Surge protectors break 360s?
Mark over at Law of the Game has posted that his 2nd Xbox 360 died. When he called Microsoft support, they told him to not use a surge protector. Surge protectors are almost givens these days, especially with expensive electronics. This is the explanation the MS rep gave:
“The Xbox 360 is highly sensitive to reductions in power, and even the slightest cut in power can cause things like the fans and even the DVD laser to malfunction. Surge protectors can cause this, and probably 90% of the consoles they see have all failed in 6-12 months of being plugged into a surge protector.”
Mark also mentioned a Microsoft Knowledgebase article that says to plug the 360 directly into the wall. So it looks like our choices are, fry the 360 when a surge hits your old and ailing power lines, or fry it trying to protect it from them.
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You’ll get voltage dips when things power on on the same circuit. Things like, oh I don’t know, the TV set you absolutely have to have to play a console?
How many people have enough wall plugs behind their entertainment center to plug everything in? Nobody I know, that’s for sure.
Exactly. The electrical system in your home is going to fluctuate. Power supplies are designed to tolerate that within reason. A quality UPS or surge protector is going to keep that to a minimum, not make it worse. This has to be inaccurate from one side or the other.
Seems to me like the KnowledgeBase article was a trouble shooting thing; more for consumers that have PEBKAC issues than us l33t folks.
I call “shenanigans” on the MS rep that claims that a power strip is going to make power fluctuations WORSE. What does he plug his gear into, a portable nuclear pile in his backyard?
More “blame the customer” from Microsoft- shocking!
A.
I blew out my entire entertainment system a few years back when lightning hit the antennae up on the roof of my trailer. Even fried my ‘Astro Invaders’ game I had in my intellivision that I was playing at the time.
It's really important on those gaming console to have a good amount of power and I can say that surge protectors can still be used but not to overload it so that the power distribution will have a focus. Make sure that the surge protectors will be used in a good way and there will be no problem then for those equipments. Equal power distribution is not good in all times because there are really equipments like those gaming console for example which must have the good amount of power distribution.