Recommend a UPS for desktop system

[sathyan]

I wasn't sure if this should go here or in Power Supplies.

I am looking for recommendations on a UPS (650VA) for my system*:
-provide battery backup to power through short (<5 min) outages
-shut down the system (Win7) in longer outages
-regulate the voltage to manage brown outs

Are there any particular brands/models you recommend? Is the Cyberpower AVR line any good?


*AMD Athlon II x 3 @ 2.9GHz (435): 95W TDP
Gigabyte 790 motherboard using 2 DDR3, 1 PCIe, and 2 PCI slots
ATI 4670 video card
WD "Green" SATA drive: 6W at seek
DVD drive
22" LCD monitor: 50W
External HDD: 37W
http://extreme.outervision.com/PSUEngine estimates the system at 238W
Adding in the LCD and external HDD we get: 325W
http://bugclub.org/beginners/miscellaneous/upscalc.html suggests a UPS in the 650VA range


thanks,
Sathyan

 

[ecom]

That sounds a bit high, but probably a good estimate. I picked up a 1000VA UPS back in 2004 and it's probably about time to replaced the battery, but it's saved me many many times because the area I lived in had many brownouts and blackouts under 1 minute.

The system I ran on it:

AMD XP 1700 (Palomino)
1GB RAM
2 x 80 GB HDD (possibly +1 200 GB) all 7200 RPM
Radeon X700
17" LCD

Total power consumption at idle was something like 220W and maybe 270W under load according to the UPS. The run time estimate was 24 minutes and I know it was good for at least 15 of those 24.

I had some kind of APC brand UPS in a tower-like configuration rather than the brick-shaped ones. Although as I recall, the battery only took up a small portion of that space.