UPS operation info

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
H

helpful55

Distinguished
Dec 27, 2012
37
0
18,540
This has been a real ordeal with trying to get a ups set up for my pc. I am almost about to connect my hard drive to a 12 volt battery, regulator and charger and just let the rest of the pc shut off if power goes out. What I have found is that a ups watt rating is the max that you can connect it to, whether it is supplying battery power or not to the pc. And to add to that APC is wanting me to have that rating be as large as what my power supply max rating is. I think I have accurate numbers and my pc will use a max of 250 watts and that is when I am at 100% running handbrake to convert a file. That is something I rarely do, like a total of 15 minutes a day. My pc is mostly at about 100 watts and can jump to 150 or so when loading some pages or video recording. My question is why in the world doesn’t the ups just cut in when it is needed so it does not have to be running everything that the pc is doing when on the AC line? I find it hard to believe that can’t be performed nearly instantaneously. And I have actually had a power off and on where the pc never even shut off so it sure could switch over at least that fast.
 
Solution
BuddhaSkoota


Most of the consumer-grade APC units are line interactive, meaning they do perform switching in the occurrence of a brown-out or power loss. You just have to be careful not to overload the UPS (regardless of whether it is operating on battery or not), otherwise it will go into protect mode or simply fail altogether during an outage.

If you feel that 250W is the max draw of your system...
Sort by date Sort by votes
BuddhaSkoota

BuddhaSkoota

Admirable
Aug 16, 2014
1,415
1
6,460


Most of the consumer-grade APC units are line interactive, meaning they do perform switching in the occurrence of a brown-out or power loss. You just have to be careful not to overload the UPS (regardless of whether it is operating on battery or not), otherwise it will go into protect mode or simply fail altogether during an outage.

If you feel that 250W is the max draw of your system, then you should select a UPS with a comfortable overhead wattage rating, remembering not to do any high performance work that will exceed that capacity.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
H

helpful55

Distinguished
Dec 27, 2012
37
0
18,540


So I take what you are saying is that at least for APC it does in fact completely switch between battery and AC modes, but maybe it sets off an alarm and maybe a shutdown when the rating is exceeded?

I mentioned APC as I had called them, although what I have is a cyber power that is rated at 425VA/255W. I thought those numbers were just related to what it could supply when on battery. I did not know exactly what power my 8 core would use at the 100% handbrake runs at. I happened to have one of my monitors (doesn’t actually need to be on it) on the UPS when I started handbrake and the alarm went off. I am trying to find a way to reduce the handbrake cpu level although from what I am reading apparently there is no easy setting for that I may have to reduce the cores running. I may just run those small files over to my secondary pc that I don’t really need to run through the UPS and use it to convert/store the videos.

Wish I would have researched/known more and maybe I could have just bought what I needed initially instead of having money invested in something that is marginal or not usable. This started off with my having a PFC high efficiency psu that I had to get rid of to even use this unit. It puts out less than pure sine wave and the psu will set off the alarm when a PFC is on it. I am going to be back to mad if this UPS battery doesn’t at least last 5 years. I really don’t have too many power glitches, but I am kind of picky on having hard drives and things shut down suddenly. I think that there is more than one reason that there is a procedure for pc shutdown, you don’t just pull the plug.

Thanks for your help here.


 
Upvote 0 Downvote
BuddhaSkoota

BuddhaSkoota

Admirable
Aug 16, 2014
1,415
1
6,460


Also, remember that the manufacturer provides a guarantee that the UPS will protect your equipment, which would be void if overloaded. The output power would be closely monitored to prevent the user from exceeding that capacity, and also protect the manufacturer from liability in overload conditions.

That guarantee adds to the price of these systems, making a moderate capacity UPS system rather expensive unfortunately.
 
Upvote 1 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom