Does active PFC help when I lose power?

[luj1]

Sorry for bad english.

I want to protect my pc against sudden electric power drops

I have an active PFC PSU - Thermaltake XT 675. does it help in any way?

 

[ko888]

Active PFC (Power Factor Correction) has nothing to do with voltage regulation.

What do you mean by "power drops"? A power outage? A power line voltage sag or brownout?

Get a line interactive or better UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply).

 

[13thmonkey]

+1 no it does not, it will help with the electricity bills a bit (for complex reasons that I still don't get)

UPS is what you need, or a surge protector if you can't afford a UPS.

 

[luj1]

What do you mean by "power drops"? A power outage?

yes i mean just as if you pull the plug

 

[rgd1101]

No. PFC is not a UPS.

 

[ko888]

yes i mean just as if you pull the plug

A UPS is your only option against that kind of power interruption.

 

[luj1]

Thanks. By the way can you tell me what do active PFC PSU actually do?

 

[bkoop]

If you don't want your PC to turn off during power drops, you need a UPS with pure sine wave, not simulated sine wave. Unfortunatly pure sine wave UPS is more expensive.

To be clear, Active PF Power Supplies need a pure sine wave UPS.

 

[luj1]

I need something which will shut down my computer when power dissapears. I mean slowly shut it down gradually instead of sudden voltage/power drop from all components.

I've been told that "smart" upses do this. Is that true and what alternative i have?

 

[ko888]

Thanks. By the way can you tell me what do active PFC PSU actually do?

Active PFC is a circuit within the PSU that continuously makes the PSU appear as close as possible to a pure resistive load to the power utility's power grid no matter what the load on the PSU. A pure resistive load has a power factor of 1.0.

With no PFC the PSU appears as a reactive load (i.e. a power factor of less than 1.0) to the power utility's power grid.

Utilities charge customers more if those customers' load on the power grid has a power factor below 0.9 because it has an adverse effect on power transmission efficiency. For example, the power utility will place a bank of capacitors outside of a large industrial customer that has a power factor below the threshold to correct the power factor back up to 1.0.

 

[ko888]

I need something which will shut down my computer when power dissapears. I mean slowly shut it down gradually instead of sudden voltage/power drop from all components.

I've been told that "smart" upses do this. Is that true and what alternative i have?

If you get at least a line interactive UPS with a communication cable to the PC along with the appropriate UPS software utility you can set the software utility to trigger an orderly shutdown of the system when a specific amount of battery runtime capacity remains in the UPS so you don't completely drain the batteries in the UPS.

For home use there is no alternative unless your home has its own UPS and backup generator.