Choosing UPS for computer

[jussi]

Ok so as the last of my components are finally being delivered this week I thought I should get a ups to help protect my investment. Any suggestions on how to determine what I need. Is it simply based on how much power I expect to draw? Which brand do you recommend APC, Cyberpower, something else?

Also I've been doing a little reading and it seems like you also have to match the psu to the right ups. And that an Active PFC power supply (which I've chosen) is not compatible with a non-sine wave UPS. I found that out as I was originally considering the CP1350AVRLCD but I don't think it will work with my Corsair HX850 psu. Is that correct? If so any recommendations under $150? Thanks

[ivwshane]

I'm no expert but I've never heard of having to match up a UPS with a certain type of power supply.

What's more important to you, surge protection or a battery back up?

For that kind of money you could buy a whole home surge protector (of course the installation would cost more).

[tgaut]

I've had good luck with APC and Tripplite with my home computers and DirecTV DRV's. There are two key questions: How much power do you need and how long do you need it to run?

I see that you are choosing a 800 watt power supply but do you expect to need that much? On the other hand, will you need to power your monitor or other devices during an outage? In my case, I have a low end computer, 21" Monitor, gigabit router and buffalo NAS all consuming 220 watts (according to the APC display)

The UPS your are interested will run 9 minutes at half load. Is that enough? I only use my UPS' as protection against storms so I only need 3 to 5 minutes to save open files.

I highly recommend choosing an UPS with user replaceable batteries. I've never experience a failure of the UPS itself but the battery does need replacing every 3 years or so.

Regards, tommy

[LCHIEN]

This is where a Kill-a-watt meter would help you.
I measured my recently built system, it has a 600W PS.
Internally it has GT-550 display card, a I5-2500K CPU and several drives.
However, with two monitors the whole AC load including the UPS is less than 2 amps.
Therefore probably a 360VA UPS will do, although I do have a 500VA UPS.

[jussi]

This is where a Kill-a-watt meter would help you.
I measured my recently built system, it has a 600W PS.
Internally it has GT-550 display card, a I5-2500K CPU and several drives.
However, with two monitors the whole AC load including the UPS is less than 2 amps.
Therefore probably a 360VA UPS will do, although I do have a 500VA UPS.

That's a good suggestion and I'm in no hurry so maybe I'll wait after it's built and see my real world power consumption instead of just relying on the spec sheets.

ivwshane: I didn't know about needing to match up the psu to the ups either. I only found about it after doing some research on UPS. I need both the surge protection and back up. Although since I have a surge protector power strip already back up is probably more important.


tgaut: 9 minutes is more than enough. Like you I just want enough time to save files and do a proper shut down.


Loring: Perhaps you would be a good person to clarify about matching a ups to a psu. I was reading reviews about a ups very similar to mine and one person commented that his computer constantly kept shutting down and realized it was the ups. Tech support said his ups was not compatible with his psu. After his comment someone from the manufacturer wrote the following. Comments on his statement?

Manufacturer Response:

Thank you for your review on the CyberPower CP1000AVRLCD. The problem you described has to do with PC's power supply. An Active PFC power supply is not compatible with a non-sine wave UPS.

Protecting equipment that uses an Active PFC power supply with a non-sine wave UPS can cause data loss, hard shutdowns or a catastrophic failure.

Why does this happen?
Over the last 10 years, power supply unit (PSU) manufacturers have transitioned to focusing on efficiency issues by increasing Power Factor in addition to reliability, quality and capacity. Problems can occur when using simulated sine wave UPS systems with more sensitive devices and electronic equipment. When on battery power, higher-end workstations and computer systems that incorporate Active Power Factor Correction (PFC) power supplies may unexpectedly shut down or crash entirely when used with a simulated sine wave UPS.

Critical Factor
Simulated sine wave output wave form produces a zero-output state during the phase change cycle resulting in a power "gap." This gap may cause power interruption for equipment with Active PFC power supplies when switching from AC power output to simulated sine wave output (battery mode).

The Solution
The PFC Sinewave Series from CyberPower ensures equipment utilizing Active PFC power supplies do not unexpectedly shutdown or experience harmful stress when switching from AC power to UPS battery power.

With pure sine wave output, the PFC Sinewave UPS systems provide continuous output during the phase change cycle and support equipment that utilizes Active PFC power supplies.

We recommend that you purchase the CP1000PFCLCD or one of our other CyberPower PFC compatible models available at Newegg - CP850PFCLCD, CP1350PFCLCD, CP1500PFCLCD, OR1500PFCRT2U, OR2200PFCRT2U.

