What UPS backup should I get?

[Bubbleawsome]

I need to look into one because the crappy power in my area, it failed once while I was writing this thread the first time.
My system has an i7 870, 8GB RAM and an HD 7770 (Soon to be a 7950) with a 550w rosewill PSU. I had the CP1350AVRLCD on my list, but then one comment said something about active PCF and simulated PCF?
I have no idea what that means, so I'm coming to you guys. Any recommendations for my system? The 7950 will be overclocked, and I would like it to last at least 10 minutes with no power. It would also have my syncmaster 940 and logitech ls21s attached to it.
Thanks guys!

 

[aigomorla]

rule of thumb..

match the UPS with your PSU.

So if u have a 600W PSU... try to get a 600W UPS... if your adding more stuff... add 100W to each item ur adding... LCD.. add 100W...
DO NOT CONNECT HEATERS OF ANY KIND, LASER PRINTERS, OR 5.1 CHANNEL+ SPEAKER SYSTEMS TO A UPS... u will overload it.. unless u have a VERY BEEFY UPS... even then most UPS states never to attach a space heater to it.

Given chances u will never exceed 100% on your psu.. unless u designed it wrong..
The 1:1 is usually the best way to select a decent UPS.

And u want a pure sine wave UPS with Active Voltage Regulation... AVR or some form of it... this is what stablizes your voltage to your PC... the Pure Sinewave has to do with how DC power is delivered to your PC....

like this guy.. he's a great UPS. (has free shipping which is a bonus... cuz they are HEAVY)
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...G&A=details&Q=

APC also makes GREAT UPS...

 

[Red Squirrel]

Also keep in mind VA is NOT watts. To get 600w you want to look at 1000VA. When buying UPSes will be rated in VAs and not watts. Puresine is always better, but to get that, you are looking at large commercial units that take up a whole room. If a $100 UPS is rated as pure sine, I'd really like to put an oscilloscope on that to see how badly they are lying. You also want to get good surge protection but let's not open that can of worms.

 

[aigomorla]

Also keep in mind VA is NOT watts. To get 600w you want to look at 1000VA. When buying UPSes will be rated in VAs and not watts. Puresine is always better, but to get that, you are looking at large commercial units that take up a whole room. If a $100 UPS is rated as pure sine, I'd really like to put an oscilloscope on that to see how badly they are lying. You also want to get good surge protection but let's not open that can of worms.

+1 with RS about the pure sine wave..

however that cyberpower is solid.. here you go red... its under a scope...
http://youtu.be/4QlF5vJlXaA?t=1m

 

[Red Squirrel]

Yeah even the "fake" sine wave is fine for most equipment.

And that actually is a pretty good sine wave.... did not expect that from a home grade UPS tbh.

I'd be curious to test my Trippe Lite inverter-charger if ever I knew someone with a scope. It is advertised as having "Stepped approximation to a sine wave" which is a bit better than typical "modified sine wave" but not sine wave.

 

[alkemyst]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews...p1500pfclcd-tripp-lite-smart1500slt,2785.html

I like APC. I had a smart ups SUA1400 with a management card forever...it just bit the dust. I am going with a SUA1500 in the form of an IBM 2130R6X. The newer LCD version called the SMT1500 is 'prettier' but it suffers from more noise and lights than the old versions...

The IBM can be had refurbished for under $200 easily with new batteries. It's the same as the APC SUA1500 except for it's cosmetics.

Keep in mind you are usually looking at replacing batteries every 1-3 years. Down here my power constantly fluctuates so my batteries are lucky to last 2 years.

Generic batteries I have found work just as well as the name brands.

Cyberpower is a great bang for buck though. In hurricane/thunderstorm Florida, I rely on the capacity of APC to get me through 5-15 min blackouts.

 

[taq8ojh]

Also keep in mind VA is NOT watts. To get 600w you want to look at 1000VA. When buying UPSes will be rated in VAs and not watts.

Is there any relationship between VA and watts then? It's been ages since I was taught physics at school, and even if I remembered any of that, I still wouldn't understand this particular thing

 

[ControlD]

Is there any relationship between VA and watts then? It's been ages since I was taught physics at school, and even if I remembered any of that, I still wouldn't understand this particular thing

There is but you need to know the power factor of the connected equipment for it to all make sense. In the above example, needing a 1000VA UPS to get 600W of backup is assuming a 60% power factor which is pretty low for modern PC power supplies but it is still the standard factor used for PC loads.

Most UPS units will have a maximum VA and Watt rating. You cannot exceed either of them, so the above advice in sizing is pretty sound. Assume your VA rating is calculated using a 60% power factor and work from there and then assume a 1000VA UPS will be able to handle a 600W load (1000 x 0.6 = 600).

