ensuring that the current is low and will not harm any person coming in contact with the power supply's chassis.

Leakage current is low. 

10-110% Load Tests

These tests reveal the PSU's load regulation and efficiency levels under high ambient temperatures. They also show how the fan speed profile behaves under increased operating temperatures.

The PSU delivers 110% of its max-rated capacity at high operating temperatures and for prolonged periods without any problems. Noise output is high, though, exceeding 50 dBA. 

20-80W Load Tests

In the following tests, we measure the PSU's efficiency at loads significantly lower than 10% of its maximum capacity (the lowest load the 80 Plus standard measures). This is important for representing when a PC is idle with power-saving features turned on.

Efficiency is high with light loads. 

2% or 10W Load Test

From July 2020, the ATX spec requires 70% and higher efficiency with 115V input. The applied load is only 10W for PSUs with 500W and lower capacities, while for stronger units, we dial 2% of their max-rated capacity.

The PSU easily breaks the 70% mark with a 2% load. 

Efficiency & Power Factor

Next, we plotted a chart showing the PSU's efficiency at low loads and loads from 10 to 110% of its maximum rated capacity. The higher a PSU’s efficiency, the less energy goes wasted, leading to a reduced carbon footprint and lower electricity bills. The same goes for Power Factor.

Efficiency with normal loads is low. The situation turns around with light and super-light loads. 

5VSB Efficiency

The 5VSB rail achieves high enough efficiency. 

Power Consumption In Idle And Standby

Vampire power is low.

Fan RPM, Delta Temperature, And Output Noise

All results are obtained between an ambient temperature of 37 to 47 degrees Celsius (98.6 to 116.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The fan's speed increases linearly to the load, even at increased operating temperatures, but at high speeds, the fan is noisy, reaching 50 dBA. Larger heat sinks would help keep noise output lower under harsh conditions. 

The following results were obtained at 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) ambient temperature.       

At normal operating temperatures, close to 30 degrees Celsius, and with the load pattern that we used, where we fully load the minor rails from the start, the semi-passive operation doesn't last long. Nevertheless, the fan's noise is minimal at up to 460W. Noise exceeds 30 dBA with more than 720W load, and the 40 dBA mark is passed with 825W. 

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Protection Features

Check out our PSUs 101 article to learn more about PSU protection features.

OCP is correctly set at 12V, and the same goes for OPP. However, this is not the case for the minor rails, where OCP is way higher than 130%. Moreover, the power ok signal's hold-up time is slightly lower than 16ms, which the ATX sets as the minimum level. 

DC Power Sequencing

According to Intel’s most recent Power Supply Design Guide (revision 1.4), the +12V and 5V outputs must be equal to or greater than the 3.3V rail at all times. Unfortunately, Intel doesn't mention why it is so important to always keep the 3.3V rail's voltage lower than the levels of the other two outputs.

No problems here, as the 3.3V rail is always lower than the other two.

Cross Load Tests

To generate the following charts, we set our loaders to auto mode through custom-made software before trying more than 25,000 possible load combinations with the +12V, 5V, and 3.3V rails. The deviations in each of the charts below are calculated by taking the nominal values of the rails (12V, 5V, and 3.3V) as point zero. The ambient temperature during testing was between 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Load Regulation Charts

Efficiency Graph

Ripple Graphs

The lower the power supply's ripple, the more stable the system will be and less stress will also be applied to its components.

Infrared Images

We apply a half-load for 10 minutes with the PSU's top cover and cooling fan removed before taking photos with a modified Fluke Ti480 PRO camera able to deliver an IR resolution of 640x480 (307,200 pixels).

As expected, the board holding the 12V FETs is the hottest part, given the lack of proper heat sinks. 

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Advanced Transient Response Tests

For details about our transient response testing, please click here.

In the real world, power supplies are always working with loads that change. It's of immense importance, then, for the PSU to keep its rails within the ATX specification's defined ranges. The smaller the deviations, the more stable your PC will be with less stress applied to its components. 

We should note that the ATX spec requires capacitive loading during the transient rests, but in our methodology, we also choose to apply a worst case scenario with no additional capacitance on the rails. 

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 20ms

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 10ms

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 1ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 20ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 10ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 1ms

Transient response is average at 12V but pretty tight on the other rails. Still, I want to see over 3.2V at 3.3V in all cases. 

ATX 3.0 Transient Response Tests

The following table shows the load that we applied. 

The PSU successfully passed all ATX 3.0 transient response tests for units equipped with 12VHPWR connectors. 

Turn-On Transient Tests

In the next set of tests, we measure the PSU's response in simpler transient load scenarios—during its power-on phase. Ideally, we don't want to see any voltage overshoots or spikes since those put a lot of stress on the DC-DC converters of installed components.

The turn-on transient response is good overall. We noticed a slight drop during the last test, which won't cause any issues. 

Power Supply Timing Tests

There are several signals generated by the power supply, which need to be within specified, by the ATX spec, ranges. If they are not, there can be compatibility issues with other system parts, especially mainboards. From year 2020, the PSU's Power-on time (T1) has to be lower than 150 ms and the PWR_OK delay (T3) from 100 to 150 ms, to be compatible with the Alternative Sleep Mode.

The PWR_OK delay is within the 100-150ms region, so the PSU supports the alternative sleep mode recommended by the ATX spec.

Ripple Measurements

Ripple represents the AC fluctuations (periodic) and noise (random) found in the PSU's DC rails. This phenomenon significantly decreases the capacitors' lifespan because it causes them to run hotter. A 10-degree Celsius increase can cut into a cap's useful life by 50%. Ripple also plays an important role in overall system stability, especially when overclocking is involved.

The ripple limits, according to the ATX specification, are 120mV (+12V) and 50mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple suppression is great on all rails. 

Ripple At Full Load

Ripple At 110% Load

Ripple At Cross-Load 1

Ripple At Cross-Load 4

EMC Pre-Compliance Testing – Average & Quasi-Peak EMI Detector Results

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is the ability of a device to operate properly in its environment without disrupting the proper operation of other nearby devices.

Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) stands for the electromagnetic energy a device emits, and it can cause problems in other nearby devices if too high. For example, it can cause increased static noise in your headphones or/and speakers.

΅We use TekBox's EMCview to conduct our EMC pre-compliance testing.

There is a single spur going over the limits, with both the average and peak EMI detectors. 

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Performance Rating

The GF3 850 achieves good performance, but the Corsair RM850x and the EVGA 850 G7 are far ahead. 

Noise Rating

The graph below depicts the cooling fan's average noise over the PSU's operating range, with an ambient temperature between 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Under normal operating temperatures, the average noise output is below 30 dBA. With lower noise at high loads, it could be close to 25 dBA. 

Efficiency Rating

The following graph shows the PSU's average efficiency throughout its operating range with an ambient temperature close to 30 degrees Celsius.

Average efficiency should be higher, above 88%, at least. 

Power Factor Rating

The following graphs show the PSU's average power factor reading throughout its operating range with an ambient temperature close to 30 degrees Celsius and 115V/230V voltage input. 

The APFC converter registers good performance. 

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The Thermaltake ToughPower GF3 850 achieves good overall performance, but that is not high enough to dethrone the Corsair RM850x and the EVGA 850 G7.

But the GF3 850 hides an ace up its sleeve; it is ATX 3.0 and PCIe 5.0 ready. Nvidia's RTX 4000 series might not require ATX 3.0 PSUs and 12VHPWR connectors to operate, but it is good to be as future-proof as possible because PSUs can outlive several GPU generations. 

From now on, we will see more and more ATX 3.0 compatible PSUs featuring 12VHPWR connectors. Such PSUs are tolerant to dreadful power spikes, reaching up to 200% of the PSU's max power. This is an overkill feature for the current generation GPUs, at least, but you cannot know what the future will bring. We strongly advise you to invest in an ATX 3.0 PSU. Still, if you find a good bargain on a previous-generation PSU, you could go for it, considering that the RTX 4000 graphics cards can operate with the provided adapter cables. The use of adapters is not ideal since they allow for higher voltage drops, especially under high loads, but this is the most affordable way to retain compatibility with PSUs that don't have 12VHPWR connectors.

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Disclaimer: Aris Mpitziopoulos is Tom's Hardware's PSU reviewer. He is also the Chief Testing Engineer of Cybenetics and developed the Cybenetics certification methodologies apart from his role on Tom's Hardware. Neither Tom's Hardware nor its parent company, Future PLC, are financially involved with Cybenetics. Aris does not perform the actual certifications for Cybenetics.

Cooler Master has introduced new power supplies for upcoming Mini-ITX systems that will use next-generation graphics cards equipped with the new 12+4-pin power connectors for the PCIe 5.0 spec. The new SFX PSUs are rated for 1100W and 1300W, so they can deliver up to 600W of power to a graphics card over the new 12+4 power cables. 

Cooler Master's V SFX Platinum lineup of modular PSUs includes two models rated for 1100W and 1300W (at 0°C to 50°C), making them the most powerful SFX power supplies available today. The key feature of the new devices is support for a 12+4-pin auxiliary PCIe 5.0 power cable for next-generation graphics cards that can deliver up to 600W of power to a board. 

Offering up to 1300W of power and a connector capable of delivering up to 600W of power to a next-generation graphics board based on AMD's RDNA 3 or Nvidia's Ada Lovelace architecture is a big deal. Meanwhile, it remains to be seen what kind of cooling it will require for a card that will consume up to 675W of power under load in a Mini-ITX system. Furthermore, the internal components of PSUs will also require active cooling under load, so the 92-mm fan might get noisy at times. 

The new power supplies from Cooler Master are compliant with the ATX version 3.42 specification and measure 100×125×63.5mm, which complies with the SFX spec. In addition, the PSUs are 80 Plus Platinum certified, so they are at least 89% - 94% efficient, depending on the input voltage. 

Being premium power supplies, the V SFX Platinum comes with all kinds of protection mechanisms, including overcurrent protection (OCP), overvoltage protection (OVP), short circuit protection (SCP), overpower protection (OPP), overtemperature protection (OTP), surge protection, and inrush protection. The devices will come with a bracket allowing installation into full-sized ATX towers. 

Cooler Master did not reveal when it plans to start selling its V SFX Platinum PSUs, but since they are already listed on its website, expect them to hit the market soon. As for pricing, given the fact that we are dealing with the world's most powerful SFX power supplies that even feature a next-generation power connector, expect these PSUs to carry a premium price tag.

The Thermaltake Toughpower PF1 650W achieves top overall performance, despite its mediocre transient response at +12V, which is the most important rail of all. With better transient response at the aforementioned rail, it could be the king in the 650W category. Still, the PF1 650W manages to earn a place in our best PSU picks article. Its major opponent is the Seasonic Focus Plus Platinum, which manages to take the lead with a small difference in overall performance. 

We have already evaluated two of the three Toughpower PF1 models, with 750W and 850W capacity, so we thought also to take a look at the smallest member of the line with 650W max power output. The Toughpower PF1 650W can support systems equipped with Nvidia RTX 3070/3060Ti or the AMD RX 6800, as long as you don't have installed other power-hungry components or a highly overclocked CPU. For the RTX 3080 and depending on the model, we would suggest an 850W power supply.

The Toughpower PF1 650W is a fully modular power supply, and like the other two of this line, it uses a platform provided by HKC. So far, this OEM didn't have much to show in the high-end category, so it is nice to see a new contender in this category where a handful of OEMs dominate the market. The PSU has compact dimensions, measuring only 140mm in length, and it is 80 PLUS Platinum, and ETA-A rated in the Cybenetics efficiency scale. It also has a LAMBDA-A noise certification, which translates to low noise output. Typically, the higher the efficiency rating, the lower the noise output since thermal loads are at low levels, so there is no need for aggressive fan speed profiles unless the manufacturer uses tiny heat sinks or/and low-quality components which need to be kept at as low as possible operating temperatures. 

Specifications

Power Specifications

Cables & Connectors

There are enough cables and connectors, including two EPS and four PCIe. Cable length is satisfactory, and the distance between the peripheral connectors is adequate at 150mm. Finally, there are no in-line caps on the cables, which can be a major pain during cable routing and management.

Component Analysis

We strongly encourage you to have a look at our PSUs 101 article, which provides valuable information about PSUs and their operation, allowing you to better understand the components we're about to discuss.

This is a high-end HKC platform using a half-bridge topology and an LLC resonant converter on the primary side. On the secondary side, we find synchronous rectification and DC-DC converters to generate the minor rails. 

Soldering quality is satisfactory, and the design leaves lots of space on the secondary side, which looks almost empty. There no heat sinks on this side, with the 12V FETs being directly exposed to the fan's airflow since they are installed on the top side of the PCB. 

The transient filter does a good job, according to our test results. The only issue is that it lacks an MOV, so there is no surge protection. On the other hand, the PSU is equipped with an NTC thermistor and a relay, with the former having low resistance. With a higher resistance NTC thermistor, the inrush currents with 230V would be even lower. 

Two bridge rectifiers are bolted onto a small heatsink.

The APFC converter uses two FETs and a single boost diode. The bulk caps are provided by Rubycon and have enough capacity to allow for a higher than 17ms hold-up time. 

The main FETs are provided by NCE Power, a Chinese manufacturer, and are installed into a half-bridge topology. An LLC converter is also used to boost efficiency.

Six FETs handle the regulation of the 12V rail, and for the minor rails, a pair of DC-DC converters are used. The latter also uses two PWM controllers, provided by Anpec. 

There aren't many electrolytic caps, but the ones that HKC used are of good quality. A large number of polymer caps do the heavy lifting in ripple filtering. 

The standby PWM controller is a PN8141 IC, and the 5VSB rectifier is a SB1045L SBR.

Eleven polymer caps are installed on the modular board's face to provide an extra ripple filtering layer. 

Not much to see on the solder side. This is a major difference in design compared to the other popular platforms by Seasonic, CWT, and Super Flower. 

The cooling fan has Thermaltake's logo, and it uses a Hydraulic bearing. It's OEM is Shenzhen Xin Wang Electronics, another Chinese fan manufacturer with better prices, most likely, compared to popular brands like Hong Hua and Globe Fan. 

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To learn more about our PSU tests and methodology, please check out How We Test Power Supply Units. 

Primary Rails And 5VSB Load Regulation

The following charts show the main rails' voltage values recorded between a range of 40W up to the PSU's maximum specified load, along with the deviation (in percent). Tight regulation is an important consideration every time we review a power supply because it facilitates constant voltage levels despite varying loads. Tight load regulation also, among other factors, improves the system’s stability, especially under overclocked conditions and, at the same time, it applies less stress to the DC-DC converters that many system components utilize.

Load regulation is tight on all major rails. It exceeds 3% at 5VSB, but we don't care much about this rail as long as its voltage is within the ATX spec's range. 

Hold-Up Time

Put simply; hold-up time is the amount of time that the system can continue to run without shutting down or rebooting during a power interruption.

The large Rubycon bulk caps provide a long hold-up time, almost 23ms.  The Power Ok signal is accurate, too. 

Inrush Current

Inrush current, or switch-on surge, refers to the maximum, instantaneous input current drawn by an electrical device when it is first turned on. A large enough inrush current can cause circuit breakers and fuses to trip. It can also damage switches, relays, and bridge rectifiers. As a result, the lower the inrush current of a PSU right as it is turned on, the better.

The inrush current is low with 115V and on the high side with 230V. A higher resistance NTC thermistor could help lower the 230V input inrush current. 

Leakage Current

In layman's terms, leakage current is the unwanted transfer of energy from one circuit to another. In power supplies, it is the current flowing from the primary side to the ground or the chassis, which in the majority of cases is connected to the ground. For measuring leakage current, we use a GW Instek GPT-9904 electrical safety tester instrument.

The leakage current test is conducted at 110% of the DUT's rated voltage input (so for a 230-240V device, we should conduct the test with 253-264V input). The maximum acceptable limit of a leakage current is 3.5 mA and it is defined by the IEC-60950-1 regulation, ensuring that the current is low and will not harm any person coming in contact with the power supply's chassis.

Leakage current stays at low levels. 

10-110% Load Tests

These tests reveal the PSU's load regulation and efficiency levels under high ambient temperatures. They also show how the fan speed profile behaves under increased operating temperatures.

The PSU delivered 110% of its max-rated-capacity at almost 47 degrees Celsius without any problems. Naturally, the fan spins at full speed under such tough conditions to cope with the thermal load, which is not excessive at 89.5W. 

20-80W Load Tests

In the following tests, we measure the PSU's efficiency at loads significantly lower than 10% of its maximum capacity (the lowest load the 80 PLUS standard measures). This is important for representing when a PC is idle with power-saving features turned on.

The cooling fan doesn't need to spin at light loads, even if the ambient temperature exceeds 35 degrees Celsius. 

2% or 10W Load Test

Intel plans on raising the ante at efficiency levels under ultra-light loads. So from July 2020, the ATX spec will require 70% and higher efficiency with 115V input. The applied load is only 10W for PSUs with 500W and lower capacities, while for stronger units we dial 2% of their max-rated-capacity.

It is a shame that this platform cannot deliver more than 70% efficiency with 2% load, as the new ATX spec dictates. It is pretty close, though. 

Efficiency & Power Factor

Next, we plotted a chart showing the PSU’s efficiency at low loads, and loads from 10 to 110% of its maximum rated capacity. The higher a PSU’s efficiency, the less energy goes wasted, leading to a reduced carbon footprint and lower electricity bills. The same goes for Power Factor.

All in all, this is a highly efficient platform requiring some tuning with super-light loads.

5VSB Efficiency

The 5VSB rail is highly efficient. 

Power Consumption In Idle And Standby

Vampire power is low with both 115V and 230V input. 

Fan RPM, Delta Temperature, And Output Noise

All results are obtained between an ambient temperature of 37 to 47 degrees Celsius (98.6 to 116.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

The fan speed profile is not aggressive, and given the lack of proper heat sinks on the secondary side, it is logical that it allows for high speeds under increased loads and operating temperatures. 

The following results were obtained at 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit) ambient temperature.       

Under normal operating temperatures, the fan speed profile is relaxed. 

