Surge Protection

Would it be wise to plug the power supply into a surge protector? Would there be any downside to doing this? Assuming the surge suppression can accommodate the wattage? I have a dedicated outlet with proper grounding, but was wondering if I should plug it directly into the outlet or through a surge device.

Downside would be that the protective ground is not as well connected (grounded) in the surge protectors - they protect also surges through that. Of course it depends on where you live if you need to use such protectors at all.

I live in Canada and I am using this power outlet strip with surge for the 2 PSUs of the SC2 Pro:

Is this ok?

Its OK if it works for you :slight_smile:

I mean is there any downside to use it compared to a regular power strip without this surge?

I bought one that has a power filter also. I live in the US and we operate at 60Hz. I assumed it would clean up the signal slightly 120V 60hz. Although my concern was all the simucube electronics working properly while having the surge suppression and power filter ahead of it’s power supply. It’s a 15A device; and I don’t know how many Amps max the simucube pro 2 is or if there will be any downside apart from grounding. Then my concern was EMI but I think I’ll just plug it directly into the outlet instead and use the surge for computer and triple monitors etc.

At least R1 Meanwell PSUs have surge protector on board, not sure about R2 single PSU unit.


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Most if not all power strips come with surge protectors these days, I wouldn’t sweat about some loose ground, not sure where this comes from.

We’ve had a few support cases where there were all kinds of weird EMI issues that went away when surge protector was removed. Don’t know about whether or not AmazonBasics is a reputable brand, there isn’t even a datasheet available for that.

Similar to using UPS, we’ve had a few cases of those as well.

Those highlighted protections are on the DC side of the PSU, not on the AC / wall outlet side.

Class 1 power supplies such as GST280A should be connected to grounded wall outlet so that it has designed grounding and its safety works fully as intended. Surge protectors typically need grounding as well so that the voltage surges can be directed to the grounding wire (unless the surge protection is a cheap one and just directs possible surges to the N wire internally, however such models can’t protect surges via N wire as there is no separate grounding).

Line to Line and Line to Ground protection and N to ground protection is ideal, but without ground connection such surge protector won’t work as intended, therefore I would recommend connecting to grounded outlet if the protection of the equipment is to some degree a priority.

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Thanks Tommi, in short layman terms if I understand it right.
Surge protectors need ground to function properly and do not impact SC2 operation with a few exceptions which are either broken or badly designed, but those do not work properly as protectors either.