There are sizing calculators online at places like APC and Tripplite, so maybe start there. In reality your 600W power supply is probably never going to actually draw 600 watts, but it is better to oversize a UPS than undersize.

 

[taq8ojh]

Eww, too much physics already. Makes me want to cry a river.

So basically if I have quality say 500W PSU, do I only need to choose an UPS based on that, to simplify things?

 

[ControlD]

Eww, too much physics already. Makes me want to cry a river.

So basically if I have quality say 500W PSU, do I only need to choose an UPS based on that, to simplify things?

If all you are planning on connecting to the UPS is the PC then that would be fine. In fact you could get by with a fairly small UPS in that case unless your really have a completely maxed out system. Chances are, however, that you will have other things on there as well such as your router, a monitor, cable modem, etc. In that case the easiest thing to do is to use a calculator such as http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/

to make sure you have enough capacity.

 

[taq8ojh]

When I was looking for an UPS for my own PC, I basically took the power draw figures (that I could google up) for my components and monitor, added them up, and picked up something with what looked like enough headroom. Is that bad approach?
Currently I am considering one that would feed my wife's lowend PC (without discrete graphic card), router, switch, PoE adapter, and a NAS. Found one from APC, 550VA/330W, pretty cheap one.

 

[ControlD]

That seems like a reasonable approach to me. Basically you were doing the same thing the calculator does, just more specific for your actual equipment.

By way of comparison, I have the Cyberpower unit pictured above (the 1500VA model) with the following connected:

- Gaming PC (650W PS)
- unRAID server (450W PS)
- 22" LCD monitor
- cable modem
- wireless router
- 8 port switch

And I am drawing less than 300 watts. I'm not sure what my peak is, but I'm sure I went way overboard.

 

[taq8ojh]

I have AEG UPS Protect A.1000, which feeds overclocked 3770K, overclocked 5850, three disks, some other standard minor components, and 24" LCD. Under maximum load I could think of (Prime95 and Furmark both running at the same time) the display on it only reads about 40%, so I think I am fine, and based on that, 300W UPS might be enough for all of the other stuff in next room.

 

[alkemyst]

Is there any relationship between VA and watts then? It's been ages since I was taught physics at school, and even if I remembered any of that, I still wouldn't understand this particular thing

Deep dive:
http://www.powerstream.com/VA-Watts.htm

 

[Nec_V20]

Unless you are bollock stupid you should not consider a UPS to be a way to keep your super overclocked gaming rig running. It is there to allow you to shut your system down gracefully and avoid data loss - end of story. A 1000VA UPS will only power your system for minutes - and precious few of those if your power goes off.

A good UPS will allow you to choose which devices should be powered by it in the event of a power cut and which ones should be allowed to crash - at least that is the case with my UPS.

I have two "APC Power-Saving Back-UPS ES 8 Outlet 700VA 230V" UPS's. I also have a backup petrol generator and also a 110 Ah gel battery (they are safe to keep in the house and to charge as opposed to normal car batteries which would be an invitation for a Darwin Award if you were to keep it in your house and charged it there) which I keep topped up. I did the experiment and took out the battery in my UPS to let it be powered by the gel battery.

I castrated my system to the bare minimum I needed to work to test it. I worked on the system for about four hours and the battery still had plenty of charge left. After the experiment the UPS itself was none the worse for wear.

To run the UPS in the way I described above it has to be remembered that the wattage of the devices attached should be 50% or less of the VA rating of the UPS - in my case 350 Watts or less is more than plenty when I have cut my rig down to the bare minimum.

The other thing is that if you do run the PC off the battery and you are working on it then you should not power down your PC if you are going to be away from it temporarily but rather send it to sleep. The computer will use more juice booting up than it would if you put it to sleep for half an hour or so.

Why the battery if I have a petrol generator? Because I don't want to keep my neighbours up at night.

 

[BrightSideSC]

Just about any decent UPS backup that you get at the computer store should last you with enough power to save your work, shut down your computer, and wait for the power to come back on. It looks like from what you said about wanting it to last at least 10 minutes, that's really all you're looking for anyway. Even the cheap ones are designed to last for at LEAST 30 minutes running a regular 'office' type system, so don't waste you're $ on anything fancy if you just need enough time to save your work.

 

[Nec_V20]

Just about any decent UPS backup that you get at the computer store should last you with enough power to save your work, shut down your computer, and wait for the power to come back on. It looks like from what you said about wanting it to last at least 10 minutes, that's really all you're looking for anyway. Even the cheap ones are designed to last for at LEAST 30 minutes running a regular 'office' type system, so don't waste you're $ on anything fancy if you just need enough time to save your work.

I couldn't agree with you more. Originally I got a UPS because there were a number of times when a fuse blew or we had a power outage and I lost hours of gaming because I had not saved (I get so wrapped up in the game that I forget). So this gave me the chance to save a game in progress and exit.