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Protection Features

Check out our PSUs 101 article to learn more about PSU protection features.

OCP is correctly set at 12V and 5V, but we cannot say the same for 3.3V. There is absolutely no point for such a high triggering OCP point at 3.3V. 

OPP is properly configured, and there is over-temperature protection, which is essential to any power supply. Finally, it is a great shame that there is no MOV in the transient filter, limiting the PSU's surge protection.

DC Power Sequencing

According to Intel’s most recent Power Supply Design Guide (revision 1.4), the +12V and 5V outputs must be equal to or greater than the 3.3V rail at all times. Unfortunately, Intel doesn't mention why it is so important to always keep the 3.3V rail's voltage lower than the levels of the other two outputs.

The 3.3V rail is lower than the other two in all tests we conducted, so there is no problem. 

Cross Load Tests

To generate the following charts, we set our loaders to auto mode through custom-made software before trying more than 25,000 possible load combinations with the +12V, 5V, and 3.3V rails. The deviations in each of the charts below are calculated by taking the nominal values of the rails (12V, 5V, and 3.3V) as point zero. The ambient temperature during testing was between 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

Load Regulation Charts

Efficiency Graph

Ripple Graphs

The lower the power supply's ripple, the more stable the system will be and less stress will also be applied to its components.

Infrared Images

We apply a half-load for 10 minutes with the PSU's top cover and cooling fan removed before taking photos with a Fluke Ti480 Pro camera able to deliver an IR resolution of 640x480 (307,200 pixels).

The primary transformer looks to be the hottest part of the PSU when there is no airflow. This is why HKC used three metallic bars to keep its operating temperatures at lower levels. 

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Advanced Transient Response Tests

For details about our transient response testing, please click here.

In the real world, power supplies are always working with loads that change. It's of immense importance, then, for the PSU to keep its rails within the ATX specification's defined ranges. The smaller the deviations, the more stable your PC will be with less stress applied to its components. 

We should note that the ATX spec requires capacitive loading during the transient rests, but in our methodology, we also choose to apply a worst case scenario with no additional capacitance on the rails. 

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 20ms

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 10ms

Advanced Transient Response at 20% – 1ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 20ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 10ms

Advanced Transient Response at 50% – 1ms

The PSU doesn't have a good transient response at 12V, which is the rail that will have to deal with the heaviest loads. On the other hand, the minor rails perform well here. 

Turn-On Transient Tests

In the next set of tests, we measure the PSU's response in simpler transient load scenarios—during its power-on phase. Ideally, we don't want to see any voltage overshoots or spikes since those put a lot of stress on the DC-DC converters of installed components.

There are no notable voltage overshoots and voltage spikes during the PSU's turn-on phase. 

Power Supply Timing Tests

There are several signals generated by the power supply, which need to be within specified, by the ATX spec, ranges. If they are not, there can be compatibility issues with other system parts, especially mainboards. From year 2020, the PSU's Power-on time (T1) has to be lower than 150ms and the PWR_OK delay (T3) from 100 to 150ms, to be compatible with the Alternative Sleep Mode.

The PWR_OK delay is out of the 100-150ms region, so the PSU does not support the alternative sleep mode, which is recommended by the ATX spec.

Ripple Measurements

Ripple represents the AC fluctuations (periodic) and noise (random) found in the PSU's DC rails. This phenomenon significantly decreases the capacitors' lifespan because it causes them to run hotter. A 10-degree Celsius increase can cut into a cap's useful life by 50%. Ripple also plays an important role in overall system stability, especially when overclocking is involved.

The ripple limits, according to the ATX specification, are 120mV (+12V) and 50mV (5V, 3.3V, and 5VSB).

Ripple suppression is excellent on all rails. 

Ripple At Full Load

Ripple At 110% Load

Ripple At Cross-Load 1

Ripple At Cross-Load 2

EMC Pre-Compliance Testing – Average & Peak EMI Detector Results

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is the ability of a device to operate properly in its environment without disrupting the proper operation of other nearby devices.

Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) stands for the electromagnetic energy a device emits, and it can cause problems in other nearby devices if too high. For example, it can be the cause of increased static noise in your headphones or/and speakers.

A single spur exceeds the limit with the average detector, but everything is in control with the peak detector. 

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Performance Rating

The unit's overall performance is high, with Thermaltake's offer achieving second place. 

Noise Rating

The graph below depicts the cooling fan's average noise over the PSU's operating range, with an ambient temperature between 30 to 32 degrees Celsius (86 to 89.6 degrees Fahrenheit).

This is a low output-noise PSU. There are three similar capacity PSUs, though, with even lower average noise levels. 

Efficiency Rating

The following graph shows the PSU's average efficiency throughout its operating range with an ambient temperature close to 30 degrees Celsius.

The average efficiency is sky-high. 

Power Factor Rating

The following graph shows the PSU's average power factor reading throughout its operating range with an ambient temperature close to 30 degrees Celsius.

Though this is not the best performing APFC converter, it's still a decent result here. 

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The Thermaltake Toughpower PF1 model with 650W max power looks to be the best of the line, achieving very high performance in almost all sections. If the transient response at 12V was better, this unit would easily take the lead from the Seasonic Focus Plus Platini, with similar capacity. It is great to see a not-so-well-known manufacturer like HKC delivering such a capable platform. Moreover, this PSU comes with many modular cables and the corresponding connectors to support a strong gaming system. 

While Nvidia recommends at least a 750W power supply for its RTX 3080 graphics card, I was able to power a high-end system equipped with an Intel 10700K processor running at the same speeds as a 10900K CPU and an MSI GeForce RTX 3080 Ventus 3X 10G OC without any problems. Actually, I tried several popular high-end 650W PSUs: Corsair RM650x, Seasonic Focus Plus Gold 650, XPG Core Reactor 650, and none of them had any problem with this specific MSI card, which has a pretty low power limit, though, at 320W. There are some RTX 3080 implementations, e.g., the Asus GeForce RTX 3080 10GB ROG Strix, with much higher power limits where even 750W PSUs might have issues. 

All in all, the Thermaltake Toughpower PF1 650W is a very good power supply which could easily be the king of its category with a little better transient response at 12V. 

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Disclaimer: Aris Mpitziopoulos is Tom's Hardware's PSU reviewer. He is also the Chief Testing Engineer of Cybenetics and developed the Cybenetics certification methodologies apart from his role on Tom's Hardware. Neither Tom's Hardware nor its parent company, Future PLC, are financially involved with Cybenetics. Aris does not perform the actual certifications for Cybenetics.

Whatever home office setup you have or high-end gaming rig you own, protecting your precious electronics from common electrical mishaps is just common sense. There are few things worse than having your expensive gadgets or equipment ruined due to some power spike or short circuit, knowing that you could have avoided it by taking simple precautions such as investing in a reliable surge protector or power backup system. There are of course a variety of power surge protection options these days that come in varying price points depending on your personal wants and needs.

Features

ESHLDTY has brought a unique option to the table, combining power safety and surge protection with fun and practical features such as IPX6 splash-proof protection, 2.4A and 20W PD fast charging capabilities, a pull-out phone/tablet cradle and even RGB music rhythm lighting, all packaged in a portable tower form factor to fit on your desk, so your ports and plugs are in easy reach. The T1 power strip tower comes with nine tamper-resistant outlets that are compatible with Type A (two prong) and Type B (three prong) plugs, and are widely spaced to avoid interference. We found, however, that the tower design may not be as ideal for larger or odd shaped plugs like Apple’s MagSafe power adapter, due to its tendency to sag and potentially slip out of the socket. Unlike traditional power strips that are usually on the floor, the T1 tower strip offers better organization for your devices and space-saving convenience, and if you like RGB, it’s also an aesthetically pleasing addition to your home office or gaming station.

With an IPC (Ingress Protection Code) rating of X6, the T1 appears to provide ample water-splash protection in case of simple water spill accidents - but nothing more. We had fun trying out the splash proof capability of the T1 as seen in the short demo below. 

It should be noted that in cases of heavy water sprays or any high-pressure water accidents, you will need to unplug the T1, towel it dry and wait at least 24 hours before reusing the power strip.

ESHLDTY T1’s additional smart and safety features:

• Overload protection
• Surge protection
• Energy saver: illuminated and covered on/off switch to save power
• Fireproof: made with UL 94-VO material
• Heat protection: includes a built-in chip that monitors delivery temperatures and shuts off when the temperature rises above 120 C or 248 F
• Tamper-resistant sockets: requires a proper plug to be inserted and appropriate pressure 75N to deliver electricity (ETL and FCC approved)
• Smart charging: recognizes smart devices connected and properly allocates the optimal safe charging current to each device

 ESHLDTY T1 Specifications 

Caveats

A few things to consider about this product:

• While the T1 supports Type A and B power plugs, it only works well with small profile plugs. Larger AC adapters will prevent you from making use of every outlet on the T1. But you could get a set of short power extension cords to move the larger plugs away from the tower.

• This is also true of the phone/tablet cradle feature that slides out from the base of the T1. Expect to lose use of one or more outlets when making use of the tray. It might make sense to keep power sources that can be easily removed on the side away from where the tray slides out.

• When using the T1’s Built-in RGB Music Rhythm Light, keep the music source close, as music with lots of softer parts won’t trigger the lights and ambient noise is easily picked up in the vicinity. Any conversations or other noise nearby are likely to be included in your light show. Another option might be to switch to the multi-color strobe setting and let the lights play a supporting role.

Bottom Line

All in all, ESHLDTY’s T1 power strip tower provides a convenient way for you to organize and plug-in your computer hardware and electronic devices on your desk without worrying about spills. Its smart design provides proper drainage to trap and channel liquid away from electrical components to prevent short circuit mishaps. Admittedly, there are a lot of cheap options available in the market today, but those typically come with only surge protection and without any bells whistles. However, if you are looking for something trendier and are willing to pay a premium for features like RGB lighting, smart charging and splash proof capabilities, then this product is definitely worth your consideration.

The T1 is currently available at Indiegogo.com for $65 (MSRP $89) and has started shipping this month in time for the holidays. Other ESHLDTY power safety products like the B1 and B2 are available on Amazon.

SilverStone puts lots of effort in the small form factor PSU category, and a few months ago released the Nightjar NJ450-SXL. It's the only passively cooled SFX-L unit available on the market today. It's based on an impressive platform, provided by Enhance Electronics. So it's not exactly a surprise that this power supply has been named as "CES 2019 Innovation Awards Honoree."

This title goes to products or technologies that score above the threshold set for a specific category, and the NJ450-SXL definitely sets a new standard in the small form factor category. So far, no other manufacturer has introduced a passive SFX-L unit, and besides dead-silent operation, the NJ450-SXL offers high performance as well, along with extremely high efficiency levels. After all, with a fanless product like this, the only way to deal with heat dissipation is to increase efficiency.

The NJ450-SXL will be on display, along with the rest of the nominees, at the Innovation Awards Showcase at CES 2019 in Las Vegas early next year. 

The PSU is currently available wordlwide, with a recommended MSRPs of $189.00 for the US market, and €159.90 in Europe.

Its noteworthy features are:

• SFX-L form factor
• Fanless design
• LAMBDA-A++ noise certification by Cybenetics (the best in the scale)
• 80 PLUS Platinum and ETA-A (88-91 percent) efficiency certifications
• Fully modular (1x EPS and 4x PCIe connectors)
• 24/7 continuous power output at 40 ℃ ambient

The following tables show the important aspects of this product.

Specifications

Cable Configuration

Power Specifications

The AmazonBasics CU23011W

Since I began tearing down USB adapters, a clear trend has started to emerge: everything under $4 is garbage in my performance and safety testing, while products from about $10 and up are generally pretty good. Of course, the cheap units are generic, while the pricier ones come from known brands with a reputation to maintain, skewing my expectations somewhat.

Today, we’re fleshing out the $10 category some more with the addition of Amazon’s house-brand CU23011W tap-adapter.

Packaging

In typical fashion, the CU23011W arrives in Amazon’s generic brown box with its black-on-white branding and description label doubling as the box’s seal. Inside, a secondary cardboard insert cradles the combo tap-adapter to prevent it from rattling around during shipping. Though basic, this does a fine job of moving products from factories, through the warehouses, and to your doorstep in good physical condition.

Accessories

How many accessories would you expect a (presumably) decent-quality and safe $10 adapter to ship with? The only thing included in the box, aside from the CU23011W itself, is a trilingual (English/Spanish/French) manual. The documentation predictably explains that the port with two lightning icons is rated for 2.4A, while the other is only good for 1A. Half of a page is dedicated to telling you how to plug devices in, another half covers the usual surge protector cautions and warnings, and the rest discusses regulatory compliance and warranty coverage.

As you would expect from a better-known brand, the manual appears to be written in proper English. I skimmed the French section, and that also seemed adequate. I presume Amazon didn’t skimp on the Spanish translation either.

Back

Labeling consumes most of the back side's surface area. We also get four screws, the prong trio, and a date dial indicating that the housing was made in October 2017 (just three months prior to my order).

Screws! Beautiful Screws!

Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic, but when a majority of AC adapters are sealed shut, I get a little excited about the prospect of putting an adapter back together after I'm done testing it. There's none of that tamper-resistant rubbish here, just plain Phillips-head screws.

Label

As is almost always the case with power outlet accessories, the multi-tap is rated for 15A. In the surge suppression department, we have 900V live-to-neutral with the relevant UL/CSA standards on its ETL records, and nothing for the other two possible pairings. The USB output is specified as 3.4A with Level VI efficiency. However, the ETL records lack anything related to information technology equipment.

Cautions include the standard dry location-only and instructions not to install surge protection on outlets with less than 10 meters of wiring to the breaker box.

Also, Ã doesn’t exist in French. That should have been À.

Front

Up front, we find three power outlets, two USB ports, and the protection indicator LED. Again, the port with two lightning bolt icons is intended for high-draw devices. But how much would you bet that they're internally connected in parallel, just like every other sub-8A adapter so far?

The power outlets are barely spaced far enough apart to accommodate straight plugs. For anything else, you'll almost certainly have to forfeit the middle outlet to plug in more than one other cord or adapter.

It Burrs

All three outlets show some degree of molding flash around the ground hole’s bevel, though the center outlet has it much worse than the other two. This picture was taken before even using the CU23011W. Could there be a molding issue? Did I inherit someone’s return? Was the damage caused by factory quality control? With some luck, we’ll find clues within.

Cracking Open

When I first saw the screws, I thought this tap-adapter combo would come apart easily. It did, for the most part, though it took me about two minutes to realize that the prongs were tight-fitted through the rear cover and needed to be pushed back out to gain access.

It looks like we may have a couple of interesting design arrangements to analyze, such as the ground bus that doesn’t look like anything I have come across previously.

First Peek

This is one neatly packed device. It shows very little wasted space and what could be one of the most promising circuit boards I've seen (based on that gigantic isolation slot and mirror-finish soldering).

With the board’s jumper wires running under the board, and the board screwed into the front cover, I was never going to get the cover off until I figured out I had to press the pins back through.

Ground Oddities

I have never used this tap-adapter before, and its ground contacts are on the opposite side of the prong holes where they can’t put any force across the hole. Yet, the prong shaft wall for the center outlet is cracked. This strongly suggests that the cosmetic damage at its entrance was indeed caused by someone struggling to plug something in.

How is the ground pin actually attached to the strip? From this angle, the connecting end looks tapered. There are no signs of welding or soldering. Is it screwed in from the other side? Prepare for disappointment.

Wandering Strands

While the blue wire got cleanly threaded through its metal strip for soldering, the same courtesy wasn't extended to the brown wire, which had a handful of strands snag on the hole’s jagged edge and crumple there.

In MOV-based surge protectors, increased wiring resistance between the MOVs and the loads they are meant to protect reduces their effectiveness.

Although a few strands may not make much of a difference, I’d still count that as a reason to aim for cleanliness. Threading wires through holes isn't rocket science. Twist and tin the wires first if you have to.

Ground Strip

Here’s a ground strip style I hadn’t seen before. Instead of rectangular flaps or pinch fingers, we have flat springs with guide tabs that slot into channels along the prong wells to limit their travel. Curiously enough, the two side contacts have a dimple to improve their chances of making multiple contacts, while the middle one doesn’t.

How about the ground prong’s attachment? The hollow pin does not appear to protrude on the other side.

Weak Spot

Zooming in much closer, we can barely discern the hollow prong’s outline making it through the metal strip. Solder holds it by little more than the pin’s immediate perimeter. Was this meant to be an expansion crimp joint? It would still require enough of a lip through the metal strip to retain it. This doesn’t make sense.

With so little overlap between the two joined pieces, it is no wonder that some people in Amazon’s reviews have reported ground prongs ripping out of their units. This should have been welded, or at least visibly flared before soldering. Unfortunately, our findings get worse before they get better.

Contact Patch – Or Lack Thereof

Here, the ground prong would enter the socket from the frame's bottom, hit the contact strip's midsection, force it down, then slip over it. The horizontal parts that go out of frame are guides that hold the finger against the well’s wall so the prong cannot get under it.

Based on the cracked ground channel in the front cover and what looked like gouge marks on the exterior, I expected telltale friction marks up the middle of this contact finger. There are none, though. I did, however, find all three fingers with similar elliptical marks along the upward bend not present anywhere else.

Seeking Validation

I put the ground strip back in the shell and plugged a cord in to verify how much of a mark that would make.

My guess about where contact with the prong would happen was low by about one millimeter. It left behind a distinctly polished spot that definitively wasn’t there before. Conclusion? It is improbable that I received a returned unit. The origin of damage to the ground pin hole remains a mystery.

Neutral And Live Slugs

Here’s another angle of that jumper with crumpled strands. We also see heat-damaged insulation (darker brown) below the area that got scraped by the board due to solder wicking into the wire, rendering it too stiff to bend during (dis)assembly.

Can you guess how the live and neutral prongs (thick metal slug on the right) are attached to the metal strips from this angle? Since these are electrical and mechanical connections, they should ideally be welded or brazed...