[LCHIEN]

changing my answer. THe answer is that there are many types of power supplies and many types of UPS and so I cannot make a satisfactory answer that will cover all bases. Seems like a lot of the newer supplies are PFC.

My answer will be, if you have a critical need and you have a PFC power supply then you should probably spend a generous amount for your UPS and buy one with real sine wave inverter.
No sense taking chances unless you are willing to do a lot of testing.

[jussi]

my only comment is that for small power supplies (less than 1000 Watts), active PFC is not real common. If you have one it was probably heavily promoted as such and is labelled as such. So you should know if you have one.

It didn't say it in the box but a little research shows it does.

http://www.corsair.com/professional-...er-supply.html

Active Power Factor Correction (PFC) with PF value of 0.99

[LCHIEN]

It didn't say it in the box but a little research shows it does.

http://www.corsair.com/professional-...er-supply.html

you should notice I changed my answer.

[Cochese]

This is opinion and anecdotal evidence, but it seems like an awful lot of money to let your computer run for ten more minutes. Buy a quality surge protector and be well off. I've never had an equipment failure even with the crappiest of surges. I've very rarely had data loss with an unexpected power loss. OpenOffice has a built-in recovery that is great.

If you want to put a UPS on something, use it on your modem and router. I found those have many more problems after a power loss than anything else.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

[pelligrini]

This is opinion and anecdotal evidence, but it seems like an awful lot of money to let your computer run for ten more minutes. Buy a quality surge protector and be well off. I've never had an equipment failure even with the crappiest of surges. I've very rarely had data loss with an unexpected power loss. OpenOffice has a built-in recovery that is great.

If you want to put a UPS on something, use it on your modem and router. I found those have many more problems after a power loss than anything else.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

I disagree, for me it's not a lot of money for what they do. Even including battery replacement over time. My UPS's aren't really in place for extended blackouts, they are mainly there to cover the little brownouts that we frequently have. Having a UPS makes a big difference to me. I have several APC units I have procured over the years.

I finally got our office to get them for all the workstations several years ago. I had been asking for them for a while, as we had little brownouts on occasion. I was always getting a "we don't have the money". One power event later and my OS got corrupted someway. After several hours of trying to get it fixed and booting, then a complete reinstall I was able to demonstrate that it would have been much cheaper to buy a battery backup. Just my straight time fixing my workstation cost more than a decent 1100VA UPS, not to even mention the amount of time that was spent not producing anything. That 'I told you so' opportunity was pretty sweet.

I think those sealed lead systems are worth their weight in gold (well, maybe not with today's gold prices).

[Cochese]

I disagree, for me it's not a lot of money for what they do. Even including battery replacement over time. My UPS's aren't really in place for extended blackouts, they are mainly there to cover the little brownouts that we frequently have. Having a UPS makes a big difference to me. I have several APC units I have procured over the years.

I finally got our office to get them for all the workstations several years ago. I had been asking for them for a while, as we had little brownouts on occasion. I was always getting a "we don't have the money". One power event later and my OS got corrupted someway. After several hours of trying to get it fixed and booting, then a complete reinstall I was able to demonstrate that it would have been much cheaper to buy a battery backup. Just my straight time fixing my workstation cost more than a decent 1100VA UPS, not to even mention the amount of time that was spent not producing anything. That 'I told you so' opportunity was pretty sweet.

I think those sealed lead systems are worth their weight in gold (well, maybe not with today's gold prices).

That's why I disclaimer-ed myself. I've never had that happen, and I can't explain why. I'm assuming the surge protector I have sees the drop in current and just plain shuts it off. So far, no damage to hardware or software. I'd say I've had about 10 or so abrupt cutouts, luckily no brownouts. It's either on or off here.

I've got a UPS I need to take over to the battery place and see what it would run to get it replaced. Still leaning on putting it on the networking equipment though.

Now at work, I've had my computer fry due to a 'thermal event.' We're in no position to put a few hundred UPS units in, though.

[LCHIEN]

This is opinion and anecdotal evidence, but it seems like an awful lot of money to let your computer run for ten more minutes. Buy a quality surge protector and be well off. I've never had an equipment failure even with the crappiest of surges. I've very rarely had data loss with an unexpected power loss. OpenOffice has a built-in recovery that is great.

If you want to put a UPS on something, use it on your modem and router. I found those have many more problems after a power loss than anything else.