I got a cheap deal on the two APC BE700 ES8 UPS's that I bought and I decided to experiment with one. I didn't really care if it broke in the process.

Looking around for a battery the safest kind for my needs was a 110 Ah gel battery, which I also managed to pick up at about half price from a reputable dealer and it had good reviews.

After stripping down the computer I wanted to see how long I could power my PC, Monitor and Communications equipment. It passed the test even if I did not deplete the battery, keeping my system running for four hours.

Basically I could power my router alone for days and I have a couple of spare nine cell batteries for my Lenovo netbook. So depending on how long the anticipated outage is I can keep going for a number of days.

 

[ultimatebob]

Hmm... I would be more worried about running a Radeon 7950 on a 550W Rosewill power supply. I'd recommend upgrading the power supply to at least a 600W name brand power supply when you do that.

 

[WilliamM2]

Unless you are bollock stupid you should not consider a UPS to be a way to keep your super overclocked gaming rig running. It is there to allow you to shut your system down gracefully and avoid data loss - end of story. A 1000VA UPS will only power your system for minutes - and precious few of those if your power goes off.

Odd, I have an APC SUA-750 (500 watts). It will run my rig with 620 watt power supply and two 23" monitors for 55 to 65 minutes, depending on what I am doing. Back-Ups are garbage in my experience.

Connect the USB cable, and Windows will warn you in plenty of time to shut down, or you can set it to do so automatically. At least with 7 and 8.

 

[Nec_V20]

Odd, I have an APC SUA-750 (500 watts). It will run my rig with 620 watt power supply and two 23" monitors for 55 to 65 minutes, depending on what I am doing. Back-Ups are garbage in my experience.

Connect the USB cable, and Windows will warn you in plenty of time to shut down, or you can set it to do so automatically. At least with 7 and 8.

The wattage of your PSU is immaterial (although the efficiency of it is not) and the only way you can get 55-65 minutes of running time out of the UPS is if your system is only drawing 80-90 Watts:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=sua750

So I am going to be somewhat dubious of your claim if you don't mind.

 

[WilliamM2]

The wattage of your PSU is immaterial (although the efficiency of it is not) and the only way you can get 55-65 minutes of running time out of the UPS is if your system is only drawing 80-90 Watts:
http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=sua750

So I am going to be somewhat dubious of your claim if you don't mind.

Be dubious all you want. I used to have a Back-Ups 700, it would only power my previous system for about 8 minutes. Power supply is an MII-620 Bronze rated, and if I'm just running Media center and surfing the net, probably isn't drawing 100 watts. i5 2500K at 4.4ghz, but mostly it sits at 1.6Ghz.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Unless you are bollock stupid you should not consider a UPS to be a way to keep your super overclocked gaming rig running. It is there to allow you to shut your system down gracefully and avoid data loss - end of story. A 1000VA UPS will only power your system for minutes - and precious few of those if your power goes off.

Depends what you want it for. A standard home UPS wont give you much time but if you go into enterprise stuff, or custom, you can get several hours. I'm a big fan of inverter-chargers for this as they're designed to run long and you just tack on as many batteries as you want.

My server UPS will give me about 4-5 hours and I'll be adding more batteries soon.

It's cheaper to build this system and maintain it than to replace server parts that fail after an extended power outage.

 

[alkemyst]

Odd, I have an APC SUA-750 (500 watts). It will run my rig with 620 watt power supply and two 23" monitors for 55 to 65 minutes, depending on what I am doing. Back-Ups are garbage in my experience.

Connect the USB cable, and Windows will warn you in plenty of time to shut down, or you can set it to do so automatically. At least with 7 and 8.

BackUPS line is not terrible if you don't have clean power requirements. I have one on my router/modem and it provides a lot of run time.

On my main rig I ran a Smart UPS 1400 with a network card even. I recently upgraded to a IBM 1500TLV (Smart UPS 1500, IBM branded), but it arrived DOA...waiting on my replacement.

 

[aigomorla]

Unless you are bollock stupid you should not consider a UPS to be a way to keep your super overclocked gaming rig running.

<--- is stupid..
I have a dedicated 2000VA ups set alone for my main PC.
Then i have 1000VA dedicated just to my monitors + additionals (USB HUB and my G19 keyboard)...

My server room has several 1500VA cyberpowers... each server has its own.
I think my run time on the server room without power is about 1 hour MAX if not under load.

I usually pray the power company turns it back on by then, otherwise, we all know how painful it is to reboot a server... :\

 

[Red Squirrel]

Try 4-5 hours.



Tripp Lite inverter-charger UPS.

Eventually I want to go with a -48v setup with bigger inverter and put more stuff on it like the TV and my computer. Curently I only have the most important server stuff, about 350w worth of stuff.

This is beyond typical for everyone's needs though. There is some general safety to be considered as well as maintenance.