Thunderstorms

Do you unplug your computer during a severe thunder storm?
Should I?
>$15 walmart power strip, no UPS, 120 year old house

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You should unplug your entire house with that shit.

This iss what we're dealing with user
Unless you were being sarcastic and just telling me to get offline

With what you have, you should unplug it. Get some surge protector extensions for your computer and you'll probably be fine to leave it on.

Well that's not a posssiblity but I would hope that even cheap strips can guard against aa surge and sacrifice themselves. If not that then do power supplies have any protective circuitry?

nope, why would i
>modern house (built in 2008)
>live on top floor
>no ups

My house wasn't built by braindead imbeciles so I don't.

Not a possibility? Not sure what you mean.. we have pic related in the UK and sure you have something similar for around $20-30.

well first you should know that power strips are not always surge protectors, most aren't.

I had lightning strike both directly and nearby a house I lived in in Houston TX. house got struck 3 times total and it did damage all three times.
first strike was direct and hit the house (we did have a lightning rod), blew up our security system and the alarm was going off for a few hours until we could disable the thing. killed two tv's and a bunch of random house shit. was honestly the most terrifying moment of my life I was standing outside under the porch watching the storm. flash of light and instantaneous explosion sound later and I had jumped like 6 feet without realizing it.

two more strikes hit the trees ~50 ft away and did temporary damage to things. we had tv's and a pc that didn't turn on for hours after the strike but worked fine the next day.

My rule of thumb is that if I spent a lot of money on something I will use a proper surge protector. My pc, tv's, musical instruments, and speakers all are on surge protectors.
I killed a $2000 keyboard once plugging into a shady looking outlet on stage at a gig. worked fine half an hour until there was a surge and my baby died. Always use surge protectors unless you don't mind replacing your unit at full cost

I don't have $20

> living in some 3rd world hovel that actually has thunderstorm

get out of here tyrone

>modern house
say goodbye to all of your shit first good storm that comes by. fucking house will probably fall down

cheap strips will just send the surge to everything plugged into the strip. you have to read the packaging, if it says its a power tap, its not a surge protector. a power tap will do jack shit to save your gear

It has to say its a surge protector and it will cost more than a cheapo power tap. a reputable brand will have an insurance guarantee for a huge dollar amount in the event the surge protector fails and shit fries. they basically never have to pay out because surge protectors work

where I live they're like 3 for $20. Not sure how thats not an option

Outplayed

Thunder can't hurt your electronics

Had a korean 1440p 100hz monitor which got fried from a surge. Still really bitter about it, it was a great monitor

What was the model? In the market for something similar.

Why your hand is empty?
Grab a dick and post new pic

I've just got a UPS with a bad batter that I use as a surge protector

Get a din rail mounted surge protector in your electrical box to protect your entire house. These should be fairly cheap to get from China.

>VS
>Word
>Discord
>Fraps
>Windows
You should let the thunderstorm destroy your computer

>from china
I'd rather take a direct lightning strike to my computer

This is all top tier software user

...

There isn't a single interesting thread there and I've been posting here since 2007. This place is better.

>Spotify
>Discord
>Word
>VS
>Fraps
>Chrome
>motherfucking Powershell

Your computer is also made in china

>Sup Forums
>better
Than what? Injecting pure shit into your eyeballs? I fucking *wish* I could leave

Tons of great products from China as long as you don't just buy $2 shit that takes 1 month to deliver from dodgy ebay pages

It's just a huge varistor disc. Worst case it blows a fuse when it fails closed-circuit.

Fabricated in China, still made to obey US regulations
Made in China for China means obeys Chinese regulation (AKA almost none)

>surge protector vs millions of volt
kek

hey thanks for telling me to go to Sup Forums guys. I've been here for almost 10 years and I've never used that board. It's kinda nice

ikr XD

some surge protection > no surge protection

>120 year old house
If your electrical has been redone relatively recently you should be fine, otherwise you're living in a potential fire hazard that doesn't even need a storm to ruin electronics.

I mean most rooms only have one outlet with "grounds" on it and if I had to guess the ground doesnn't actually ground out to anything. The rest of the outlets are all just 2-hole ones.
But it's a half-way house and all 6 residennts have air conditioners yet the power hasn't browned out so I hope it's good? I'm the only one who has a computer, all the rest of the people do is watch tv(idk how people do it)

they never have to pay out because the insurance is a gimmick
read one of the warranties
>send company damaged surge protector and all damaged equipment on your dime
>no guarantees anything gets returned if claim is denied
>subrogate to just about every other policy (homeowners, renters, equipment warranty)

i'm not saying don't use one, just don't expect too much protection

>$5 thrift store power strip
>no UPS
>170 year old house
>gray clouds rolled in
>wind picked up

How fucked am I?

Hey I'm in one of those areas.

Check the National Weather Service or whatever other organization serves your area for advisories specifying thunderstorms that have dangerous amounts of cloud-to-ground lightning.

You won't have to worry much about strong storms unless you happen to live in southern/mid New England where high amounts of potential convectional energy will linger into the evening.