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk 2

the idea for most UPS is to let your computer shut down in an orderly fashion so as not to lose work or corrupt files. rather than just pulling the plug. So 10 minutes is plenty. In the old days of Windows (Win 3, win 95) you wouldn't dare shut off the system without doing a shutdown. Windows has improved to where, if the computer is mostly idle, pulling the plug will not do too much damage and restarting may even bring everything (open files, browsing sessions) back on line. But there are still some disk operations that, if interrupted, can do a great deal of damage and disrupt your OS and files so the computer does not operate upon restoration of power.

if you are solely accessing data and browsing the web and there's few power failures, then you probably don't need a UPS.

I think UPSes have their place. The more critical the work, the more critical the need. If you're updating data bases, entering data, working on software development or important documents or install a lot of software, and your power is not highly reliable, then you probably should have one. If your working time (your salary plus overhead and expenses) is worth more than $50-100 per hour then you should have one.



There's other industrial installations where the computer is controlling a process - the computer needs a UPS to keep the process under control until it can be shut down orderly (could be hours or days). Of course, those installations also need UPS for power to the process equipment, so the added power requirements to keep the computer on are small.

[dbhost]

For the purpose, the bigger, the better. But there is a point where there is such a thing as too big...

For my application, I have a home cloud cluster (for professional development / training purposes) that consists of 2 quad core 32GB machines with a single disk, no DVD or anything like that, and 2 gigabit ethernet switches connected to a single 1500VA UPS, I have a single core 64 bit 2GB machine with a single hard disk, eSATA controller, and an 8 bay eSATA RAID array with currently 4 disks connected to an older version of the same UPS. (Same capacity, no display function etc...). I also have an older 32 bit PC on that same UPS. I am unsure of the time to total power failure as the shutdown command comes 2 minutes after power loss, and the systems have all shut down cleanly before power loss.

My main Desktop PC is a quad core 8gb box with 2 hard disks, a 24 inch flat screen, and a USB all in one printer all connected to an 800VA UPS. My other systems are various 32 bit PCS, and 1 64 bit dual core system with monitors all on 500 VA UPSes.

I originally started out with APC, but they proved no more reliable and were far more expensive than Cyberpower. So I have gone exclusively Cyberpower Systems over the years. Happy I did too!

[pelligrini]

Battery life diminishes quite a bit over time too. All my units are APC, but I've been getting my batteries from RefurbUPS.com. They've had the best prices I've found, even with shipping. I'll take my used batteries to a local Batteries Plus and make a cursory inquiry about pricing (holding my gasp back), then leave the old ones with them.

[westom]

It didn't say it in the box but a little research shows it does.

Some basic electrical knowledge is desperately needed.

For example, how many watts does that computer consume? If 600 or 1000 watts, then that computer is outputting heat like a four slice toaster. Is it? Of course not. Most every computer rarely even draws 350 watts. For a variety of reasons (traceable to computer assemblers without electrical knowledge), then a popular myth hypes "More Power".

The Kil-A-Wat simply confirmed that reality.

Your supply called 265 volts as normal. How often is your 120 volts exceeding 265 volts? How many appliances then get replaced when that happens? Never and none would be a likely answer. But again, popular myths hype fear because numbers are ignored and basic electrnical concepts are not yet learned.

Do you need 9 minutes of temporary and dirty power during a power outage? What is that protecting? Not hardware. All electronics must suffer an unexpected blackout without damage. A design standard that has existed long before the IBM PC even existed. So which anomaly creates a problem?

Most electronics have PFC. PFC is not your concern. But 'active PFC' means a UPS must output power with less distortion. That means a UPS with a low %THD (or some other spec number). Many UPSes don't want to provide those relevant numbers.

This UPS is also a sine wave output. Its 120 volt output is a 200 volt square wave with a spike of up to 270 volts. Ideal power for most all electronics. But might confuse some active PFC circuits in some PSUs.

Most UPSes cause no problem during normal operation because the computer is connected directly to AC mains - where power is cleaner. Some 'dirtier' sine wave UPSes cause problems only when in battery backup mode. To have a better answer means spec numbers for each UPS - such as %THD.

What electrical anomaly so concerns you? A list of potential anomalies is more than you have fingers. Most are made irrelevant by superior protection routinely found inside every minimally acceptalbe power supply. What exactly do you need to protect from? The useful answer would also provide relevant spec numbers.

Every question in this post needs an answer to provide more useful assistance.

How large must your UPS be? That is also answered only after the relevant anomaly is first defined.