Stake-On

The two main prongs of interest are attached to their respective contact strips using a single square stake, punched down the middle to expand and lock it in place. While this does a great job of ensuring that the slugs don't get left behind if the adapter is ripped from the wall outlet, a single point only eliminates three out of six degrees of freedom. It is locked in for the x, y, and z axes, but given any slack or force, it will still pitch, yaw, and roll by some amount. Movement from normal use will inevitably wear it down and work it loose.

A loose connection becomes a nuisance at best when it causes your devices to randomly lose power. However, it's a fire hazard at worst under non-trivial load.

Wiggle-Wiggle-Wiggle-Nope.

There's no party in Amazon’s house tonight; the CU23011W is not having such a good time. Stuff like this should make you lose your mind. Shake that.

How did this get through QC? We'll never know. But any Amazon customer receiving a unit with this issue would certainly ask for a refund after dealing with connected appliances and gadgets randomly losing power.

Would you trust this to pass 15A from the wall outlet to its three outlets? I certainly wouldn’t. Let’s stop shuffling.

Zero Degrees Of Freedom

Although soldering isn't ideal for mechanical joining, it is the only thing I have on-hand to work with. The stake bears all of the pulling and pushing (the dominant forces), while the solder needs to lock up the remaining degrees of freedom to prevent wear on the stake and guarantee electrical continuity. What sort of solder did I use? Tin-based/lead-free for its relatively high melting point and better mechanical strength than lead-based solder (Sn96.5Ag3Cu0.5 if you really want to know; that’s the only other alloy I have aside from Pb60Sn40).

With a solder joint securing both sides of each prong across the strips’ width, these aren’t going anywhere.

Board Bottom

What are the notable features on the circuit board’s bottom? There's an input fuse for the AC-DC converter, spark gaps and the input diode bridge in the bottom-right corner, a strange pad configuration where an SO-8 package straddles the D3 and D4 footprints in the bottom-left, and one of those SOT23-5 chips near a USB port's pins.

From a safety perspective, the two most significant components we can see are the L-shaped isolation slot and what is slotted into it.

Am I under-appreciating the fuse? Perhaps, though a sacrificial trace flanked by anti-tracking slots would be similarly effective.

Near-Perfect Soldering

Out of all of this board's solder joints, the one on the right capacitor pad is the worst I could find. The second-worst has about half as much excess solder on it. The rest look just about right for surface-mount components that went through the solder wave process, as evidenced by the red glue under surface-mounted components that's there to prevent them from washing away.

JoulWho?

What is the mystery SO-8 chip for? As you may have guessed from its location in place of the diode footprints, the JW7707F is an integrated synchronous rectifier solution. The only external components it requires are a resistor and capacitor for snubbing switching transients (sometimes present in non-synchronous designs), along with a second pair for powering itself.

Who owns this unfamiliar logo and makes (or at least brands) the IC? A Chinese company called JoulWatt that specializes in power management products.

The Mystery SOT23-5

What does this RH7901A do? If you guessed it was a CX1901 single-port identification chip based on its location relative to one of the USB ports, you were almost correct. Apart from offering some extra package pin-out variants, the Rong He part appears to be otherwise equivalent as far as key datasheet values and tables are concerned.

Paper Please! (And Make It Flame-Retardant)

What is so special about putting a piece of cardboard inside an isolation slot? It inserts a physical barrier between the high- and low-voltage sides to contain most catastrophic failures. Arc flash may sputter material on the cardboard’s surface, but the paper's specific heat should quench it long before anything manages to get through. Worst case, flame-retardant materials don’t lose their battles without raising an overbearing stench.

A nice air gap is great, an air gap with a physical barrier floating in it is greater.

Board Top

This is one busy-looking board. Electricity’s trip through the circuit begins through the MOV cluster on the right, followed by the common-mode filter and capacitor bank before hitting the AC-DC converter chip driving the transformer. On the transformer’s secondary, all we see from the top is a bank of three polymer caps.

Fairest Comparison

Among the adapters in my collection, Aukey’s PA-U32 is the closest match I could think of, and its assembly looks tiny next to the CU23011W. Of course, the Aukey doesn’t have MOVs and is rated for 1A less output current, which helps considerably with size reduction.

Comparing transformer cores, the CU23011W’s is about 20% wider and taller than Aukey’s, but about the same depth. That makes it approximately 50% bigger by volume, which is in line with its ~50% higher output rating (assuming they’re using similar core material and operate at similar frequencies).

Surge Protection

The CU23011W’s surge protection feature is provided by a set of four 14D331K MOVs in parallel, shrink-wrapped to their thermal protection fuse.

How does the “Protected” LED detect that the MOVs have gone bad? Simple: when MOVs fail, their leakage current rises, increasing their power dissipation and temperature until they get hot enough to blow the thermal fuse. Since the USB adapter circuitry is connected downstream from this fuse, the AC-DC converter loses power too. In essence, it is a glorified “On” indicator, as is nearly always the case.

Obligatory Stray Bead

If you look hard enough, you can probably find stray solder beads in just about any consumer electronic device. Here, we have a rather large ball approximately one millimeter in diameter barely hanging on the transformer’s tape, next to a splash of silicone adhesive.

Wire To Seemingly Nowhere

See that wire sticking out from the white goo near the top-right corner, skittering off behind the transformer tape wrap? Where could it possibly go that couldn't be handled within the coil form or through the board? Could it be stray excess wire that got taped over instead of trimmed? The only way to find out for certain is to expose it.

Final Destination

Where does this mystery wire end? Its final stop is seemingly nowhere in particular. However, I seriously doubt the wire’s tinned section happened to line up with the tape’s width and location by chance.

You may remember how some adapters in previous tear-downs failed my voltage withstand tests due to arcing between pins through the ferrite core. This wire is likely intended to pick up stray charges from the core before they ever get a chance to burn permanently conductive tracks into the coil form.

Cap On Stilts

Output filtering is handled by a proper 1nF X1Y1-class (8kV non-repetitive peak) capacitor and a trio of 560µF 6.3V polymer capacitors, one sitting between the two ports and the other two in the corner. There is enough space on both sides of the right capacitor to be flush with the board, so why isn’t it flush with the board?

Mechanical Interference

Whoever designed the capacitor footprints made them slightly smaller than the capacitors, and also failed to account for sleeving on the transformer’s secondary wires when placing their holes. Now we have the capacitor attempting to occupy the same physical space as the white wire’s insulation, preventing the capacitor from sitting flush.

This could have been avoided by either shifting the synchronous rectifier on the bottom away by half a millimeter or replacing the unused diode footprints with a slightly smaller copper-pour heat sink for the JouleWatt chip and tweaking the hole’s location accordingly.

Refresher

If you forgot about the size difference between a regular 1kV capacitor and a Y-class one, here’s a refresher. The last (and only) time I showed two of these side by side, they were of different nominal values. This time around, though, they are both “102” codes, meaning 1nF. The proper Y-class capacitor is about four times as thick and 50% wider in diameter for a total of eight to 10 times bigger by volume.

All of that internal redundancy with increased safety margins comes at a hefty premium in terms of volumetric density.

The Show-Runner

At the heart of Amazon’s CU23011W, we find a Chipown PN8386. This is the manufacturer’s top-of-the-line monolithic universal input converter. It features an internal startup bias circuit, a 1.6Ω 650V FET, it claims to enable standby power as low as 30mW, and it's intended for output power up to 18W (3.6A at 5V).

Apart from the prong attachment concerns, this adapter appears to have all the right parts and design precautions necessary to safely deliver the expected 3.4A and Level VI efficiency.

Standby Power

Since the adapter has 30µF of input filtering and very low standby power, its top-off current peak near each voltage peak gets lost in the noise as far as we can see. Thankfully, calculating power by integrating v(t)i(t) cancels out the noise and yields an input power of 36mW. That's pretty close to Chipown’s sub-30mW claim, especially if you account for the red LED and its 3kΩ current-limiting resistor drawing about 1mA. That’s 5mW in output power.

Efficiency

Among the single-stage adapters that have survived my gauntlet and earned a pass, Amazon’s CU23011W takes the efficiency lead up through 8W and holds on to second place (while also beating Level VI efficiency) until 18W. Aiming for a cut-off voltage of 4.75, its output current eventually stabilizes at 3.64A (240mA overload), where its efficiency can be forgiven for dipping below the curve.

I tested the CU23011W fully buttoned up in its enclosure, so it didn't get receive a convection cooling bonus. Even after several minutes at 3.5-3.65A, the unit had barely warmed up.

Output Noise Waveform

When measuring output noise, I rarely get to use my oscilloscope's 10mV vertical scale for long. Amazon’s CU23011W is an exception, allowing me to continue using this scale at up to 2A output load. At 15 switching cycles spanning 600µs, we get a surprisingly low operating frequency of 25 kHz, which increases to 40 kHz by 3A output.

Why modulate the pulse frequency instead of the pulse width? Switching losses are incurred whenever the switch is in a transient state between fully on and off in either direction, regardless of on-time. Modulating frequency to maximize on-time and energy transfer per cycle reduces overall losses. It is a common trick in high-efficiency/low-power converters.

Peak-to-Peak Output Noise

Having three polymer capacitors and a monolithic synchronous rectifier works wonders for the CU23011W’s peak-to-peak noise, making it the new benchmark in this test.

RMS Output Noise

In the RMS noise department, Amazon’s adapter beats SilverStone’s for the first two data points, then trades places for the rest of our chart. I’m not going to complain about anything under 20mV_RMS since device current draw transients combined with cable resistance can easily add considerably more than this.

Output Voltage Regulation

Output voltage is well within the acceptable range, though it's a little high in an unloaded condition. That's a side-effect of using primary-side sensing, where the controller periodically needs to activate just to detect whether a load got connected. While Amazon’s adapter may rival Phillips' for output regulation non-flatness, part of the CU23011W’s upward output voltage trend is courtesy of the Chipown PN8386’s 3% cable loss compensation doing exactly what it is supposed to do.

Transient Response

As usual with adapters featuring primary-side sensing instead of opto-coupler feedback, we get a 150mV dip that the adapter needs about 15ms to compensate for when the extra load is switched in, and a 150mV spike that takes about 20ms to settle after the additional load is removed. Transients of 100-150mV with 5-10ms settling time are par for the course, making the CU23011W worse than average for being 5-10ms slower.

This is still acceptable, just not praiseworthy.

Short Circuit Response

What happens under a short circuit condition? Current output is limited to a reasonable 4A for about 110ms before the controller turns the output off, then attempts to restart approximately every two seconds after that.

With an effective average current of only 200mA, attached connectors and cables should have no problem surviving an indefinitely long short circuit.

Isolation Withstand Test

Was my optimism about the board’s design and safety misplaced? Not at all. Amazon’s CU23011W had no trouble holding 3500V. In fact, after recording this video and realizing that leakage current was lower than expected, I decided to go back and re-measure. While doing so, I was watching leakage current instead of test voltage. The next time I looked at voltage, I had passed 3700V (200V more than intended), and leakage still didn’t go much beyond 700µA.

Why is the leakage current lower than expected? The adapter has inductors in the path from L-N terminals to output, and these cancel out part of the capacitor’s reactance.

So Close, Yet So Far

This was a mix of wonderment and disappointment. On one hand, we saw one of the best examples of isolation between primary and secondary sides, some of the best noise performance, decent efficiency, impressive voltage regulation, and better-than-rated output current. Apart from its somewhat sluggish transient response, the CU23011W qualifies as a top contender for best adapter in my tear-downs so far.

Where Amazon's adapter loses points is in the rather weak connections between its prongs and outlet connection strips where the ground prong’s solder joints may be prone to breaking off. Meanwhile, the live and neutral prongs are susceptible to poor electrical contact with their respective strips.

The CU23011W reflects a great job on the electronics, undermined by shoddy electrical hardware work. It's an unfortunate combination.

The New Challenger

AmazonBasics may not be the first name an enthusiast thinks of when it comes to surge protection for PCs and related equipment. With the rise of online shopping, though, Amazon’s house brands are bound to garner increased exposure.

I recently went shopping for surge protection for my mother’s new flat-panel televisions, and Amazon’s ABHT1208TC came up along the usual suspects. More than a year had passed since my last surge protector tear-down, so I decided to buy one for $23 CAD (~$19 USD) and find out how it stacks up against established players like APC’s SurgeArrest Performance, which costs $10-15 more and serves up a seemingly comparable feature set.

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The Box

As is frequently the case for goods that ship directly from warehouses to consumers, the expense of colorful print on glossy paper laminated on cardboard gets skipped in favor of generic brown cardboard and a simple label to act as a seal identifying the contents.

According to the label, this surge protector has 4350 joules of surge suppression, which is 1330 more than APC's.

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Accessories

The only other item inside, other than the power bar, is its multilingual manual, which rehashes the specifications and warnings on the box’s label. APC’s competitor comes with Velcro straps for cable management, a coax cable, and a phone cord, so there's roughly $5 worth of the price difference.

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Unboxed

Inside the box, the unit is wrapped inside a plastic bag. Usually when manufacturers do this, they also throw in a packet of silica gel and try to seal the bag to prevent metal parts from oxidizing while they sit in warehouses. Here though, it looks like the open bag’s only function is to protect the surface finish from scratches and friction during shipping.

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Shipping Cap

I believe this is the first surge protector I have looked at that ships with a protection boot on its RF connectors to protect them from getting knocked around. Then again, most other surge protectors are either tucked into custom-molded packaging or snug-fitting cardboard forms where the unit isn’t free to bounce around inside, as is the case with Amazon’s generic brown box.

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Plug

Here's another new plug style to add to the collection. This one is in somewhat of a P-shape, with a modest ridge along the top and back to help with grip. Assuming you grab this plug with your thumb in the nook and your fingers mainly on the back part near the neutral pin, maintaining a safe distance from the live pin shouldn’t be an issue. If you cannot access the outlet from an ideal angle, though, the irregular shape can be awkward.

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Cord

A fair number of sub-$40 surge protectors have 3×1.5mm² (#16) power cords. Surprisingly, that isn’t the case here. We instead get a whole 2.4 meters (eight feet) of 3×2.08mm² (#14) cord.

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Ports End

Two coax F-connectors and three telephone jacks sit directly on the seam between the two housing pieces instead of being inserted through housing holes with some alternate internal retention means. This simplifies the molds and assembly.

As far as I can remember, the other surge suppressors with coax ports I've seen had washers between their external nut and plastic housing. That's not the case here, so tack on another $0.05!

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Tail End

The side with the cable entry point features a typical rocker switch. We can't help but to be disappointed by the lack of strain relief at the cable’s entry point, which could lead to premature failure. Then again, most people rarely move their surge protectors, so failure from metal fatigue within the product's lifespan is pretty unlikely. There goes another $0.10!

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Back

The rear cover features a generous total of 10 screws holding Amazon’s surge protector together, two of which provide the clamping force near the cable's entry point to ensure it cannot be ripped out using force (within reason). Two wall-mounting slots provide means to mount the surge protector vertically in either orientation.

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Identity Check

Looking up UL listing E196224 reveals that Amazon’s ABHT1208TC is manufactured by CyberPower. With the amount of re-branding going on in every branch of the IT world, this shouldn’t be surprising at all. What do we expect to find inside? Likely a souped-up version of CyberPower’s unit in my $15 surge protector round-up from a few years ago.

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Label

The back’s label showcases two familiar warnings about dry locations and no daisy-chaining.

We observe a protection rating of 500V between any two conductors, which is the most lax rating for a 120V surge protector. While this may seem bad considering that modern universal input devices only have 400V input capacitors, 500V is a worst-case figure for a maximum rating surge that may one-shot the unit's MOVs. Everyday surges are nowhere near that strong and will get clamped to far more reasonable levels.

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Front

The top of Amazon’s surge protector features a column of six outlets in the center and two columns of three outlets on the sides. Gray silk-screening identifies ports on the left side and provides an LED legend in the bottom-right corner. All outlets have gray shutters, while Amazon’s branding is printed in the fingerprint-magnet glossy black area.

Overall, I’d say it's pleasantly minimalist.

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Shutters

Built-in shutters appear to be increasingly common on power bars of all shapes, sizes, and price points. Between molding slots into the cover for clip-in sliding shutters to snap into and molding completely separate plug-in outlet covers, the sliding covers may be cheaper to manufacture. They also spare you the trouble of managing (or losing) loose caps.

I’m not a fan of shutters, but at least these aren’t the fancy automatic type that occasionally require brutal insertion force or a plug-wiggle to make them slide out of the way.

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First Peek

Inside the unit, we find four circuit boards: the main surge suppression in the top-left corner, coax protection in the top-right, phone protection in the bottom-right, and indicator LEDs in the bottom-left.

As appears to be tradition for transformer-spaced lateral outlets, the internal construction can actually accommodate an extra outlet in-between, but every other outlet is omitted on the front cover.

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Coax Protection

There's nothing fancy about the RF surge protection: we find two stud-style F-connectors through a single-sided circuit board soldered to the ground plane with a transient suppression diode between the ground plane and "input" connector, along with a piece of wire between the F-connectors’ pins. This is the same thing you’ll find in most generic coax surge protectors, minus the shielding can.

I’d be curious to put these through a transfer function analyzer to find out whether construction style (mainly, this tower style versus APC's routed PCB) makes any difference

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Telephone Protection

Telephone surge protection is provided by one fuse and one 271KD07 MOV for each wire of the primary pair. As with the coax protection, it doesn’t get much more basic than this.

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Daisy-Chain

Internal wiring is somewhat odd, with live and ground fed from the left end of the top strip, daisy-chained to the middle strips at the right end, then to the third strip at the left end. Neutral, on the other hand, starts on the center strip and forks to the bottom strip. Meanwhile, the top strip is daisy-chained to the right end of the middle strip. I would have preferred to see all three strips connected in parallel from the left end to minimize worst-case wiring losses. Instead, they pile up by needlessly passing power through the full length of multiple metal strips.

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Side Strips

Live and neutral on the lateral outlets are provided by pinch contacts, while ground contact is provided by those dreaded flaps that have a tendency to permanently deform and no longer make reliable contact over time.

