Silverstone Zeus 650 Tripping AFCI Breaker in House

I am having an issue with a brand new Silverstone Zeus 650 power supply tripping a breaker when turned on when attached to a power line with an AFCI breaker on it. These AFCI's are supposed to detect arcs that might cause fires. Both AFCI breakers I have on the house trip when I simply plug in the power suppliy and turn it on, with NO COMPONENTS attached! The other non AFCI breakers, even the 15A ones, don't trip. This is the only PSU that does this, though it is the most powerful one we have here.

Any clues or ideas?

A PSU with no load should draw nearly zero current.

Bad PSU.

I've run into an interesting problem recently with active PFC....

If the active PFC emulates the exact same sine wave as what the AC outlet produces, the resulting harmonics can have some pretty crazy side effects... like flickering lights!

I've never plugged a PSU into a AFCI, so I couldn't tell you what the AFCI would do, but I imaging tripping would be a potential side effect.

A good solution is to plug the PC into a UPS or an AVR since the output sine is changed when going through one of these devices. You should have some sort of AVR regardless if you want your PC to last.

I get the lights flickering when not attached to an AFCI line too.

As for the bad PSU -- i have another on the way but I am not so sure. I was always told that when you first turn a PSU on that they cause an initial spike of current sometimes more than 50 amps as they power on all the components.

I originally did have this PSU going into an APC BackUPS RS 1500, but the same thing occurred, it tripped the breaker and then went to battery power. The APC website says it has AVR support as well. http://www.apc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=23

Actually now that I look, I have the XS model, not the RS, as that is what Best Buy sells. The difference between the two: "The Back-UPS RS models have both Boost* and Trim** as features of Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR), where as the Back-UPS XS only has Boost. When the input voltage increases above the high transfer point of a Back-UPS XS model it will only go to battery."

I wonder if that might help it to get an actual RS model....

Any other thoughts?

Well lets see... what kind of device can change the frequency of your AC input? That'll fix the problem.

I have an Arc Fault breaker on the circuit in my computer room, and have never had any problems to date, The Arc Fault, detects shorts like arcs in a Vaccum cleaner, and trips the circuit when that happens.
Just to see what gives, upon reading this thread, I shut down, disconnected from my AVR, and booted from straight off the wall receptacle. No problems.

On the other hand, in my daughters bedroom, which is also Arc Fault, I had to swap the breaker out to a regular 20@, as the light in her aquarium would trip the Arc Detect breaker. Go figure.

Big Lar said:

Just to see what gives, upon reading this thread, I shut down, disconnected from my AVR, and booted from straight off the wall receptacle. No problems.

Click to expand...

I never said all APFC PSU's did this. It's a coincidence more than anything. Typically, the frequency of the corrected power is NOT exactly the same as what's in somone's house. AC mains are rarely ever exactly 60Hz and the power factor correction is rarely exactly 60Hz.. or whatever frequency they're both at right now (could be 59.7Hz for all we know.) Odds are, you can go out and buy a second Silverstone PSU and it'll work perfectly because it might be 60.2Hz.