High end UPS for home destop?

[MikeJRamsey]

For your home desktop computer, have you stepped up to an uninterrupted power supply with online topology, pure sine wave output waveform, or both? If so, what were your reasons for deciding that line interactive topology and stepped sine wave output waveform was not good enough?

I am trying to decide on a new UPS and was wondering if a higher end UPS was worth the 2X price tag.

See the following if the terms are unfamiliar.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248245-28-tomshardware

 

[ainarssems]

I don't use ups and never considered getting one for home pc. Even if I got one for free i would probably sell it on e-bay instead of using it. It is for servers and mission critical professional pc's which my pc is not.

 

[ainarssems]

Modern PSU's can handle Voltages 90-264V and 47-63Hz so I do not see need for online topology unless you are running on cheap petrol generator in Your back garden and not the mains line. Especially since online topology are bigger, more expensive and less efficient.

I am not sure about output waveform but I think even square shoud not be a problem for modern PSU. I think best to contact manufacturer of Your psu and see what they say about it.

 

[MikeJRamsey]

I don't use ups and never considered getting one for home pc. Even if I got one for free i would probably sell it on e-bay instead of using it.
It is for servers and mission critical professional pc's which my pc is not.

OK. Good feedback and another data point.

I seem to get brief power outages, sometimes a couple-three times a month. It is enough to cause me to fix my house clocks. Since laptops have a built in UPS, they are unaffected by such outages. My desktop, OTOH, goes down like a brick which is a pain when I am working on something. An UPS would stop that.

I leave my system on at night to do virus scans and automatic updates. In case of a longer outage the UPS could trigger a graceful shutdown of the system.

It is for these reasons that I am thinking about it.

 

[MikeJRamsey]

Modern PSU's can handle Voltages 90-264V and 47-63Hz so I do not see need for online topology unless you are running on cheap petrol generator in Your back garden and not the mains line. Especially since online topology are bigger, more expensive and less efficient.

I am not sure about output waveform but I think even square shoud not be a problem for modern PSU. I think best to contact manufacturer of Your psu and see what they say about it.

Your 2nd post touches on my reason for starting this thread. My power is fairly well regulated but an occasional brownout is not unheard of. Especially in the middle of summer.

Are their tangible benefits to a UPS that offers online topology and/or pure sine wave output waveform? Why would it be worth 2X the price?

 

[ainarssems]

I only get power outage mayby 2-3 times a year so it is not a problem. In your situation I might get UPS but nothing fancy. At the same time from reputable vendor and not some unknown maker but one of the base models with a bit higher power rating then needed.

 

[MikeJRamsey]

I once had a client that supplied me with a notebook and a docking station with all the usual equipment. I noticed that even when the office took a power hit my laptop kept working. This got me thinking about UPS for my home.

Lightening strikes are rare (my neighborhood's utility lines are buried) but friends have had their PC and TV burned out by lightening strikes. OK, one friend.

I am looking at the APC Back-UPS RS 800VA 120V Black, sku=BR800BLK. List is $134.

It's real power is 540 watts. My system should draw a calculated 413 watts. I have a 750 watt PSU so the actual draw is less than 60% of my PSU's peak output as per recommendation.

Back to the UPS, I was wondering why anybody would pay $300 for the high end equivalent. There must be reasons; not everybody is a simpleton.

 

[MikeJRamsey]

OK. I think that I have it .

Power Supply Units (PSU) with Active PFC (Power Factor Corrector) do not get along well with UPS' that supply square or stepped sine wave output waveforms. Lots of problems have been reported. So if you have a high end PSU you will need a high end UPS to output the needed pure sine wave output waveform.

Rats! My milk money for a year.~

EDIT: See http://sureshks.netfirms.com/article/ups/ups.htm especially the last paragraph.

 

[Guest]

OK. I think that I have it .

Power Supply Units (PSU) with Active PFC (Power Factor Corrector) do not get along well with UPS' that supply square or stepped sine wave output waveforms. Lots of problems have been reported. So if you have a high end PSU you will need a high end UPS to output the needed pure sine wave output waveform.

Rats! My milk money for a year.~

EDIT: See http://sureshks.netfirms.com/article/ups/ups.htm especially the last paragraph.