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Center Strips

The middle outlet strips are common fare for budget power bars: they're fundamentally the same flapped ground strip in the center and offset-punched slotted strips for live and neutral.

This isn't the most reliable connection style in my experience, but there are countless UL-listed relocatable power taps using these two styles, which should mean they aren’t particularly problematic safety-wise.

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Strip Welds

All connections to metal strips appear to be spot-welds, with tin from the plated wires oozing out from the weld under heat and pressure.

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Breaker Switch

When I saw the clear plastic rocker, I was expecting an indicator switch. That's not the case, though. The third terminal for the indicator’s neutral connection is missing. Since the top does have LED indicators for ground fault and protection, I concede that such a switch would have been redundant.

Based on the documentation I could find for this protection switch, its trip time can exceed one second at 300% overload. Since distribution panel breakers are at least an order of magnitude faster, that explains why I’ve never seen a surge protector breaker switch trip.

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Internal Wire Gauge

Although the power cord is #14, all of the internal wiring is #16. To be fair, losses in 10cm of #16 are still negligible next to 2.4m of #14, and wiring inside the power bar isn’t as tightly packed as the cord's.

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Broken Strands

Look at that beautifully tinned wire. Unfortunately, four of its strands broke during stripping or preparation. While reviewing photographs, I noticed that double-insulated wires are being used for the hot-side wiring (the central insulation is white with a thin black outer layer). Double-insulated wiring with high contrast layers is used to facilitate visual identification of compromised insulation.

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Slight Nick

At some point during the unit’s assembly, a small chunk of the black wire’s insulation was shaved off, though not enough to reveal the white insulation underneath. We're still good to go.

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Indicator Board

There isn’t much to see on this tiny board. Since all power has to pass through the main thermal cut-off fuse on the surge protection board, the "protected" LED's only job is to show that the surge protector is still receiving power. In other words, the main cut-off hasn’t blown.

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Surge Suppression Board Back

The soldering quality looks pretty good, with minimal flux residue around the manual wire soldering jobs and no apparent cold or under-filled solder joints.

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Surge Suppression Board Top

Where does AmazonBasic’s surge suppression come from? A total of 10 MOVs, the four thicker ones being 20D471s and the rest likely either 20D271Ks or 20D201Ks. I’m guessing here, as none of them face outward for me to read numbers from, and I did not want to rip the tape off. For what it's worth, there is also a tiny 10nF Y-class capacitor on the left.

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Skimping On Filtering

The board layout had provisions for a filter choke meant to separate the first bank of three MOVs (directly across hot and neutral after the thermal shut-off fuse) from the second bank of two MOVs downstream from said inductor.

I was tempted to dig through my scavenged parts bin to find a suitable choke to put in there, but did not find any with suitably thick wire gauge.

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Why Inductors Matter

Inductors oppose any sudden change in the current passing through them, which makes them ideal for rejecting short-lived voltage transients. How much of a difference can a modestly-sized inductor make to the strain put on other transient suppression devices? Here’s a simple test circuit with two quasi-ideal 200V TVSS', one directly across simulated live-neutral and the other with an extra 22µH inductor in series, both branches subjected to the same 6kV pulse source.

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Simulation Results, Current

Inserting a mere 22µH in series reduces peak current through the diode from 2778A to 890A, a 68% reduction in transient suppression strain. Since MOV lifespan is heavily dependent on peak energy dissipation, using inductors upstream to reduce current rise rate and peaks considerably improves the life expectancy of downstream MOVs.

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Simulation Results, Voltage

What about voltage let-through? Without the inductor, voltage peaks at 257V. With the inductor, it only rises to 219V. In other words, having inductors between input and output not only reduces strain on surge suppression components by a large amount, but it also improves let-through performance by a fair margin.

APC’s SurgeArrest Performance and Tripp-Lite’s Isobar may cost roughly twice as much, but I’d wager you could expect more than 4x the useful life from either of them. Magnetics is magic!

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Souped-Up Basics

The AmazonBasics HT1208TC’s lack of filtering inductors disqualifies it from competing against the $30 SurgeArrest Performance and $40 Isobar (even though its circuit board had a footprint for one). Pitted against the $10-15 surge suppressors from my years-old round-up, though, you do get three times as many outlets, a 2-4’ longer #14 power cord, three to four times the total MOV energy-clamping capacity, and basic coax/phone line protection. I’d call this a fair amount of value for $20.

While the ABHT1208TC appears to have been delisted since I purchased it, CyberPower’s own seemingly similar HT1208TC sells for a much heftier $30-50. At that price, and assuming the same innards, I'd go with a competing Performance or Isobar instead.

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Today's Victim: Tripp-Lite SMART1000LCD

When the Canadian price for Tripp-Lite's SMART1000LCD dropped from $200 to $160 CAN ($120 US), I decided to see what corners, if any, the company cut in its consumer-grade units.

As usual for power protection products, the main marketing claims get repeated on every printable surface. In this case, the front and back have English marketing, the two sides have French and Spanish, while the two ends summarize specifications in all three languages.

Even before opening the package, I can already tell I won't like how little Tripp-Lite UPS I got for my money. The SMART1000's cardboard box is about the same size as the unpacked CyberPower LX1500 from last time. The other hint is weight: 7kg for the Tripp-Lite versus 12kg for the CyberPower. Take five seconds to guess what component got sacrificed to save most of that 5kg.

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First Impression

Taking the unit out of its packaging confirms what was already obvious: it's tiny. The SMART1000LCD survived shipping through Canada Post without any visible cosmetic damage, although a large piece of packing foam did break off. The enclosure feels quite sturdy overall, which is an easy feat on such a small unit. After all, smaller dimensions leave that much less leverage for flex.

Aside from a Tripp-Lite badge glued near the bottom, the LCD is the only other item up front. The rest of the enclosure is common fare.

How Small Is Small?

For reference’s sake, I decided to stuff the SMART1000 under my desk where the LX1500 resides, and then squeeze in my old BX1000. With all three units aligned at the rear, the SMART1000 is slightly taller than the LX1500, a little narrower and a whopping half as deep. The BX1000 looks like a giant next to both of them.

Second Hint Of Disappointment

I left the SMART plugged in under my desk overnight with nothing connected to it, and when I picked it up to do some measurements later during the day, I noticed that it got quite warm and emitted a distinct 120Hz buzz. I set the UPS up on my bench with a thermometer taped to the side and a layer of foam clamped over the top to see how warm the enclosure got. Since the UPS is supposed to be designed for both horizontal and vertical orientation, it should be perfectly fine with one side covered. I found that its temperature reached 45 °C at 22 °C room temperature, which was much warmer than the LX and my ancient BX.

Can you guess where all of this disappointing heat is coming from?

Green Creds

As I inspected the packaging for an explanation, I noticed this little piece of information intended for the Mexican market. I may not know Spanish, but the black square to the right looks like it says the UPS uses 18W once its battery is fully charged. That’s nearly as much power as leaving a 100W-equivalent fluorescent or LED bulb turned on 24/7. I’ll make sure to measure that after the tear-down.

Upon re-examining the packaging, I realized that the only green certifications on there were RoHS and Green Solutions (recycling), nothing efficiency-related.

Papers, Please!

Tossed haphazardly into the box are:

• a crumpled registration card
• a crumpled manual
• a crumpled promotion leaflet for Tripp-Lite’s keyboard-video-mouse (KVM) switches
• a crumpled warranty information card for Mexico

It looks like the papers may have been dumped inside the box before the unit.

Accessories

What other goodies do you get with your expensive and hot-running little UPS?

• an oddly twisted USB cable
• a two-conductor phone cord

I was half expecting a coax cable too.

An Old Acquaintance

Here is one piece of UPS and surge protection documentation I had not seen in a while: an automated test equipment report. The last time I got one of those was with my SurgeArrest Performance from about 10 years ago.

The ATE checks for wiring errors, battery voltage, the ability to power up from DC power, the output waveform, the alarm squealer, the battery charging function, the status display and the successful completion of a self-test cycle.

That's My Plug

This is an interestingly-shaped plug. Its stepped rectangular design may look a little odd, but it does provide a good grip while keeping fingers as far away from the live pin in the middle as possible. Although it may look like an eyesore on an open wall, I’d say this is functionally one of the better plug designs as far as flat-to-the-wall plugs are concerned. The visual aspect could be improved a little by making it more cylindrical.

Thin Gauge

Just like CyberPower's LX1500, the SMART1000 also uses 3x#16 (1.31mm) conductors in its cord. For a unit rated at only 1000VA and 1440W including surge-only outlets, which should be under 12A_RMS under normal operating conditions, this should be perfectly fine… except for one little detail I will cover later.

LCD And Control Module

The display provides basic information in a static configuration: current line voltage, battery charge level as a five-segment bar graph and indicators for voltage regulation buck/boost, battery failure and wiring fault.

Dim And Dimmer

If bright status LEDs and backlit LCDs bother you, the SMART’s display has an intensity slider that lets you dim it all the way down to off. With transmissive LCDs, no backlight renders the display unreadable. But this is a transflexive panel. It can work with both backlight and ambient illumination, much like LCD watch and calculator displays. Here, the only ambient light I had was daylight through my window blinds hitting the LCD almost perpendicularly. Despite those intentionally poor lighting conditions, the unlit LCD remained readable.

Party Trick

If the LCD’s orientation clashes with your application, the display and control module can be snapped out by prying them from the top, rotating them 90° and snapping them back in. Standing or lying down on one side, there is enough slack to put the display just about anywhere you want.

You do not see manufacturers allowing their customers to expose internal wiring – however little that is – very often these days.

Naughty Bits

Flip the module over after pulling it out and you are treated to the sight of its PCB, protected by a sheet of transparent insulation. The design of this sub-module is apparently contracted out to Winstar.

Left And Right Sides

The two sides are practically identical with a large Tripp-Lite logo and four screw wells. The only difference is that one set of screw wells actually has screws, while the other side is screwed into from the other side. Cutting the shaft length in two like this makes the unit look symmetrical and also improves structural integrity: half the length between the panel and screw means half the leverage against the cover. With only four screws holding the whole unit together, mechanical failure is not an option.

Rear View

Instead of listing everything on the back, which you can already see for yourself, I will focus on what is not present: a breaker. If I thought that CyberPower not putting the correct breaker rating for its unit’s cord was a little disappointing, Tripp-Lite knocks my sentiment up a notch by omitting the component altogether. In many countries, this is a violation of electric code for good reason. Distribution panel breakers can take several minutes to react to mild overloads, and if you plug a #16 cord rated for 13A in a circuit with a 20A breaker, the cord could be overloaded to over 25A for a long time before power gets cut off. I’ll let you imagine how that story can end.

My apartment has 20A breakers throughout, which makes the SMART1000 potentially unsafe to use unless I add my own breaker in-between.

Bottom View

The battery door occupies almost all of the bottom surface and slides inside tracks molded into the side panels. One screw prevents it from accidentally sliding out, while some vents near the front keep a bit of airflow going through the battery compartment to prevent hydrogen accumulation. The rest of the door is covered by the product label. There is also a small sticker between the screw and vents reminding us of that 18W figure on the packaging.

Label Commentary

Instead of molding generic info directly into the body, Tripp-Lite has unit-specific labels, complete with serial number. From the NOM (Norma Oficial Mexicana) NYCE mark, this model is intended for sale in Mexico.

Aside from the usual “no user-serviceable parts inside,” which I merrily disregard in a moment, we also get a warning against unplugging the unit while turned on, non-sinusoidal output and a mention of your responsibility for evaluating the device’s appropriateness for any given application.

Can Tripp-Lite's customers resist the temptation of pulling the plug on their new UPS to test it? For many, that’s how they'll determine whether this UPS gets the job done without waiting for a power outage.

Battery Compartment

With the stopper screw removed and the door out of the way, we gain access to the UPS’ single battery and its terminals. The battery effortlessly slides out by a few centimeters while the wires are still attached for better access to its spade terminals. This makes plugging and unplugging a little easier, especially for those first few times where the connectors fit very tightly.

The Battery

If you didn't guess already, the main reason behind this unit’s diminutive footprint and light weight is its use of a single YUASA NPX-35 VRLA battery instead of the pair of 6-9Ah 12V batteries used in many other 1000VA and up competitors. As a result, the power source has to work more than twice as hard (provide over twice as much current) to drive a given load. That translates into reduced usable capacity.

To power 1000VA from this battery, the inverter needs to draw over 80A.

Battery Specs

While the battery’s markings already do a good job of explaining what the NPX-35 model stands for (15-minute discharge down to 1.67V, while providing 35W per cell or 210W for a six-cell battery), a comparison helps put things into perspective. Conveniently enough, the CSB GP1272 that I have been using as my UPS battery reference has the same physical dimensions.

The NXP offers substantially better performance with 35% lower internal resistance (15mΩ vs. 23mΩ) and 19% higher output (177W vs 210W) on the 15-minute constant power discharge spec. It looks like I may have a new brand to consider the next time I need VRLA batteries and can get them for a reasonable price.

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Internal Overview

The guts contain six major assemblies: the rear outlets, a combined phone and coax surge suppression board, the motherboard, the LCD and control module, and the transformer. The transformer alone occupies about one-third of the total internal volume; the battery compartment accounts for most of the rest. I have mixed feelings about how tightly packed the wiring is between the phone/coax board, the transformer and the main board.

Remember a bunch of slides ago when I asked if you could guess where all the idle waste heat was coming from? If you guessed the motherboard, you guessed wrong. It is the transformer. Why is the transformer heating up so much? We'll see soon enough.

Hollowed Out

Reinforcement ribs inside the housing look similar to the LX. But with half the depth and less than half the battery weight to contend with, Tripp-Lite's implementation feels much sturdier. You can also see that the screw wells have two or three reinforcement walls connecting them to other surfaces for additional structural strength. The company is not taking chances with shafts breaking off from the side panels. Mechanically speaking, the SMART1000LCD should survive getting kicked around quite well.

Tear-Down Unfriendly

Another minor disappointment is that spade terminals and their associated crimped connectors were apparently too expensive for Tripp-Lite to use in this model, except for the ground wire. Instead, the company crimped solder cups to the wires to facilitate insertion and provide some degree of strain relief, and then soldered those directly to the board. This means I am either stuck with everything getting in the way for the remainder of this tear-down or having to de-solder wires.

Of course, this assembly technique is perfectly fine for a regular end-user who doesn't plan to open their UPS.

Behind The Rear Cover

Just like the LX, the “Surge and Filter Only” outlets are wired directly to the cord. At least the cord’s wires loop a few times around a common mode choke before getting crimped to the outlets and main board wires. That’s slightly better.

Strip Mining

Also like the LX, the SMART1000LCD has plastic covers behind its outlet strips to secure them in place, prevent foreign objects from poking in any farther than that and reduce the likelihood of shorts between strips. Covers hide the usual complement of stamped metal strips: pinchy fingers for the live and neutral contacts, torque flaps for the grounds.

Coax And Phone Surge Protection

To save space and cost, both coax and phone protection are implemented on the same circuit board. Phone protection is handled by a pair of Maida Z151-09 MOVs (150V_AC, 9mm) and series fuses, while coax protection is done by shielded can magic that I'm not going to get into.

Battery Fuse

According to the main board’s silk screen, the UPS should have a pair of 40A fuses for the battery. Instead of putting them on the board, though, they appear to be soldered in-line with the battery’s negative cable. Each fuse has its own wire to the PCB and the whole thing is covered in two layers of thick heat-shrink tubing.

Transformer, Heater In Disguise

This transformer has one center-tapped winding connected to battery positive for the inverter’s drivers (which needs three wires), one winding for the AVR buck/boost and inverter output functions (which need another three wires), and a seventh wire that goes unaccounted for in this tally. Care to guess what it is for? Here is a hint: it is part of the reason why the transformer is running continuously whenever the UPS is turned on.

The Motherboard

Apologies for the cluttered view. I did not want to de-solder a dozen wires, especially when there's a high probability I will return the unit for a refund.

I thought the LX’s motherboard looked simple, but Tripp-Lite takes simplification another step further. In the top-left corner, we have all the line voltage wire connections and associated components. The bottom-left corner contains a small buzzer and the panel connector, while most of the middle is covered in jumper links. The right third is dominated by a pair of aluminum slugs with a pair of FETs each for the inverter driver, along with a handful of filter caps.

There is one major function missing from this description. Can you identify it before the board tour is over?

May The Glue Be With You

Tripp-Lite did not want the front panel connector popping out during shipping or, more likely, from someone pulling a little too eagerly on the panel while changing its orientation. This is one of the biggest globs of glue I have seen on a connector in a while. The rubbery adhesive would not come off without a fight, so I decided to leave it alone. That’s one more component I will have to continue tossing left and right as I explore the board.

Flip Side

The soldering looks good overall, apart from the Tripp-Lite’s trademark solder flux residue all over the board. The only two noteworthy components, aside from the passives and discrete ones, are an LM324 and a USB micro-controller.

Sore Spot

It looks like the wave soldering process at Tripp-Lite’s factory might require a little tweaking. It missed a strip of bare copper between the two negative battery connections. Solder failing to stick in the wake of large component pins is a common manufacturing problem. From the amount of flux around the bottom wire, I’m guessing the board has been reworked due to a cold solder joint or joint under-fill on that wire. The top wire’s connection looks great.

House Brand

When dealing with electronics, you often see chip markings defaced to make reverse-engineering more difficult. But when you are a large company and order chips factory-programmed by the tens of thousands, you can spare yourself that trouble by adding custom markings to your order. Here, Tripp-Lite had the chips marked with its name and firmware version. At a glance, the pinout appears to match the Microchip PIC18.

Input Stage

Surge suppression and filtering are provided a trio of 20D271K MOVs and a 100nF X2-class capacitor in the background to the left. Behind the MOVs, you can see the bottom of a ½W 680Ω resistor next to an axial film capacitor, the yellow part slightly visible behind the right MOV. At first, I thought it may have been a capacitive dropper power supply for the control circuitry. But after following the traces, it turned out to be a simple snubber between the AC input and UPS output to reduce arcing when relays break contact.

