Can UPS (uninterruptable power supply) damage my computer in anyway?

pcdudedude · Jul 2, 2015

So my pc pulls about 600watts I am planning on getting a 650watt pure sine wave UPS. There was a guy in the comments saying that his gpu and cpu were fried because of a UPS was faulty. Is this true? Am I better off just dealing with the power outage in my area.
My computer get knock off power about once a day due to outages, could this harm my cpu or gpu?

dextermat · Jul 2, 2015

Hi,

Power outage can damage, depends on quality of parts.
The only way to know is to test your parts one at the time in a working computer.
Usually a damaged component won't damage the rest unless it's a low quality PSU.

Solandri · Jul 2, 2015

A pure sine wave UPS should be no problem. Cheaper UPSes simulate a sine wave with a bunch of overlapping square waves to form a stairstep pattern in the general shape of a sine wave. In most cases these work fine for short periods. But if the guy had a crappy PSU which didn't adequately filter line signal noise, I could see it damaging his PC components. The PSU has to convert AC power into DC, and the better PSUs can handle greater degrees of "noisier" AC (sine wave) input.

But a pure sine wave UPS puts out an actual sine wave just like regular AC power. Your PC won't know the difference.

And yes power failures can damage your equipment. Both during the failure and when the electricity comes back, there can be voltage spikes due to mismatches between the power company's generation and total electrical load in the affected region. Better devices can filter some of these spikes out, but a surge suppressor or UPS is the safest way.

GhosT_Hv · Jul 2, 2015

Yes! the bad UPS can damage your computer parts only if you have a low quality PSU.
You can use a Seasonic Gold Certified or Corsair Gold Certified PSUs to lower the risk.
Make sure you get the right and branded UPS too!
According to me, OCZ UPS are pretty good.

Giroro · Jul 2, 2015

If operating properly, a pure sine UPS shouldn't damage any equipment and should even have 'cleaner' power than plugging your PC directly into the wall or into a cheap power strip. I'm curious in what way the UPS in the comments was faulty - if it was, for example, damaged by a power surge... odds are the computer would have been damaged either way. Also unclear if that failure happened while the UPS was on battery power, because otherwise they basically just act as a glorified power strip (and I assume surge protector but I haven't personally tested one to check). Plus, CPU+GPU being fried sounds more like damage caused by an internal PC power supply failing than what you would find in a UPS. In either case, many surge protectors offer warranty coverage for damaged equipment, so be sure to fill out that warranty card!

In terms of wattage, if your computer is using a true 600 Watts, than 650 Watts is a little close for comfort, and you should should consider getting a higher rated UPS. However, if your internal PSU is merely rated at 600 Watts, then your computer isn't likely to be using that much power (probably more like 300-400W, and 650 Watts should be fine in that case.
You generally want your power supplies rated to at a higher wattage than the actual amount of power you plan on using, as they will run cooler and more efficiently.

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Can UPS (uninterruptable power supply) damage my computer in anyway?

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