Mike - The above article was written between 1998 and 2001. Most PSUs today (>500w) are active PFC(it is generally more efficient). The problems that people have had were with older UPS when using some of the earlier PFC PSUs. There have been numerous discussions regarding this with PSU makers as well as APC (a UPS maker). The conclusion is that as long as your active PFC PSU supports ~90V - 240V operation (almost all new PSUs sold in the USA do), and as long as you are running it at ~110V it will be able to handle the garbage "modified square"/ "stepped sine" thrown at it by the consumer-level UPS. Otherwise just about everyone running a modern (post 2004) system would be beating down APC's door to get a refund on their UPS. I'd hate to see someone spend >$200 on a pure sine model UPS for their home PC when it's unnecessary...

See http://www.jonnyguru.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3964

and

http://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=5181

-Larkspur

 

[highmeadowhiker]

For your home desktop computer, have you stepped up to an uninterrupted power supply with online topology, pure sine wave output waveform, or both? If so, what were your reasons for deciding that line interactive topology and stepped sine wave output waveform was not good enough?

I am trying to decide on a new UPS and was wondering if a higher end UPS was worth the 2X price tag.

See the following if the terms are unfamiliar.
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248245-28-tomshardware

I have a Dell XPS9000 computer. It has "active power factor corrected power supply" ( Maybe the term is "correction")
My Tripplite G1000U UPS worked very well with my old Dell Dimension 8400, probably saving my motherboard many times, as we live in an area subject to momentary outages and surges. The Tripplite UPS many times gave an audible signal and went to battery power, and all was well.

The Dell XPS series is incompatible with the stepped approximation to sine waveform. Its internal power supply cuts off virtually instantaneously when the Tripplite G1000U goes to battery power, which is a bad thing and can cause serious instability depending what you were doing when it happened.

I telephoned Tripplite, and complained that their UPS did not work. Their tech support man asked me if I had a Dell XPS, right away. When I said Yes, he told me that was the problem.

The Dell website offers to sell several UPS units, none of which will work with their XPS computers. Bad!

I contacted CyberPower to ask if the UPS unit being sold by Dell would work with a Dell XPS. The e-mail informed me absolutely NOT. A telephone call to their tech support confirmed that truth. A UPS has to be designed specifically to work with the "active power factor corrected power supply" in certain computers. For Cyberpower, such a unit is the CP850PFCLCD. The "PFC" means "power factor correction." CyberPower units with "AVR" in the model number will not work, and that is what Dell is selling!

As I now understand the issue from extensive discussion with Tripplite and CyberPower experts, some of the replies in this thread are not correct. My newer Dell was built in late 2009. It is therefore plainly "post 2004." It absolutely cannot handle the "garbage" mentioned in one post in this thread. I advise all concerned to talk with a manufacturer's expert if you need the actual facts.

 

[highmeadowhiker]

I don't use ups and never considered getting one for home pc. Even if I got one for free i would probably sell it on e-bay instead of using it. It is for servers and mission critical professional pc's which my pc is not.

I am not a "mission critical" user. But that is not the issue. I live in an area where power surges and momentary outages -- not to mention long outages -- happen.
A couple of years ago, in spite of having a surge protector, my motherboard was rendered permanantly inoperable by an electrical event. I had to have a technician install a new motherboard.

So if you live in an area where the power is not always well-conditioned, you do need an appropriate UPS to avoid the serious inconvenience of having to pay for a replacement motherboard. It is not a matter of " Mission critical" but of cost and inconvenience. And I recommend that before buying a UPS, contact the UPS manufacturer to learn which UPS unit is appropriate to your computer. There is such a thing as "active power factor correction" that must be considered in some if not many computers.

 

[Guest]

Hi - this is Jonah Cagley from CyberPower Systems. I recently read this thread and wanted to let you know that CyberPower has recently launched a new UPS line that supports equipment with Active PFC power supplies and standard (or conventional) power supplies. The new UPS line is called Adaptive Sinewave UPS. It's available in both Desktop tower and Rackmount/Tower models. Our new waveform design not only supports Active PFC power supplies but it is the most affordable UPS solution in in the market for this critical compatibility issue.

Depending on the model you require, you can save up to 50% compared to pure sine wave. I encourage you to visit http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/about-us/news/adaptive-sinewave-ups.html to learn more and check it out for yourself. Please let us know your feedback and how we can serve members of this community better. We'd love to hear from you.

Best regards,
Jonah

 

[pawn3d]

I'm not quite understanding what people are saying about PFC and AVR. Basically, I want to supply 30 minutes of power to my 27" iMac, router and modem. Anything under $100?