Cheesy Capacitor Brands Of The Day

Peppered throughout the board are Gemcon- and Jamicon-brand capacitors. There is not much information about Gemcon in consumer electronics, but Jamicon is considered slightly better than Fuhjyyu or Su’scon.

Can you hear that noise? That’s the sound of my confidence crashing.

Doubling Down

Switching 80A is too much for a single FET to handle reliably, so each heat sink gets two P80NF55s. With 6.5mΩ of on-resistance, that’s up to 20W getting converted to heat by these devices. Because each of the two heat sinks is responsible for driving one side of the “PWM sine wave,” this reduces average dissipation to 10W per sink.

In the LX tear-down, some readers wondered if a UPS could run continuously if given extra batteries, and I answered that components in most consumer UPSes are not sized to support such a taxing workload. This is a prime example of heat sinks just large enough to handle the stock battery under significant load.

The Weakest Link

So, what's the missing function? How about a power supply for the monitoring circuitry and charging the battery? Instead of a dedicated switching power supply, which costs less than a dollar in parts to implement, Tripp-Lite powers the SMART1000LCD through the inverter transformer’s battery winding. This means the UPS’ 1000VA transformer is always in-circuit in every operating mode other than off.

Do you know what else it means? That the UPS cannot power up with a dead or missing battery since it needs battery power to activate its AC input relay and energize the transformer.

Let’s see what this translates to in measurements.

Standby Power

How much power does this monstrosity use while turned on with no load attached? I measured 26.8VA, 21.9 of which at the fundamental frequency, an integral power of 12.4W and a power factor of 48%. Basically, half of the power going in serves no purpose other than magnetizing the transformer core. A large chunk of the other half is copper and iron core losses incurred while doing so. At least 12.4W is better than the 18W specification on the labels.

Why is the waveform so odd? The first current peak between 0V and 90V is caused by capacitors and the battery getting topped off. The UPS had been plugged in for over 10 hours though, so the battery should have been as charged as it was going to get. Once that initial peak is over, current dips to whatever the core’s magnetizing current is at. The second peak occurs when line voltage reaches 0V as expected since AC current through an inductor lags 90° behind voltage.

Output Waveform

With my SL300 connected and powering the same 80W LED strip as last time, I turned off power to the UPS using one of my spare power strips. Unless Tripp-Lite has different versions of the SMART1000LCD for the USA and Canada/Mexico, its “PWM sine wave” translates to the usual bipolar rectangular waveform, and is practically identical to the LX1500’s output.

Gutted

When I paid $160 CAN for this unit, I was expecting exceptional design and component quality to justify the price tag for its modest specifications compared to slightly more expensive units. Aside from the great battery and neat movable display though, there are too many important things to dislike about Tripp-Lite's SMART1000LCD:

• high standby power draw due to using the inverter transformer for operating power instead of a power-efficient standby power supply
• high standby temperature due to said high standby power dissipation
• third-tier capacitors
• no breaker

I was originally planning to give this unit to my mother to power her VoIP installation, but with its horrible 12W of standby power, this UPS would waste more power than the modem, router and ATA combined. I would not normally return a tear-down guinea pig to the store out of respect for whoever might end up buying it, but in this case I simply do not want to encourage the manufacturer by keeping it.

By the way, and for comparison’s sake, I wrote in the LX1500 story that it drew 9W. That was actually incorrect: the unit was drawing 9VA while its real power was 4.5W. That includes its built-in USB power supply.

My plan for the next installment? Get the cheapest UPS I can find and see how it fares compared to the SMART. Want to bet on whether the sub-$100 UPS will win?

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Today's Specimen

Most of the markings on the front summarize the UPS' specifications, which are reiterated and detailed on other sides:

 - 1500VA/900W output rating
 - Automatic Voltage Regulation
 - LCD
 - 890 joules surge protection
 - 10 outlets
 - 2.1A USB power source
 - Coax and phone/Ethernet protection
 - Energy Star and Green/Energy Saving credentials
 - An optimistic 450 minutes maximum run time, likely only achievable if all you do is stare at its LCD status display with nothing plugged in

The closest match I could find in general appearance and features on CyberPower's U.S. site is the BGR1500AVRLCD, which has two extra outlets and an RS232 (DB9) serial port.
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Unboxing

This compact yet heavy unit is supported by inch-thick foam blocks on the corners. Unless the bottom and side panels were heavily reinforced to support the batteries through shipping, the packaging could have used additional support along the bottom length. You'll see why later.

Accessories

The only extras I found in the box were a single-page reference sheet for front-panel configuration, a manual in English and French and a USB A-to-B cable. Since there is no packing list anywhere, I presume that's it for accessories.

First Impressions

The first thing I noticed upon picking the LX1500GU-FC up was its weight. Of course, I was expecting this, given the larger batteries listed in CyberPower's specifications. With all of the plastic panels and fasteners in place, the enclosure feels satisfyingly sturdy, though its matte finish is an excellent fingerprint magnet.

Side By Side

The shallower and narrower APC unit looks huge next to CyberPower's solution. In terms of actual volume though, the comparison is 10.8 to 9.6 liters (only a 70 cubic-inch difference). The LX1500 must be using space more efficiently to fit its 25 percent larger batteries and 50 percent higher peak output in an 11 percent smaller volume.

Starting From The Wall

While most enthusiasts don't move their battery backup systems regularly, having a plug with good ergonomics is still nice. Instead of going for the lowest-profile plug design possible, CyberPower employs a sharp ridge standing about half an inch from the wall with ears to provide a more comfortable thumb grip.

There is one minor issue with the design: in a correctly wired installation, the live pin is closer to your thumb than it needs to be. A simple safety improvement would be to make the cable enter the plug from the other side of the ground pin, which would make neutral and ground your thumb's new neighbors.

Power Cord

Now this is disappointing. CyberPower uses a cord with 3x1.31mm (AWG #16) for power. While it's adequate to carry the 12.5A a 1500VA UPS may need to pass through, and just below the UL's 13A recommended maximum for #16 power cords, the extra wiring losses are at odds with energy efficiency goals. Good thing I had no plans to plug anything other than my PC, my LCDs, my USB hub and external HDDs (when in use) into it anyway.

Front Panel

Up front you'll find one button to turn the unit on/off, one dual-purpose "Display" button used to cycle the LCD through various measurements (input voltage, output voltage, output power, output VA, load %, estimated run time and battery charge level) and enter one-button configuration mode, and the status display.

On-device configuration could have been made quicker and easier by borrowing the power button: use it as an Enter key (a quick action that would not interfere with its regular functions, since they require long presses) instead of holding the Display button for three seconds to enter menus and wait for eight more to confirm selections.

Rear End

We get two banks of outlets around back, one surge-only and the other with battery backup. There's also the pop-breaker, the network and cable surge suppressor, wiring fault indicator and a USB port for computer monitoring.

Unless CyberPower provides exceptional surge protection in its mainstream UPS, this seems like too many surge-only outlets for a model that only has a #16 gauge power cord.

Top Label

Plastered across the top of the UPS is a metalized sticker with first-time turn-on instructions. Under the label is a tough plastic sticker, which is either intended as a warranty seal or to prevent the two halves of the shell from coming apart during shipping. Perhaps both.

Bottom Labels

CyberPower reuses the same mold for at least three LX models. The unreadable line at the bottom simply states that input current ratings are for the whole unit, including surge-only outlets. Other information molded directly into the panel includes an FCC compliance declaration, the usual warning complement of indoor use only at 40 °C or less, electric shock hazard and no serviceable parts inside. There's nothing out of the ordinary.

CyberPower also specifies the total harmonic distortion of its modified sine wave output as 46.8 percent with a peak harmonic up to 33.4 percent. In other words, expect the usual bipolar return-to-zero (BPRZ) waveform.

Behind The Battery Door

To access the battery compartment, you must first undo the two screws found on the bottom. Pull the half-panel down until it clears the side rails before you can lift the cover off. What you find in there is a pair of Leoch 12V 9Ah batteries. Their model number, DJW12-9.0, does not appear to be standard stock, and the closest match I could find on their site is the LP12-9.0.

There's no fancy battery pre-packaging or connector. The two batteries sit right there with cables going straight to their spade terminals.

Batteries Out

Getting those connectors on and off in the tight space over the batteries is more difficult than it should be. You have to twist the right battery out to access the positive terminal before you can pull the power source further out to unplug the yellow wire. Once that is done, you can remove the first battery and move the second one to the right slightly to unhook it from behind the front frame. After that, you can twist it out and repeat.

The sharp plastic molding around the cable holes bites into wire insulation and complicates the process. Smoothing the holes would also reduce wear on the wires' insulation.

Breakable Slot

If you were wondering about my comments that the UPS' base should be braced with more foam, this is why I said that. The middle of the battery door hooks into this tab from below to keep the door from bowing out. At some point during shipping, the box must have fallen on its side. Since there is no packaging supporting the middle of the panel, the batteries' weight broke the flimsy slot. You can see the plastic turn white in the inside corners from strain.

The tab and slot should have been thicker, and the slot split in two to limit leverage.

Battery Door

Irregular rib spacing causes the door to warp most visibly around the area with three vent rows when force is applied near the middle. That also happens to be where the bottom locking tab is located, and where the batteries might put the most force. Since the battery door is primarily held in place by a nice track at each end, the door should have had two wider longitudinal ribs to redirect lateral force from the batteries there.

Reinforcement through the rest of the unit is generally shallower, but still feels adequate against external forces when the unit is fully assembled.

Battery Power Levels

How do the Leoch batteries used in CyberPower's UPS stack up against the CSB batteries in APC's? If we scale CSB's specifications by 9/7.2 to extrapolate what a 9Ah CSB battery's performance would be like for a one-hour constant current discharge, we get 6.89A for CSB versus 6.24A for Leoch. Ah-to-Ah, CSB beats Leoch by 10 percent. Repeating the comparison with a 15-minute discharge rate, which is more representative of what a UPS might encounter powering a high-end gaming PC and related accessories, we get 20.6A for CSB versus 20.2A for Leoch. That puts CSB only 2 percent ahead. It looks like Leoch batteries should be on par with CSB's at medium to high loads.

With the regular user/buyer tour out of the way, it's time to get into the more interesting stuff.

Lost?

The left screw inside the battery compartment unlocks the front panel, which can then be lifted and pulled away, revealing a hidden screw hole in the top corner with no screw in it (at least on my unit). Was it accidentally forgotten? Deemed redundant due to the top sticker? Superseded by the sticker because the transformer's weight causes the screw mount to break?

Once the front and rear covers are out of the way, two tabs at the bottom of the battery compartment release the inner shell and top half of the housing. From there, you can gently pry it up while repeatedly tapping the top seam with a plastic screwdriver until the wide clips under the top of the cover disengage.

Peekaboo

And what do we find? One small power PCB with three small heat sinks, one small 5V power supply board for the USB ports, a modestly-sized phenolic board for the high-current components with a small FR4 riser for control logic and one large transformer. CyberPower's LX1500 is a much simpler critter than the old APC BX1000.

Behind The Rear Cover

Behind the outlets, we find a plastic cover. We also find that the live wire from the power cord goes through the breaker and then straight to protected outlets. While this may not seem like much, putting the MOVs half a meter downstream from the first device requiring protection via extra wiring can reduce their effectiveness by 100V or more due to the added resistance and inductance.

Remember when I said this UPS has too many "surge-only" outlets due to its thin wire gauge? It's time to revise that "it shouldn't have any" due to a sub-par implementation.

And what is that I see near the bottom-left corner?

Pinched

The live wire was cut too long, and instead of trimming it down to length before soldering it to the breaker, it was simply tucked between the battery compartment wall and rear cover. That's fine except for the part where the wire ended up straddling one of the screw cups and got pinched hard enough to visibly compress its insulation. When you tuck wires away, make sure you are not putting them where they may get crushed. Tape them down in a safe place if you have to.

Breaker Bad

CyberPower continues to impress, but not for good reasons. There's a 15A breaker on a power cord that should not be used to carry more than 13A. While two or three extra amps before tripping may not be enough to turn a cord into a safety hazard, it is still disappointing to see that CyberPower could not be bothered to use breakers that match the cord's UL rating. When you run 15A through a six-foot #16 power cord, it dissipates around 12W. This may not sound like much, but it is still enough to get noticeably warm, especially if the cord has limited airflow around it.

Old Acquaintances

Removing the outlet strip cover reveals familiar sights to everyone who has seen some of my previous power bar tear-downs: the usual metal strips shaped to clamp the neutral and live pins, and torque flaps for the ground pins.

And yes, the connections in here appear to be tinned wires tack-welded into place with mixed preparation quality. Although it's blurry, the ground wire on the left clearly didn't get properly tinned like the one on the right.
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Behind The Front Panel

There's not much to see here: a chip-on-board to drive the LCD, a connector and some metal tabs to hold the LCD. Both switches are routed directly to pins on the connector header.

USB Connectors PCB

I was expecting to at see at least a 10µF chip capacitor to dampen noise from the power supply and connected devices. Am I asking for too much? Maybe. We'll see how well or poorly it fares on the oscilloscope.

CN12 was visibly intended to be a dedicated ground connection for the USB connector shield, but CyberPower ended up tying the shield to USB neutral with a 0Ω resistor.

Munched Up

Good thing the front panel's cable is sleeved. Whoever placed it put quite a few scrapes into the sleeve by shoving it behind the riser card in the top-right corner of the first internal picture. In the top-left of that same image, you may also be able to see the sleeve oddly deformed above its first hanger. If these were really meant for wire management, I find it odd that the enclosure designers would put features that could crush and shear thin wires there.

Network Surge Suppression

I thought I saw a 1N4007. I did! I did see a 1N4007! Twenty of them, in fact. What sort of transient voltage surge suppression is CyberPower doing here? With a typical 1N4007 having over 10pF of junction capacitance near 0V, this cannot be a good thing for 1GBase-T signal integrity.

As if that was not already questionable, differential routing for pair one is completely ignored. One signal goes along the PCB edge, through the fuse, and back up along the edge to the other connector, while the other signal scoots along the diode row from one RJ45 connector through the fuse and back to the other connector.

Some Reverse-Engineering Required

So, how does the network surge suppression work? All pairs operate on the same basic principle: use 1N4007 diodes to steer over-voltages through either a SIDAC or zener diode. The difference between pair one and the others is that, because it may be used for telephone service, it needs to allow the full open line voltage with ring tone (130-180V_PK), while the other lines only need a few volts.

I bet a TDR cable analyzer would have some interesting things to say about the LX1500's network surge protection. It should work fine on modest cable runs in a quiet RF environment. But for longer cable runs in a noisy environment, you may have to look elsewhere for network surge protection.

Coax Surge Protection

CyberPower's coax surge protector comes in a fully shielded box with the rear cover tacked in place by two small solder blobs. I do not normally bother popping open soldered boxes, but I got curious; this one was easy pickings for a solder wick.

Under The Skirt

What is that going straight from one F-connector's signal pin to the other? No controlled impedance PCB or mini-coax here, just a piece of ordinary #16 electrical wire with a Glass Discharge Tube (GDT) surge suppression device between one connector and a ground plane PCB,which the two F-connector bodies are soldered to.

I do not know what the transmission line impedance of a piece of #16 wire covered in PVC insulation in free air is, but I seriously doubt it is anywhere near 75Ω. A quick check with online transmission line calculators say 25-35Ω. Say hello to signal reflections.

When a cable guy tells you that the coax surge suppression in many power bars is junk, this is exactly what he means.

The Iron Lump

Unlike the APC BX1000, which used a DC-DC converter followed by an output bridge to switch polarity and a separate voltage regulation transformer, CyberPower's LX1500 uses a simpler and older topology where an iron core transformer is used to directly step battery voltage up to AC line level at AC frequency. The same transformer performs double-duty as the AVR buck/boost transformer when not used for battery power.

USB Power Supply

I was hoping to see the 5V USB supply powered directly from the battery charger and battery voltage, which would have provided 5V without having to power up the whole inverter circuit. But instead we have a complete USB AC adapter: a common-mode choke at the input, a pair of Su'scon SK ("Standard") input filter capacitors, a single switching transistor in TO220 packaging, a flyback transformer, two Su'scon HG ("Low-Z, Long Life") capacitors for the output filter and another common-mode choke before the output cable. At a glance, the capacitors' specifications appear to be reasonable.

On the bottom, we find the input rectifier bridge, a PWM controller in SOT23-6 packaging, an 817 photocoupler, a handful of diodes and an SOT23 431 shunt regulator driving the isolator. Nothing fancy.

What does its output look like?

USB Power Supply Output

Under open circuit condition, the supply outputs 5.12V with 60mV_PP of ringing and 100mV_PP of switching transient noise. At 1A output current, I got exactly 5V at the USB plug and the pictured waveforms across my load. Switching transients died down as soon as there was any load on the output, which is good. We can clearly see the 50-70mV_PP turn-on transients at the oscilloscope's trigger point, followed by more small transients and a slight ringing with less than 10mV initial magnitude at turn-off.

Having that 10µF capacitor I mentioned on the USB connector board would have eliminated most transients from the USB output. A common-mode choke does you no good when there is no load attached to close the loop.

For Comparison's Sake

Here is the output from my 2012 Nexus 7's original AC adapter. The thing is over three years old, has been plugged in nearly 24/7 all along, yet still produces output with negligible ripple, negligible ringing and 30mV_PP transients under 1A load.

Genuine OEM adapters usually carry high premium prices as replacement parts or accessories. But some of them are legitimately over-engineered. The LX1500's USB output is almost that good, at least for now.

The Main Board

There are four distinct areas on the circuit board: the low-power, low-voltage control area with the daughterboard and output current-sensing transformer in the top-right corner; the line voltage section with AVR/bypass relays and four 14mm MOVs in the bottom-right corner; the UPS' internal power supply, which also provides charging in the bottom-left corner; and the inverter bridge in the top-left to drive the transformer. All electrolytic capacitors come from Su'scon and include the low-voltage HG series, UX for the battery charger output and SE for the mains input.

The only EMI filtering provided by this UPS is what it needs to suppress noise from its own power supply.

Main PCB Bottom

Soldering quality looks good across the board. Aside from a bucket of resistors, capacitors, some diodes and transistors, its residents also include three 817-style photocouplers. One of those couplers is used for the charger's feedback loop and the two others drive the inverter's MOSFETs.

Driving 1500VA out of the transformer requires pushing nearly 70A. If you have no idea what this translates to in terms of circuit board layout, here is a hint: it is not subtle.

Some Delegation Required

The analog and digital magic required to bring the LX1500 to life requires higher circuit density than what can be accommodated on a single-sided board. Instead of making the main board double-sided and finding space for these components, CyberPower put them on a riser card.

What is on there? A microcontroller, a pair of 324 quad op-amps, a buzzer and a linear regulator on the front. The back side is covered in the usual complement of resistors, capacitors, diodes and transistors.

Standby Power

How much power does an EnergyStar UPS draw while doing nothing? The LX1500 had a few hours to top off its batteries and the initial 40W died down to 8.8W. To meet EnergyStar UPS requirements, a UPS must have 96.7 percent weighed average efficiency across 25, 50, 75 and 100 percent load test points weighed 0.2, 0.2, 0.3 and 0.3, respectively. With 8.8W of internal power draw and 5W of weighed wiring losses, the LX1500 should achieve an overall efficiency of 98.5 percent.

Output Waveform

If you were wondering what a "modified sine wave" with 46 percent of THD and 34 percent peak harmonic looked like, this is what the LX1500 produces. Its output goes to 190V with 40 percent duty cycle, which yields 125V_RMS with a slight amount of ringing at each transition. During battery operation, a slight buzzing can be heard from the transformer.

Why do some power supplies with APFC have trouble with this waveform? It is usually because their APFC controller shuts down or misbehaves when it detects a non-sinusoidal input. When the main converter is designed to expect APFC-boosted input voltage, losing the input boost may be sufficient to make it shut down. At 190V, though, most converters should have little trouble operating without it.

More Comparisons

The BX1000's electronic inverter produces perfectly flat plateaus at 160V with a 57 percent duty cycle resulting in 121V RMS. Here, what may look like ringing is actually a choke getting switched in and out to soften the slopes. In operation, the BX1000 generates a distinctly audible 120Hz buzz.

Two completely different implementations of the same general waveform, nearly identical results. But it's still looking good for a 10-year-old device. I just need to investigate why it's excessively sensitive to noise.

Non-PFC Current Waveform

Many people are wary of connecting electronic equipment to a modified sine wave UPS out of fear that the fast edges might damage input rectifiers or capacitors. I decided to have a look.

Here, I am using the SL300 supply I repaired a few months ago to power a 15-foot 12V 80W LED strip. While intuition may spontaneously dictate that the "square wave" plotted in dark green should have worse peak current than smooth AC plotted in dark red, practice shows that flat tops keep capacitors charged longer than AC peaks do. With capacitors having less time to discharge between pulses, peaks remain of similar magnitude but much shorter duration.

Try to avoid connecting large iron core transformers (“linear adapters”) and AC motors to UPS though: the harmonics will greatly increase core losses.

APFC Current Waveform

Some people also believe that an APFC power supply requires a "pure sine wave" UPS. For this round, I used my PC as the load since its EA-650 is the only APFC supply I currently own. As a bonus, it is one of the pre-Green Delta-made EarthWatts models that allegedly had issues with modified sine wave UPS.

As expected under AC, the current follows line voltage, albeit a little noisily. Under battery power, though, the EA's APFC circuit does not skip a beat. The momentary peak at over 5A is caused by APFC trying to follow the rising edge. Once it figures out that the slope is too steep for a sine wave, it switches to boost regulator mode for the remainder of the pulse.

Shaving Pennies

To put it bluntly, I feel like the LX1500 was built down to a price. There's the power cord using #16 wires instead of #14, a 15A breaker instead of the breaker that matches the cord, surge-only outlets built like an afterthought, no EMI filtering for attached devices, LAN surge suppression done in the cheapest way possible with minimal concern for signal integrity and the same for coax protection.

On the plus side, the main reason most people buy a device like this is for battery backup, and in that department the LX1500 delivers: good batteries, good waveform (as far as modified sine waves go) and a status display that covers the essentials. Some people may take issue with Su'scon capacitors, but the brand does not appear to have been involved in notable capacitor failure events since 2006, so I'll take that to mean its capacitors are alright when used correctly, which seems to be the case here.

Would I recommend this UPS? Only, if you do not mind writing off the coax surge protection and possibly the network protection too. What do you, the readers, think? And what would you like to see us tear-down in the future?

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About Today's Catch

Some of you asked for a professional-grade surge protector tear-down when I started taking these apart nearly a year ago. Well, that time has come.

I poked a handful of manufacturers back in February to see if any might be interested in sending samples, got a bite from Electronic Systems Protection, received its SA-1810 in April and now we get to go in for a tour. The SA-1810 is ESP/SurgeX's entry-level offering with the most built-in outlets.

If the brand name sounds unfamiliar to you, you may be shocked by its $400 street price and be curious to find out why it is so expensive compared to typical surge suppressors.

For people who have no idea who ESP is, the company originally started doing power conditioning for office equipment in 1985 when power quality issues were causing abnormally high service call frequency on the first generations of electronic copiers and other equipment. As for SurgeX, the company started in 1995 by introducing the concept of series-mode protection using non-sacrificial surge clamping components, which are still the two main features it's known for today. ESP bought SurgeX in 2010, so I'll be using SurgeX, ESP and ESP/SurgeX interchangeably.

SurgeX Technology Overview

The full SurgeX solution is divided into five stages; its SA-1810 implements only the first three, which also happen to be the most important under normal circumstances. Those are:

1. the SurgeX reactor, intended to block high-frequency surge components
2. the surge elimination circuitry, which replaces the MOVs from regular surge protectors
3. the EMI filter

From this, we can expect the insides to be partitioned in three functional sections in one way or another. On the infographic, stages one and two together form SurgeX's Advanced Series Mode (ASM) protection.

The two functions not included are the Catastrophic Over/Under-Voltage Shutdown (COUVS) protection, which disconnects everything in case of an abnormal voltage condition, and Inrush Current Elimination (ICE), which sequentially turns outlets on via inrush-limiting elements to mitigate inrush current.

The SurgeX Claim To Fame

A quick glance at this other SurgeX infographic highlights the following three key points:

• the series nature of the primary protection
• the non-sacrificial nature of the protection's design
• the non-contamination of the ground voltage

The first two have already been hinted at earlier, while the third simply means that the protection scheme does not involve the ground wire. We will get to what these translate to in terms of hardware later when the lid pops. For now, onward to the exterior tour.

Packaging

To paraphrase: good things come in inconspicuous packages. There's no fancy marketing here, not even a model number. Just the SurgeX brand name and company motto. People who order SurgeX units simply do not need to be reminded why they are doing so by colorful or wordy packaging. They already know, buy it based on recommendations without caring about cost or are obeying a procurement requirement.

A “fragile” power strip? Hm.

Inside The Box

ESP does not chance its unit getting mangled during shipping. About three centimeters of stiff foam pad the unit away from its light corrugated cardboard box on every side at both ends. This makes me wonder what the “Fragile” sticker was about.

Instructables

How difficult can setting up a SurgeX unit be? About as difficult as plugging in any other surge protector: plug it into a power outlet, then plug in your devices. The LED chart on the back of this 8.5x5.5” sheet may seem intimidating until you realize it covers 11 different product lines, one product per row. In the case of this “Standalone” product, the only LED is green, and a light means there is power and the protection is working. When it's off, there is either no power or the protection failed.

Checking Out

Traceability is always nice to have, especially on premium and potentially mission-critical products. The assembly and test slip included with the unit I received indicates that at least three people directly handled the unit. Based on the slip date, it appears this unit was assembled and presumably tested a few days before my first attempt to contact SurgeX.

Foam blocks, the unit itself, the instructions half-sheet and the checklist. That is it for package contents. To be fair, I doubt many people really care for more than that anyway.

Outlets, Outlets And More Outlets

Ten yellowish-orange outlets adorn the SA-1810's top, leaving no space for anything else. These should hopefully be enough to accommodate most peoples' accessories.

Up-Front

There are no attempts at fancy or flashy design on the panels either. The sides are bare apart from the branding, Advanced Series Mode surge suppression and power conditioning key features, self-test light-emitting diode and the “A-1-1 Certified” mark in the bottom-left corner of the front panel.

Bottom-Up

The bottom cover features a product identification and specifications label, along with a “Test ID” that refers to the assembly and test checklist. Along the perimeter, we can see that the enclosure is made from folded sheet metal, with the bottom tray screwed into from the sides.

Plug And Cord

ESP does not try doing anything fancy with its plug, favoring an off-the-shelf 3x2.08mm² (or 14/3) PVC jacket cable with straight plug-style rated for 15A and 300V. Personally, I prefer flush-type plugs.

It looks like the molded plug got gouged, though I could not find any protruding or sharp edge on the enclosure to explain how. The shipping box also lacks any holes or impact marks. I am inclined to believe it got damaged prior to shipping and slipped through QA.

Pushing Buttons

On the power cord entry side, we also have a plunger-style 15A circuit breaker. This concludes the preliminary exterior tour. If you are wondering where the switch is, there isn't any on this model.

The Traditional Label Shot

No “Made in China” here. As you would or should hope to see on more premium products, ESP/SurgeX spared no expense on assembly by manufacturing these in the USA. Some of you might be wondering why a $400 product features the same 330V Voltage Protection Rating as $30 units. The reason for it is simply that 330V is the lowest or best protection rating defined in ANSI/UL 1449-rev3. As for what C22.2 no.8 is, it is just a Canadian complement to UL 1283 for EMI filtering.

Note the warnings. We get the usual indoor use only, accompanied by the timeless classic “no user-serviceable parts inside”, which I do not remember seeing much lately and will gleefully ignore as usual in a moment.

The A-1-1 Game

Here is that optional 1449 adjunct Commercial Item Description mentioned earlier. It is the main reason why people and companies fork over $300 for these and equivalents. While basic 1449 certification means a surge protector should not be a safety hazard and can suppress surges, it makes no guarantees about product endurance. Adjunct testing and certification addresses that.

Here, 'A' means the product suppressed 1000 worst-case surges (6kV at up to 3kA) without performance degradation, the first '1' corresponds to the 330V protection rating class, and the second '1' means no ground contamination – no surge current dumped to ground.

Put together, A-1-1 represents the best power line surge protection certifiable under ANSI/UL 1449-rev3. If your surge protection has no CID, it is not rated for endurance.

Unfolding At Home

Four self-tapping and six metal screws later, the bottom cover falls off from the top and the reason why the SA-1810 is the same or similar size to its two-outlet SA-15 variant becomes obvious: the box is actually full, which I suspected from its weight.

In the back, we see the rear of those outlets. To the right, we find the breaker, and at the bottom-right, the load-side EMI filter board. Hiding under a sheet of insulation, the larger board hosts the surge clamping circuitry. Below it, you find SurgeX's reactor, the linchpin behind its Advanced Series Mode surge elimination.

Unplug Fest

After disconnecting a handful of wires, the top cover can be separated from the base for a less cluttered view. These outlets look every bit as bog-standard from behind as they did from the front, making them very serviceable if need be. The top part's three ground wires (one from the power cord, one from the outlets and the other jumper from the bottom cover) join together on the stud near the bottom-right corner.

Letting It Out

You may remember me commenting how some manufacturers choose odd ways to route power to their strips' outlets. None of that nonsense here: power, neutral and ground are all attached to the middle outlet, then fanned out both ways from there.

These outlets look like decent quality and are the rear-entry type with screw-driven wire clamps for live and neutral, which makes them very reusable and replaceable. When I replace outlets for friends and family, this is my preferred wire attachment style to work with.

Bonus Point For Effort

Instead of looping the solid ground wire around the ground screws and tightening them, ESP/SurgeX went through the extra trouble of folding fork connectors with metal tabs over the tin-plated wire and soldering them. There was somewhat of a solder spill here, but the electrons won't mind.

Breaking Up

Unsurprisingly, we find a breaker rated for 15A. Less common is the mentioned ISO 8846 compliance, which pertains to safety in explosive marine craft environments, meaning the breaker is sufficiently gas-tight and thermally isolated to prevent arc heat from detonating an explosive propane-air mix.

One Gauge To Rule Them All

While the power cord is the expected 14-gauge copper and 300V insulation rating for a 120V/15A product, all other visible leads and jumpers within the unit are 12-gauge, 600V “boat” cable. With the margins SurgeX earns on these, I would not be surprised if it decided that shaving quarters on manufacturing separate parts for the company's 15A and 20A products was not worth the trouble and potential risk of putting 15A wires in 20A models. As for the higher insulation voltage rating jumpers, the thicker and more tightly controlled insulation reduces the risk of having an insulation breakdown event within the unit during endurance testing or after years of field exposure.

Empty House

With the outlets and breaker gone, the top looks so much roomier. Even with all of the screws removed, the folded sheet metal enclosure remains reasonably stiff, as you would expect from what appears to be 1.3mm (0.05”)-thick steel.

Under Pressure

The lone grounding stud in the top cover, as well as all other studs on the bottom, appear to be press-fitted into the sheet metal.

Serving The Tray

Here we have a top-down look at that bottom tray once all of its other wires are unplugged. Between the filter board, main board and the reactor under it, it looks quite well-packed from this angle too.

Filter PCB Top

What is the difference between a generic EMI filter and an “impedance-tolerant” one? Simply the addition of small ferrite bead chokes to form a balanced pi (Π) filter with the other X-class capacitor on the main PCB and a 3.3Ω resistor in series with the load-facing 1µF X capacitor to prevent LC resonance. There are also two 2.2nF Y-class capacitors connected from live and neutral to ground through the top-right mounting hole.

With a dual footprint common-mode choke and doubled-up spade terminals everywhere, I believe it is safe to assume this PCB gets reused through much of SurgeX's product lineup.

Filter PCB Bottom

Check out the simple and straightforward PCB routing; not much imagination is required to see how power makes it way from the inputs to the outputs. The fiberglass board is clear enough that you can even see some of the components' outlines through the PCB.

One Nice Thing About Single-Sided Fiberglass PCBs...

...is that you can back-light them to see most of what is happening on both sides at the same time. This isn't particularly useful for such a simple PCB, but it's still a handy trick to keep in mind for more complex circuits.

Ooh, Shiny!

The soldering looks great except for one little detail: achieving mirror-like solder joints requires either a tightly controlled cooling profile for lead-free solder or the cheaper, simpler low-tech option: lead-based solder. I asked Nicholas and was told SurgeX went lead-free for its international products a while ago, but still use 63Pb/37Sn solder for North American models. There's a plan to go lead-free in the works.

PCB And Reactor Sandwich

The heart and soul of SurgeX's ASM protection is a huge inductor with complementary electronics to take care whatever remaining power surge energy manages to pass through it. High-performance and -endurance surge protection adds a fair amount of complexity compared to basic MOV protection.

In Perspective

How much bigger than conventional MOV protection do you need to go if you want a high-endurance surge protection solution? Well, here is the reactor with its PCB next to a pair of Bourns 20D201K MOVs for comparison. The size and weight differences are not subtle.

Main PCB Top

How much electronics do you need to do a MOV's job when you do not wish to use a sacrificial element? About this much. And the circuitry is only intended to deal with the remainder of surge energy that manages to pass through SurgeX's reactor.

From left to right, we have an AceWin 1µF X2 cap, a discrete bridge made of Vishay P600G diodes, three 390µF 250V Panasonic ED capacitors, a Vishay 1N5404 diode for the peak detection circuitry, a pair of power resistors to discharge the surge suppression caps, air-core inductors to limit current rise rate through the SCRs and the LittleFuse S4025 SCRs with their trigger components.

Main PCB Bottom

The soldering quality looks similar to the filter board. Most modern PCB designers would use copper pours with thermal relief pad connections and 45/90° trace routing. Here, though, SurgeX's PCB engineer decided to forgo copper pours and also use free-hand routing.

I See Through

If you follow the self-test LED header traces near the bottom-right corner, you find out that it is simply a LED connected directly across the main input capacitor through a pair of series 15kΩ resistors – a glorified “Power On” indicator that doubles as the bleeder circuit for the main surge filtering capacitor.

Following traces around non-populated components reveals that they are alternate footprints, component orientations or alternate signal path implementations, no mysterious missing feature there.

Location, Location, Location

Do you see those two studs just below the reactor's steel casing? These help keep the bulky device from shifting around. I am a little surprised to see no nuts on them, which would properly secure such a large component. But the way they butt right up against the putty tells me they were intentionally left nut-less.

Hanging By Two Threads

This is my only major bit of criticism about the SA-1810's mechanical design: since there are no nuts on the locator studs, all of the reactor and main PCB's weight is held in check by two metal screws through the side panel, meaning a hard upside-down landing could warp the side panel (although improbable with the combined thickness of the overlapping walls),snap the screws or strip threads in the reactor's housing. The main PCB riding on the reactor might not appreciate getting whipped around in such way, either.

How Big Is Big?

We know this device is physically large (10x10x4 centimeters or 4x4x1.6 inches for those of you who want to know how chunky it is). But how much inductance does it actually provide? By measuring impedance against a 1Ω resistor, I calculated a primary inductance varying from 132µH at 60Hz down to 3.7µH at 20kHz. When you want a high value non magnetically saturatable inductor capable of passing 20A_RMS and ~1000A peak primary current, you pay the price in volume, weight and copper.

On an unrelated note, how often do you see “do not expose to rain” on internal components? I believe this is a first for me.

1/20,000th Of A League Under The Putty

Since the transformer is potted in epoxy or some other tough material to prevent vibrations, help with heat transfer, increase the working voltage and various other reasons, I tried asking for pre-potting pictures. Unfortunately, they were deemed too sensitive for release.