>tfw live in area where theres rarely thunderstorms

feels bretty gud

I do

>that pillow on the bottom
God, I wish that were me.

Depends 100% on the local infrastructure.

I just turn it off, mostly so my disks aren't interrupted during a write and left in an unclean state.

Nope, but I live in a city and the chance of a direct hit is astronomically small.

I luckily live in a city that mandates surge protectors, so I don't.

Only once a black out happened and I wasn't even using my computer tho

>Do you unplug your computer during a severe thunder storm?
No, I live in an area with a decent power grid. I also have a pure sine wave line-interactive UPS.

>Should I?
Varies by state, some places have shitty power grids. Do your lights flicker often? Do you get random power drops more than a couple times a year? Do you live in a shitty area thats almost like a third world country? If so, unplug your shit every time you are done using it.

Here is a pic of my secondary UPS for my media server. 5 power drops in 24 weeks. Had a span of a few days where power dropped every day, I think they were doing work in the area.

>random power drops like a 3rd world country
I get this. My UPS is old and still works well enough to shut things down, but it buzzes extremely loud once it has charged to capacity, so I'm not able to use it frequently.
Any one else get this?

Then you won't have $600 either when your computer gets fried

I somehow managed to spend way more than $60 but you are of course correct.
It seems the storms almost completely missed us even though it seemed they were starting pretty heavy when I posted this. I'll buy either a surge protector or a nice UPS as soon as I can.

Thunder storms can't even hurt electronics, that's just an old wive's tale

You should use a surge protector at minimum for all your high end electronics (Entertainment Room/Living Room,Office equipment,home server,etc) no mater if you get lots of storms or not, cause power does go out for reasons other than weather related. I had a dish sat tuner box get fried by a storm, thanks to the protector, it was only thing that died, my TV,dvd player, PS2 were spared. But really for home servers you gotta go with a UPS cause one day all those little power flickers/failures will add up to data getting corrupted (bitrot). Yes you could always retrieve a good version of the damaged file (s) but do you really want to spend the time to do that or if it's really bad do a full on server restore. Now for small data (1TB) it ain't that big a deal but when you got 8-10-20TB it can turn ugly real quick.

>implying the construction workers who built it all had Ph.Ds

Depends on the severity of the storm, but yes I do. Also I live in NYC and I did not turn my computer off during this measly "storm"

Not when I have this bad boy

Thunderstorms are why surge protectors exist. Stick your hands out. Wave them around. You're touching electricity.

You'll most likely be fine. Eventually you should consider a better power strip, they're like $20-30.

amazon.com/Belkin-BE112230-08-Outlet-Protector-12-Outlet/dp/B000J2EN4S/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1497925230&sr=8-3&keywords=surge protector

Is this any good? I recently purchased it. I see some reviews of them catching on fire, and that worries me.

>Visual Studio
>objectively the best IDE on Windows
>being told to go to Sup Forums because apparently this is video games????

that doesnt make sense, if you had one you would technically always unplug it.

lightning is arcing between the fucking sky and the ground, do you think some dumb fucking consumer battery or 'surge protector' is fucking enough to stop it?

Lightning never actually strikes in the vicinity of my house tho

I've been alive 30 years. I've had my house electrical system hit by lightning once as a kid. I estimate the chance of a hit during a lightning storm between 1 in 1000 and 1 in 10000. Lightning storms are pretty common where I live.

So the expected cost of leaving your computer plugged in during a lightning storm is between

price of computer/1000

price of computer/10000

So if you have a $1000 system you're taking about a 1 dollar risk per lightning storm. If you have valuable data put a number on it and divide. If being without your computer after a hit is worth something to you put a price on it.

It's up to you if being without a computer for the duration of a lightning storm is worth a dollar or two. Personally if the delay between seeing lightning and hearing thunder is less than 5 seconds I unplug.

>mfw my surge protector is 15 years old

it's still okay, right

He's calling you casual scum.
Whioch you are for using spotify, jesus christ.

No
t. Kansasfag who stopped giving a shit

Visual Studio is the only thing there even worth saving. You life is a mess. The best you can do is hope that the storm kills you. Sorry user. Good luck in the next life.

after a storm fried my relatively expensive monitor and i was forced to buy a new one i bought a nice surge protector.

Still unglug it if theres a house-rattling storm though.

It never does until it does.

Pretty much this. Surge protection is nice. It helps with small stuff like the lightning strike that happened behind 3 transformers of isolation on the grid or some weird transient.

There's such a thing as EMP hardening so a direct lightning strike could be dealt with. I just wouldn't expect anything I could purchase in a store to do it.

I've seen one system installed in a residence I'd think had a shot at it. It was a part chosen by a guy who does information security and I installed it right after his meter before the wires entered his house. The shunt path to his ground rod was 4 feet of 8 gauge wire. I wouldn't count on it though and he didn't. He had UPSes inside and a disaster recovery plan in case those didn't work either.

It's probably as good as when you started unless it has shunted a surge.

Always be on the safe side user

My old PC survived Katrina. Usually in a severe storm, the power goes out before things get bad enough to fry your hardware.

brands for a surge protector?