Everyone is familiar with the potential of damage to computers and networks when exposed to a voltage spike on the electrical grid, and most of us use surge protection to prevent it.

Unfortunately, surge protectors don’t protect you from all of the power issues than can potentially damage your equipment.

Over the past decade, as the use of computers has grown commonplace, people have become acutely aware of the need for surge suppressors to protect their computers. But when hardware fails, I often hear the question “Why did it fail? I have a surge suppressor.”

Well, the truth is there are a number of reasons why hardware might fail from electrical reasons from manufacturing defects to mishandling of components that causes electrostatic damage. Two serious evil-doers to your computer system are blackouts and brownouts. These can have significant impact on your computer systems and cause devastating damage.

Most people know what a blackout is – the power goes away. In a brownout, electrical service isn’t stopped completely, but the voltage on the electrical grid drops below normal limits… potentially wreaking havoc with your network or computer system.

When the grid voltage drops below normal levels it causes components – like drive motors and power convertors – to draw more electrical current. The lower the voltage drops, the higher the current draw goes. As an electrical device, computers are really quite delicate. The sudden change in current draw and related heat buildup that accompanies a brownout (and in some cases a blackout) is more than enough to kill power supplies, hard drives and motherboards with ease. And a simple surge protector won’t protect you against this.

Let’s talk about the various ways to protect your system from damage.

Everyone is familiar with surge suppressors which cost anywhere from about $6.00 to over $30.00. Surge suppressors are relatively simple devices that are designed to block electricity when the flow exceeds normal limits. However, a surge suppressor will not protect your computer from the significant surges of power that are associated with brownouts and blackouts.

Another form of common protection hardware is the basic Uninterruptable Power Supply, or UPS, which has a battery and inverter built into to it. The UPS is designed to take over and generate electricity for your computer when power goes down during a blackout. These devices range in cost from about $50.00 to thousands of dollars for elaborate versions than can easily fill entire rooms.

The best form of power protection is called an Online UPS or Active UPS. These are very similar to a basic UPS in that they contain an inverter and batteries, and can generate electricity for your computer in the event of a blackout. But there is one distinctive difference. The term “Online” or “Active” in the name signifies that they are always generating electricity and are, essentially, replacing the electricity from the electrical grid with pure, clean, and stable electricity freshly generated on the spot for your computer.
This difference has several advantages, most significantly: protecting from power fluctuations of both the spike and brown/blackout variety while also protecting you from RFI (radio frequency interference). This is the gold standard in power protection. These devices range in price from about $350.00 to thousands of dollars.

Now let’s look at the costs of repair which can be incurred if you are not protected. Without getting into the potential costs caused by the loss of data or the loss of income due to down time, I would like to discuss the basic costs of hardware replacement. Labor rates vary greatly in the computer repair market from $35.00 per hour for your backyard mechanic/kid next door type technician, to well over $100.00 for premium service vendors. For the sake of this article, I am going to use a labor rate of $100.00 per hour, since it will cover the majority of the market. For basic repairs of desktop computers to replace failed power supplies, hard drives, and mother costs (parts and labor) easily range from $200.00 to $500.00 or more. When dealing with a server or more complex computer systems, those costs will easily double or triple.

With a basic UPS to protect a desktop computer running $50.00 to $75.00, and a solid Online UPS starting at under $400.00 for a single server solution, it is easy to see the cost to protection benefit of using basic and Online UPS solutions instead of surge suppressors for all of your computer and network hardware.