Basically, what you have in there is a pair of loosely coupled copper coils and some low value shunt resistor attached to the secondary winding. Based on US patent 7068487, reactor parameters for a 120V/15A reactor should be 80µH primary inductance, 4µH secondary inductance, a 0.35-0.65 coupling factor between the two windings and a shunt between 0.01 to 0.2 ohm.

The idea here is that when a surge gets presented on the primary, a proportional and opposite voltage appears on the secondary winding, canceling out the residual surge seen by the load relative to the intermediate tap.

Empty Tray

With everything removed, we are left with the bottom tray that features four threaded spacers for the filter PCB, one threaded stud for grounding, two more studs to locate the reactor and a glob of RTV presumably intended to keep the reactor from rattling around during shipping.

If the adhesive was intended to secure the reactor on the tray, then it failed in transit since there was no resistance when I lifted it out. The sticker does not show any sign of ever have been in contact with anything, hinting that the RTV may have cured before the reactor ever got dropped in. When I sent a draft copy of this story to Robert for review, he told me the RTV blob should have been bigger and definitely not have come loose on its own.

Circuit Operation

How does it work? Here is a schematic I put together for simulation purposes.

Under normal operating conditions, AC voltage goes through the rectifier bridge, through D5, top off C2 to AC peak voltage and that is it. The low shunt value (R200) reflected through the L200/L201 transformer effectively shorts it out.

When a surge occurs, L200's inductance opposes any sudden change in current. Part of the surge voltage across L200 appears across L201 to cancel most of the initial spike. Some surge energy gets dumped in C2 causing it to rise a few volts and the sharp rise triggers the SCRs. With C4 and C6 initially discharged, the center leg gets shunted to neutral, diverting the remaining surge energy let-through to C4/C6 and the L201-R200 loop.

When the surge is over, R6 and R9 discharge their respective caps and R200 dissipates the remainder of the energy stored in L201's field.

Take It Apart, Then Turn It On

How does all that translate into actual operation? Time to rig things for poking around. Some of you may have noticed that ground clips are missing from my probes. With this much exposed 117V_AC on my bench, they are not worth the risk of accidental shorts.

What is the device at the end of that coax cable you might ask? It is a simple differential probe based on the AD629 amplifier that I use for shunt current measurements. It used to reside on a breadboard until a month ago, when I received the PCB I designed for it.

What Does The Scope Say About Its Power Levels?

With nothing plugged in, I measured an integral power of 837mW, which is basically the power being dissipated by the self-test” LED and its 30kΩ bleeder/limiter resistor. Apparent power, the product of RMS voltage and current, is 10.6VA.

The bulk of this 10VA is simply the fundamental current going back and forth through the reactor and X capacitors. Smaller bumps near AC peaks are the peak detection capacitor getting topped off to restore the charge bled off by the LED. As for the narrow glitches on the current waveform, they might be caused by the diodes' reverse recovery.

Let's Get Unscientific

When I first read about SurgeX, I spontaneously asked myself two questions:

• How well does it actually work?
• What happens with that large inductor if a horribly noisy load is connected to the unit?

I do not currently have the necessary equipment to answer the first question. But for the second one, I can use the vacuum cleaner test from my isobar Tear-Down – SCR/triac variable speed drives are fairly good AC noise sources.

My probes were connected to the three reactor legs (input, main board and output) to see if there would be any dips or ringing around turn-on time. The three voltage traces overlap almost perfectly with no apparent oddities, so no problem here even with this unusual load.

Spicing Things Up

Of course, for that first question, simulation may offer a worthy alternative to hands-on measurements. Here, I reproduced the SA-1810's circuitry in LTSpice with some help from Harford's patents to fill in blanks. Robert from ESP kindly providedparameters for the EMI filter magnetics and actual waveforms so I could sanity check my simulation model against them.

Vin is the input voltage with a standard B-class (1.2x50/8x20) surge applied to it, I(V300) is the current passing through the simulated source and finally, Vout(P-N) is the voltage across output live and neutral. After the EMI filter, there is effectively nothing left of the surge and the output voltage peaks at a completely benign 184V, merely 14V above nominal for 120V_AC.

What is the lazy hump after the initial surge? Simply the shunt capacitors (C4/C6) finishing to charge since normal SCRs cannot turn off until their anode current drops near zero.

For Comparison's Sake

Since I went through the trouble of modeling a combination wave surge generator, I thought I may as well pick up a MOV spice model (Epcos S20K130 here), whack it in and see what happens. After much fiddling with circuit and spice parameters to get around “time step too small” errors, I managed to get these waveforms.

As before, Vin is the input, Ix is the current through the MOV and Vmov is the voltage across the MOV, which also counts as the output voltage. The MOV peaks at 420V and 1700A, 250V above peak AC voltage.

Why don't the voltage input and current waveforms peak at 6kV and 3kA? The first reason is because the specifications are 6kV 1.2x50µs open-circuit and 3kA 8/20µs short-circuit, so the two conditions are intrinsically mutually exclusive since you cannot have 6kV across a short-circuit. The second is that as-modeled, my combination wave pulse shaper only went up to 4.5kV/2.5kA, so not quite up to full spec.

Wrapping Up

If you were starting to grow tired of power strips that all seemed to look mostly the same inside, the SA-1810 is definitely something different. Through clever use of magnetics, semiconductors and large capacitors, it achieves power line surge suppression that MOVs cannot match. Even after tweaking my surge generator model some more to get closer to 6kV/3kA, the peak output remained under 200V, well within even the most sensitive electronics' comfort zone.

I really liked the overall construction except for the use of RTV to secure the reactor instead of nuts, in equal parts because the RTV failed in my unit and if it had stuck, I would have had to pry it off for the tear-down. This would have likely involved mangling the reactor's sticker, scratching the reactor housing and bottom tray.

Despite its great surge elimination performance and build quality, I cannot help feeling like the $400 street price is still too steep for what it is and does. If you have a large collection of sensitive electronics to protect, though, it should be worth considering.

Thanks go to Nicholas from Caster Communications for having the unit shipped to me, Robert from ESP for sharing his engineering insight, and readers like you whose on-going interest in these stories drive the manufacturers' interest in participating.

Tripp-Lite isobar Tear-Down

Some of you asked for this, and forum member kyuuketsuki kindly offered to send a spare my way. So here it is: Tripp-Lite's isobar 8 Ultra.

A Staple Of IT

The isobar brand, which surfaced in 1982, quickly established itself as the go-to for office surge protection. Those of you old enough to remember may have noticed these boxes in government, education and medial environments about that long ago. The general external design remains mostly unchanged except for the switch, which went from stamped steel to an extruded aluminum housing. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right?

From California

You may want to thank forum reader kyuuketsuki for punting this box all the way from Bakersfield, CA to Saint-Hubert, QC. Postage across the border costs half as much as buying one of these on sale. Most of the front is covered by the customs declaration, address, USPS and CP postage labels.

The naked box survived the trip in surprisingly good condition considering the distance. One of its corners does show signs of getting banged up worse than the other three, though.

Under The Labels

After half an hour of careful peeling and cleaning, I have a mostly clean box to take a picture of.

Aside from touting isobar as a best-selling surge protector and a 3840 joules rating, the only two other highlights featured on the front are the all-metal housing and isolated filters. When your product is the de-facto standard in so many institutions, there is no point in preaching to the choir or bothering with minor features nearly all other surge protectors also have.

The Other Side

Aside from the crumpled corner, there is no other obvious shipping damage on the back.

Most of the rear is dedicated to a brief overview of how the isobar's protection works, complete with an annotated picture highlighting the key components and their roles. I will save comments on the image for later, after I get a look at the actual PCB.

The bottom square lists slightly more detailed specifications than usual.

The Spiel

To make a long story short, the isobar's main claim to fame is simply using more and bigger components than competing products.

The Monster unit I looked at back in February possessed a common-mode choke but no inductors, while the SurgeArrest Performance from last summer had inductors but no common-mode choke. The isobar has both and some extras, making it the most complete of the three for power filtering and surge blocking.

The Ratings

Aside from the cord length, 1449-rev3 surge voltage and energy rating, the most interesting specification listed is the 35V surge let-through. This is something usually associated with fancier surge protectors like SurgeX's older designs.

Also of interest (but for a different reason) would be that 97kA surge current specification. It needs to be taken with a pinch of salt; modern 20mm MOVs have a one-shot rating of 10kA, and with 10 MOVs total, the sum barely gets there. This is clearly marketing fluff – a value that should not be achievable in practice.

Extras

As part of your purchase, you get a folded sheet containing the owner's manual, warranty and miscellaneous other information. You also get four Tripp-Lite-branded outlet covers.

How many people actually use their power bars' outlet covers? I simply throw mine into a spare parts box.

The Plug

Inside the packaging, the power plug was tucked into the banged-up corner, which may explain why the ground pin has a slight inward bend. The plug size is about the same footprint as APC's, except the isobar's also has ears on the sides to provide extra grip, making it much easier to pull out. Cabling, on the other hand, is the usual PVC fare.

Spotting Differences

When companies update products, they sometimes opt out of printing updated packaging. Here, the artwork shows a plunger-style breaker on the right end-cap, while the actual unit uses an illuminated breaker-switch.

Rear View

The usual complement of warning and certification stickers adorns the rear cover (five in total if you include the tiny “QC pass” one below the serial number).

Wall-mounting accommodations are provided by bent ears extending from each end-cap, putting about one centimeter of clearance between the enclosure and whatever it rests or mounts on. Should a fire actually start inside, the surface supporting the isobar should be spared most of the heat and hopefully remain intact until the fire dies out.

The Usual Warnings

Turning the unit over reveals the usual indoors-only, dry location, 10m of in-wall wiring from the breaker box and daisy-chaining warnings. French-speakers again appear exempt from everything except dry locations. Surprisingly enough, the unit is only rated for 12A instead of the usual 15A; this is not mentioned in the packaging's specifications area.

The second warning blob mentions that the isobar might not be suitable for use under certain circumstances. I do not remember seeing this on any of the products we've dismantled in the past (or their documentation).

The Other End

Aside from a cable entry point, there is not much to see here other than a fifth oddly placed screw. More curiously, that extra screw happens to be one of those non-reversible flat-heads. What does it actually do? Time to start digging in.

Short-Lived Mystery

Four screws later, the mystery is solved. That extra screw is merely a ground connection. Looks like Tripp-Lite did not want anyone loosening the ground screw without meaning to. This may seem redundant next to the quadruple grounding through the outlets' center screws, but safety rules require a non-structural ground attachment since outlet screws may loosen over time from normal use.

Slip-Sliding Along

With either end cap removed, the rear cover effortlessly slides out of its housing track.

Cover Up

A thin piece of what appears to be heat-shielding material is stuck on the rear cover over the PCB's area, further reducing the amount of thermal exposure for whatever lies behind in case of a contained fire.

Surprise!

When I first received the retail box and saw the PCB image on the back, I thought it might spoil the tear-down surprise if they happened to match. So, I secretly hoped they wouldn't.

With the rear cover out of the way, we have a glimpse of the internals. If you remember back to the packaging's PCB image, you may notice that the PCB shape and layout are completely different.

House Of Spades

All except one connection between the PCB, the power cord and breaker switch use spade terminals. The ground wire gets crimped to another piece of wire, which is in turn soldered to the PCB.

Crimped Space

When you thread wires using crimp connections, you want all of the strands inside for best performance and also to ensure the tightest possible crimp. From the looks of it, the wires got rammed straight inside and a handful of their strands crumpled during insertion. This isn't ideal, but it's good enough to earn a “QC pass” sticker from automated testing.

Diagnostic

The Protection Present, Fault and Line OK Diagnostic functions announced on the housing's silk-screen are provided by this small PCB made from the main PCB's cut-out, which is a great way of reducing waste and manufacturing costs.

Hot Snot

What do you do when your snap-in panel mount breaker is rattling slightly? You gunk it up. While duct tape often gets credit for holding the universe together, I believe hot glue deserves an honorable mention.

In case you were wondering, this is an Approach SS-001 12A/125V snap-in breaker. The oddly shaped plastic piece on the left is the LED holder for the status indicator PCB.

Hallowed Out

With everything but the glued-down switch removed, all that is left is the three-sided shell. You can clearly see the classic extruded aluminum body shape with screw channels near each corner and the groove the rear cover slips into at the top.

Extruded aluminum enclosures are convenient when you manufacture a range of products that require slightly different lengths of the same general shape. Order full-length runs and cut them down to whatever size you require.

Spilling The Beans

Unlike the box shot, where the diagnostic PCB is shown with all of its wires neatly tied together, the wires are actually all over the shop. It didn't look like there was this much wiring in here, based on Tripp-Lite's shot.

Something Troublesome

I see something potentially troublesome: the two outlets on the right are connected using rear-entry solid wires, while the other two on the left are connected directly to the PCB.

Along the bottom, you can see the daisy-chained ground connections, starting with the PCB's ground wire on the left crimped to another wire using a fork connector.

Hitting A Snag

These Rong Feng outlets with snare-type connections have no wire release slots. Even if they did, those slots are usually on the back, which would be of no help with the two outlets nailed directly through the PCB.

What The Packaging Says

Here is a closer look at that PCB image for reference purposes. On it, we can see three fat MOVs, a small X-cap and a common-mode choke on the left edge. A pair of chunky inductors, six more skinny MOVs (only one pair of which equipped with a visible thermal cut-off), three toroidal inductors and two more X-caps are on the right edge.

What You Actually Get

The PCB has four skinnier-looking MOVs on the left. The two inductors got shifted further apart, presumably to reduce mutual inductance. Two MOV pairs got grouped around a single thermal fuse. And there is only one X-cap at the board's right edge instead of two in the artwork version.

Upon examining the PCB, I cannot help wondering where the “isolated filter banks” advertised on the packaging actually are, unless the company means those toroidal inductors at the bottom are the only isolation between banks.

Wound Up

The front end of both large inductors looks like whoever wound them had a hard time making the wire go from the top layer to component lead cleanly. Since these inductors could be blocking over 2kV during a surge, I am surprised they rely exclusively on their enamel coating to prevent arcing between layers. The first and third layer wires are also crossing quite close to each other.

The other components comprising the isobar's line input are four Ceramate 20D391K, a 100nF Carli X2 cap, a common-mode choke and a 15A fuse. I was surprised to see MOVs rated at 390V here, instead of the usual 200V 20D201K.

Back-End

All six MOVs in this shot are the expected 20D201K. The two at the top are across live and neutral after the large ferrite bead inductors, while the four at the bottom are split between live-ground and neutral-ground. A 1µF X2 Carli cap completes the isobar's bulk filtering circuit.

Drawing A Blank

There is not a lot to see from below, since the whole PCB is covered by a sheet of heat-resistant material pinned down by two of the four outlets.

Nailed

Those outlets are not going anywhere, either. As mentioned, they are nailed directly through the PCB by a pair of gauge 14 jumpers through two holes on each side. Since I could not even manage to pull one of the single wires out of the wired outlets, there is no chance of prying outlets off the PCB without wrecking something.

If you were wondering about the wimpy-looking piece of wire in the middle, that's a fusible link between the four N-G/L-G MOVs and ground.

What Has Been Seen

Pulling back the loose half of that sheet reveals a similar fluxy solder job to what we saw in January's TL606 tear-down. The bottom-right trace goes directly to ground and, looking at the solder joints, we can conclude there is one MOV across N-G, one across L-G and two across L-N in this cluster.

The rest of the circuit that cannot be observed from the board edges will need to be figured out the old-fashioned way: continuity testing and intuition.

Traced Out

Traced lines on this image correspond to PCB connections, while dotted lines represent connections through inductors or fuses. Imagine where the components' leads are to figure what they are connected to.

As I suspected, the “isolated banks” are only one inductor apart. More surprisingly, those inductors are wired in series between outlets. I have doubts as to how well the isolation would perform in the presence of a significant noise current.

Introducing Some Noise

How do you test noise filtering or isolation? You inject noise and measure how much of it shows up where it is not supposed to. I'm using a vacuum cleaner as my noise source. Although it's not the most scientific test instrument, it should prove more than adequate for demonstration purposes.

The trace shows the current waveform after adding a 700Hz high-pass filter to attenuate 60Hz current by about 21dB. Our point of interest is the 2A step in 100µs at the red arrow occurring two milliseconds after every zero-crossing due to the electronic power controller.

Rigged For Testing

To measure voltages at each output, probes are hooked up to components inside the isobar. Channel one is connected directly at the fuse, channel two connects to the tinned part of the toroidal inductor's lead, while channels three and four connect to the back of their respective outlets. The blue cap provides a bypass path between scope ground and the isobar's neutral to reduce common-mode noise.

How well-isolated do you think the banks actually are? Let's have a look. The following waveforms are taken at the switching point mentioned on the previous slide, since that is where noise should be at its worst. The traces are offset for enhanced visibility.

First Bank

With the vacuum connected to a first bank outlet, there is nearly no visible noise on any of the four banks. You might even think I got the horizontal and vertical scales or offsets wrong, or forgot to turn the vacuum on. This is exactly what I was expecting. The isobar's 1µF X2 capacitor connected almost directly across bank one eats practically all electrical noise, leaving little to contaminate the other banks strung after it.

Second Bank

Now the vacuum is connected to the second bank, one toroidal inductor downstream from the first bank and X2 cap. As before, the first bank shows negligible noise. But the second bank does have about 5V_PP from current change through the inductor. I was expecting it to get transposed directly to the third and fourth banks since they are connected through series toroidal inductors, however, noise actually doubles to 10V_PP on bank four. It appears the inductors have a self-resonance frequency of about 100kHz.

How much difference would plugging something in bank four to load it down make?

Second Bank, Take Two

I used a spare computer power supply to provide light loading. As expected, the ringing frequency dropped to 12kHz or so, courtesy of the PSU's 1µF X2 cap in its EMI filter. But the magnitude still doubles between bank two and four.

This may shed some light on why Tripp-Lite mentioned the isobar might not be suitable for all uses. Interactions between reactive components can form resonant circuits, generating unexpected voltages and frequencies that could be problematic for sensitive equipment.

