Enthusiast Power Protection: Four-Way 900 W UPS Roundup

Power Protection Or Rage Prevention?

Few events are more upsetting than getting to the toughest part of a game and having your PC go down. Less traumatic (but still troublesome) are situations like losing a video only seconds before you’re done re-encoding it. Even losing a carefully-written email before it can be sent is enough to push some Tom's Hardware editors past the edge of sanity (Ed.: *raises hand*).

Enthusiasts often rely on little more than a surge protector to keep their hardware safe. But these devices can’t prevent brownouts from resetting a computer, nor can they prevent blackouts from stopping the computer in its tracks completely. The inevitable result is lost work, even when that “work” is an entertainment-oriented task.

While mainstream users have long been able to buy low-cost uninterruptable power supplies, the unique demands of enthusiast-class hardware have often put this type of protection out of reach.

A quick look at the specifications recommended by four top UPS manufacturers for our enthusiast build could help to explain the enormous price disparity. 

Notice that all of the units in today’s review produce something that approximates a true sine wave, something that costs far more to produce than the stepped square waves of lower-cost parts. We’ll explain why this is so important on our next page, before going into the individual characteristics that make each model special.