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Need help understanding Voltage regulator choices!

B

BeakerChem

Senior member
Hi all,

I am trying to figure out what I need to get to protect my system from the power problems I am having in my new place. We get light dimmings periodically and it doesn't seem to be due to anything in the house (not timed to the AC or fridge).

I just want to regulate the voltage to the computer, but here is where the problem comes in. I am running an X2 4800+ with a BFG 7800GTX etc... and using a 600W PSU. The friendly staff at Bestbuy sold me a UPS that is only rated up to 330W, saying that it is enough if I only want to use the voltage regulation portion (although searching online says that the systems work by pulling entirely from the battery and charging the battery from the wall, which means that 330W won't be enough at all.)

So, do I need a 600W UPS system, or is there a system out there that just runs AVR. I found a couple, but I don't know the quality and there don't seem to be any reviews on these sorts of things.

Candidates for AVR only:

OptiUPS brand AVR (Only AVR - no battery)

APC's Line-R unit

Anythoughts on if these would be big enough units to work with my system and/or if they are ok companies?

Thanks!
 
Hmm, my problem as well. Doesn't seem to be a much talked about thing. I wonder if I need to just break down and buy the uber expensive 600W UPS?
 
Check with the neighbors for similar problems then contact the power company if the problem is not unique to your residence.

UPS will only mask your problem.
 
The whole town has the problem, so I don't hold much hope for getting the power company to do something about it unfortunately. 🙁

By mask do you mean that it will still be damaging? Still trying to research AVRs, power conditioning and filters...
 
If it is only dimmings without any outages or powercuts, the best thing would be to go in for a CVT(Constant Voltage Transformer). Need to keep it on the floor, away from your CPU, may give out a small hum, but believw me for your situation, this is the thing that works. Go in for a CVT with a rating of 1KVA.
 
Actually that Opti-UPS one looks pretty good, if I'm reading the specs right. I think I heard somewhere that APC's AVR unit is not great but I'm not sure.

I do know that it's hard to find good AVR in newer cheap UPS's. Many of the UPS's that claim to have AVR have only 1 boost mode. I needed one witha good trim function because our voltage is chronically high. I originally bought an APC Back-UPS RS 800 but found out that it either doesn't have trim or it's not very sensitive at all. I ended up then buying a Tripp Lite Smart Pro 700 which has 2 boost modes and 1 trim mode and it's working wonderfully.
 
Wow, all of the CVT modules I am finding are really, really expensive.

The AVR cheapness in a UPS is what I was worried about. I was finding UPS's saying they had AVR for $40 bucks, while a mid level AVR was $30. I know the battery is not cheap, so the only way they are making that price cut is through using sub-par regulation.

Still not sure what to do here. 🙁
 
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