Fourth Bank

This time, the vacuum is connected to the last bank, the one after all three series inductors. Voltage spikes scale proportionally at 5V per bank, starting from negligible noise on bank one and peaking at 15V on bank four, exactly as you would expect from a voltage divider.

My vacuum's current slew rate is about 20mA/µs, which is at least an order of magnitude milder than truly nasty noise sources, so the isobar's inductors could possibly end up generating well over 100V worth of voltage noise from current.

Fourth Bank, Take Two

With both the vacuum and PSU connected to the fourth bank, oscillations similar to the second bank with our PSU on the fourth return, except the waveform gets distorted more severely. Again, the noise amplitude scales linearly with the number of inductors between the reference (bank one) and the other banks.

Isolation?

I really like the isobar's mechanical design, and the use of regular outlets instead of stamped metal strips is also a welcome change.

Electrically, the input filter should do a fine job at filtering line noise and blocking most surge energy. However, the four allegedly isolated banks are a let-down. Performance looks more like you have bank one, and then everything else since the series inductors fail to provide anything I would consider as meaningful isolation. In fact, for the limited testing done here, the isobar would have been better off without them. Tripp-Lite could easily improve this by wiring its toroidal inductors to a common live point instead of cascading them, which looks like a significant oversight to me.

Aside from the design concern above, there is no doubt the isobar has the beefiest filtering and surge protection featured in these tear-downs so far.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions? Leave your message down below or PM me.

Today's Guinea Pig

Many of you may have recently experienced the joys of Boxing Day/Week, and I am no exception. When I saw Monster's HT800G going for $30 instead of its typical $45 street price (or $90 MSRP), I decided it'd be a fine unit to look at.

Knocking At The Front Door

This premium power product comes packaged in one of those dreaded blister packs; not exactly the most return-, storage- or finger/user-friendly stuff.

Features listed on the front include its “GreenPower” outlets to stop devices from drawing standby current when the “Master” device is either off or in standby itself, fire-proof MOVs with 2160 joules of surge suppression, cable and phone surge protection, nondescript other filtering and protections, a $500,000 connected equipment warranty (I thought APC's $200,000 warranty was silly high already) and patented cable labels.

Knocking At The Rear Door

For all my dislike of blister packs, at least Monster's packaging is pre-cut around most of the back so there are only small plastic bridges left to break.

The back gives a summary description of key features listed on the front. The “Dual Mode Plus” protection simply means the switched outlets get turned off to prevent (further) damage to loads and sound an alarm on surges large enough to trigger it. “Clean Power” filtering isn't really explained clearly, but the “precision engineering” claim compels us to expect something more than a simple X-rated capacitor for EMI filtering.

The fine print near the bottom reads: “Designed in the USA and manufactured to its quality specifications. Made in China.”  We'll see what Chinese quality translates to soon. With a $90 MSRP, though, Monster should have been able to afford having the HT800G manufactured elsewhere.

Patents Inside

I was puzzled that no patents were listed on the packaging. A second look, this time inside, reveals Monster's list of trademark claims, patents and disclaimers printed in white on light green. They're easily missed unless you are looking for them.

Packaging Contents

Aside from the surge protector itself, packaging includes:

• a trilingual instruction manual with warranty information
• a disposal notice for European customers (not shown)
• Monster's patented labels
• a one-meter Monster-branded coax cable
• a telephone cord

The Manual

The manual is probably the most frequently overlooked part of most obvious-purpose products, but if you buy one of these “green” PowerCenters, you should definitely read the part about how to use the GreenPower or equivalent feature correctly to reduce the risk of data loss or bricking devices.

Patented Labels

What is so special about these labels? Not much, apart from their glossy paper being punched all the way through the waxed paper backing. If you were expecting to peel them off by bending a corner (as you would with most labels), that's not going to work well; the paper backing will most likely come with it.

Looking up design patent d443 250 reveals it to be nothing more than a patent on color-coded labels that match colored labels on the power center itself.

Phone Cord

If this was from any other manufacturer, I would not bother with a closer look at the phone cord. But it's Monster we are talking about, makers of usually expensive cables.

This isn't a fancy phone cord that promises to make your phone calls sound crisper. Monster didn't even bother to have Dong Long put the house's brand on it.

Monster Coax

Here, we have a 1.2m (4') piece of Monster SV1-RG6 cable with gold-plated termination shells. It feels thick, sturdy and pliable, but I am not too impressed with the off-center terminations and the gouged dielectric on the right. Also, look at the bend radius on that cable; it looks a whole lot sharper than the “five times the cable diameter” thumb rule for shielded cables. Although the cable does not feel like it got structurally compromised, why tempt fate when this potential issue can be easily avoided by folding or coiling the cable more loosely?

Frontal Assault

The Monster HT800G gives you three master-controlled outlets, four always-on outlets, coax and phone surge suppression, power, protection and ground indicators, a 2.4-meter (8') power cord and an illuminated breaker switch to turn incoming mains power on or off.

The exterior design is simple and to the point, just how I like it. I wish the company had simply put five outlets on the always-on side and four controlled outlets, though. Simplify the layout and give people the most flexibility.

Rear View

There's not much to see on the back, where most of the space is occupied by the molded information label. As appears to be customary for power strips, French-speaking people only need to worry about keeping the unit dry, while English speakers need to beware of aquariums, wet locations and piggy-backing strips onto each other. As typical for better-quality MOV-based surge suppressors rated under UL 1449v3, this unit is rated at 400V across any two mains wire pairs.

At The Top

The cable enters from the top, just beside the GreenPower switch. If going green is not your thing, Monster's GreenPower is causing you unexpected issues or you read the warnings about potential data loss and decided not to try your luck, this tiny switch gives you that option.

The Cost Of Going Green

The extra circuitry required to manage Monster's GreenPower and Dual Mode Protection requires power of its own. With the GreenPower outlets inactive, the HT800G draws 58mA of standby current versus 87mA with the GreenPower outlets forced on using the bypass switch. For comparison's sake, I also included the current draw from one of my APC SurgeArrest, clocking in at 17mA.

Note that since both units contain reactive components like chokes and X-caps, and active components like diodes, these figures are apparent current, which is a combination of active, reactive and distortion currents. Isolating the active current draw would require separating the 60Hz current component and calculating its phase shift relative to voltage or a power analyzer. At 114V line voltage, those currents would translate into apparent powers of 6.6VA, 9.9VA and 1.9VA respectively.

Measuring Power

Phase shift is easy enough to measure. Introduce any form of resistance on the neutral wire, measure the resulting voltage and then measure phase difference with line voltage. Here, my multimeter's mA-range current shunt acts as my arbitrary resistance in the neutral path.

After eyeballing the waveform distortion and noise out, current is leading voltage by about two divisions, which translates to 86° of forward phase shift, or a capacitive power factor of 0.063 if you prefer. This means the HT800G presents an almost entirely capacitive load with nothing plugged into it, regardless of whether GreenPower outlets are on or off. Since many countries' power utilities meter residential customers only for active power, less than 7% of the previously calculated figures would be billable, or less than 0.7W in the HT800G's case.

Fancy Mathematics

For the sake of fun, curiosity and checking that I still remember how to do a Discrete Fourier Transform, I decided to export waveform data to a CSV file, put together a spreadsheet to compute the 60Hz DFT over 30,000 points spanning 600ms and plot the raw and extracted 60Hz signals for sanity-checking, seeing if the calculated signals line up with the raw data for both phase and amplitude. This far more accurate measurement came out as 83.6º or a PF of 0.11 with GreenPower outlets forced on (GreenPower off) and 82.7º or 0.13 PF with the GreenPower outlets off.

Three degree eyeball error? I call that fair enough. This means the HT800G still uses less than 1W.

Measuring Thresholds

How much current must the Master device draw before the GreenPower outlets get turned on and off? I used a PC supply as the load, measured its AC input current as I increased power draw on the 5VSB output until the GreenPower outlets turned on, then repeated the process backwards until the slave outlets turned off. Turn-on occurred at 305mA, while turn-off occurred at 165mA, corresponding to 35VA and 19VA respectively on 114V AC line voltage.

About That Switch

When I think of switches, I usually think about snap-action types that maintain their on/off operation until the lever reaches the tipping point and snaps in the opposite state.

While doing the limit measurements, I used the switch many times and noticed how little pressure it took on the Off side to make it break contact while still in the On/Reset position and how “spongy” the movement felt. I revisited the breaker-switches in my growing pile of spare power strips and they all had similarly spongy On-to-Off feels. They do all have the expected snap action going from the Off to On position, though.

I never really paid attention to it before, and the main reason this surprised me is because distribution panel breakers have the exact opposite feel to them; they snap Off but have a spongy travel towards the On position.

The Bottom End

I am not quite sure how I feel about putting the cable and phone protections at the bottom. The mounting slots on the back of the unit are clearly meant for vertical mounting. But in a vertical orientation, you end up with the power cord sticking up to keep the phone and coax pointing down or vice versa. On the floor, space to let the coax bend might also be inconvenient. Top connections aren't as pretty, but they have fewer potential usability issues. As usual with higher-end AV connectors, the RF studs are gold-plated. To complete the gold-plated-everything theme (at least as far as visible parts are concerned), the washers and nuts are as well.

Plugging In

One of Monster's claims to fame with the HT800G is its “FlatProfile” plug and cable. I did a quick visual comparison against my SurgeArrest, and APCs' plugs have a lower overall profile by about one millimeter since they lack Monster's cable over-mold bulge.

With that said, Monster's plug is about 40% bigger than APC's (32mm diameter versus 27mm), and combined with the serrated ridges, it makes getting a firm grip on the plug to pull it out really easy and comfortable.

Safety First Or Coincidence?

I wanted to put in photos to illustrate how much better the Monster plug fits in-hand, but upon reviewing images, I could barely tell them apart. So, I decided to enlist my ruler's help. On the left, we have APC's SurgeArrest's plug with the prongs coming within 3mm of the grip's edge, while Monster's on the right nearly doubles the safety margin with 5mm.

Safer plug designs are always nice to have, and I find them especially important with these low-profile plugs where pulling from the cord to unplug is not an option. Of course, most people rarely relocate their relocatable power taps on a regular basis, so how easy they are to grab might be a non-issue to you.

More Cable

All of the power strips that have passed through my tear-down treatment used stiff PVC or similar power cords. The HT800G uses Monster's house-brand “PowerLine 100” cable, which is considerably more flexible, though not to the point of straightening itself under its own weight like high-quality power tool cables. The matte semi-slick outer jacket's texture feels like neoprene, a more durable type of synthetic rubber.

One-Way

You can add Monster to the list of vendors that likes using security screws of some sort. In this case, it uses “non-reversible” flat-head screws. These were surprisingly easy to reverse out, though. I simply sharpened my flat-head screwdriver's tip, applied pressure to make it bite into the screws and kept it from slipping.

First Peek

It looks like quality Chinese manufacturing strikes again. As soon as I started prying the top cover off the bottom, I was greeted by the sight of a suspicious hole through the white neutral wire. Whoever put the cover on this unit did not bother ensuring all wires were safely tucked out of harm's way, put the screw right through it and crushed the insulation in the process.

This is one of those occasions where uncovering manufacturing defects and potential safety hazards (like a compromised wire and an enclosure screw connected to mains power) requires breaking the warranty.

A (Much) Closer Look

This is a bottom-side view of the wire. As the screw bore through the insulation, it pulled it into the screw hole, ripping it off and leaving exposed copper. Had the screw been maybe a millimeter closer to the middle of the wire, it might have cut it in two.

When I called Monster's customer support and explained what I found, they offered a replacement even though I technically voided the warranty. But because shipping for warranty replacement was at my expense, I decided to have it replaced as defective by Best Buy instead.

The Replacement

In my replacement unit, wire routing at the cable's entry point is different. Instead of going around the housing edge and breaker switch to the left, it scurries to the right then directly under the main PCB, far away from any screws.

Some Prying Required

The cover's top half popped off fairly easily with only a few snaps holding it down, but the bottom end required extra leverage and patience for some reason. I got the prying started with an expired credit card and, once I had enough room, I upgraded to a bamboo chopstick.

The Fun Begins

The only thing left in the way of separating the top and bottom shells is the GreenPower switch fastened to the bottom half by two tiny screws and the cable connector glued to the PCB. Everything else is fastened to the top cover where the outlets are. In my replacement unit, the glue glob is on the wire, seemingly acting as strain-relief at the connector.

There is some amount of lint or other particles stuck on solder flux near the mid-right solder joint on both the original and replacement units.

The Dinky Switch

PCBs do not get much simpler than this: one switch, one resistor and one connector. I am a little surprised that Monster did not simply put the resistor on the main PCB and soldered the wires directly on the switch.

Since there is no electrical isolation between mains and the control circuitry connected to this switch, safety regulations require the use of extra isolation. Here, it takes the shape of an interposed plastic cap between the user and the switch's body.

Pressing Matter

This looks familiar: those of you who have seen my inexpensive power strip round-up may remember the Dynamark “bonus” unit, where I mentioned press-fitted studs but did not actually put pictures of what I meant. Here is a chance to make up for that.

The top cover studs on the left go in the bottom cover holes on the right. No glue, no barbs or anything fancy. The only thing holding the two parts is tight tolerance between them generating enough pressure and friction to make extraction difficult. I am surprised these things did not break. There is one on each side, likely intended to keep the shell together between the time where the two halves are combined and when screws get put in.

Fully Exposed

With the last impediment removed, we get a full view of the PCB's back side. From the left, we see the coax and phone surge protection, the outlet connection strips, a small PCB whose function is unclear from this angle, the rather busy main PCB, the breaker switch, power cord and finally, the tiny GreenPower switch PCB.

Phone Protection

The HT800G ships with a four-conductor phone cord and contains a matching two-circuit surge protector comprised of CNR10D241K MOVs and fuses.

Coax Protection

Without a tracking generator-equipped spectrum analyzer, I cannot verify Monster's claim of low-loss RF surge suppression. But the HT800G does at least have a fully shielded RF unit instead of the naked-bottom PCBs found in APC's fancier models.

The Mystery PCB

Here's the component side of that small “mystery” PCB. It features one generously-sized 1µF X-cap for EMI filtering connected directly across the load-side metal strips, along with support components for Monster's surge protection buzzer that lets you know when the surge protection either kicked in or failed.

The Main PCB

Soldering on the main board looks a little blobular, similar to most PCBs with large through-hole leads. But it does not appear to have any obvious issues electrons would complain about. If you are wondering what the six extra holes are for, my guess is they serve other products reusing this PCB.

Going Top-Side

It's looking a little crowded. So crowded, in fact, that extra circuitry has to be relocated to a small daughterboard. In the top-left corner, we have the input choke and status LEDs. Below them are two film caps whose function is unclear. Occupying most of the middle of the board are Monster's two ceramic-encased MOVs with the usual thermal shut-offs in-between. Below and to the left (and along the right edge), we have the relay controlling power-saving and “dual protect” outlets, current-sensing shunts and likely bits of support circuitry.

Daughter Dearest

If you were expecting anything fancy on this little PCB, you might be disappointed. It's only hosts a humble LM324DG quad operational amplifier, likely acting as a comparator for the dual-mode surge protection and detection amplifier for the GreenPower master current sensing.

At The Input

On the left, we have a chunky common-mode choke to filter out high-frequency noise and soften edges on incoming surges to spare other components, such as the MOVs and X2 cap - at least in cases of common-mode events. The 330nF (front) and 680nF (back) film capacitors on the right form capacitive voltage dividers with the remainder of circuitry connected downstream from them. The larger capacitor powers the daughterboard, while the smaller one appears to be powering the relay's circuitry.

On And Off

The HT800G's GreenPower function needs to measure the “Master” device's current to determine whether it is turned on or off, and does so using a pair of metal shunts on the master's neutral side. You can see the master's neutral (covered in fire-resistant fabric near the MOVs) connect to the PCB on one side of the shunts and the normal outlet strips' neutral at the other end. The small potentiometer just below the MOV most likely provides trimming for the GreenPower on/off threshold and is covered in glitter-glue to prevent accidental changes after factory calibration.

The Star Of Monster's Show

These are likely the main selling point for most people – they certainly were for me. I would expect manufacturers of ceramic-encased MOVs to put their brand on display, but these have no visible manufacturer markings on any side. Doing a search for the 20S201X3 part number returns a few hits on Chinese distributors, one of them with a matching pictures lists the manufacturer as Shenzhen Kangtai Song Long Electronics Co., Ltd. The corresponding website was not responding when I tried accessing it, and I was unable to find the specifications anywhere else.

From the part number and distributor descriptions, we can guess the ceramic casings contain three 20mm square MOVs with a varistor voltage of 200V connected in series with one of the four terminals bonded to each internal node.

The Sidekick

After the fireproof MOVs, the HT800G's other main attraction is its GreenPower function that switches off controlled outlets when the “Master” device is off. The device responsible for switching those outlets is the blue Goodsky relay, which also performs double-duty as the “dual protection” output disconnect for those outlets.

Behind The Scene

Remember earlier when I wished Monster had simply put five outlets on both sides? It turns out that all of the necessary metal and plastic work is already there; the only missing detail is holes and patented coordinated labels, I suppose, just to keep up with the theme. If someone really wanted the two additional outlets, all they would need to do is drill holes at the correct locations.

All wire connections except mains ground are spot-welded to metal strips, while the ground gets the solder blob treatment. Readers who have been following these tear-downs should be familiar with both connection strip styles by now, but we will still take a look at them next.

Something Old, Something (Not So) New

Shown above is a piece of ground strip, which is practically the same flappy style as the dollar-store units. Below that, you can see a sample of the live and neutral metal strips employing the more durable bent fingers contact style instead of the usual strip with offset punched slots.

I was really expecting round finger-style ground strips similar to what I saw in my APC BX1000 tear-down from last summer.

Spot-On Welding

This is an example of direct bare copper to metal strip contact. There's no tinning or plating on the wires, just pressure to tightly pack all the strands together and a high-current pulse to fuse them in place without causing much visible damage or melting. All of the wires are stripped two or three millimeters too long, though.

Spilling Monster's Guts