For UPS owners, please tell me why you are using a UPS. And any recommendations are appreciated.

I'm using a Corsair HX650 professional series. Certified bronze.

I have been experiencing very very rare instability issues over a year now. It was only until recently that someone directed my attention to an unstable supply of power. To make this short, I want to know what conditions/situations made you opt for a UPS.

And feel free to let me know if https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/gx1325u/ is a good choice for me. I don't have the know-how to test whether my wall outlet is experiencing grounding issues/brownouts/surges, so I'm just gonna buy a UPS. It is probably not gonna be a good investment, because I don't see this PC instability often. But, since I paid a lot for my build, I expect it to be 99% stable most of the time.

P.S. If that UPS i'm looking at was a good one to get, then I'll be sad because 2 days ago it was selling for 125 + free shipping from newegg
Edit: wait.. this deal for this UPS has appeared once every month for 2017 so far, lol. Either this is a good sign, or a bad sign.

I was going to ask what you meant by unstable and if you have actually troubleshot it but then you say you are going to buy the UPS no matter what. So, I guess that is that. Not that it is a bad idea to have a UPS anywhere but it is kind of an odd way to start a conversation.

I have APC brand UPSes on my main desktop and printer, modem, and living room flat screen t.v. I have them because the power will occasionally go out for one reason or another. It has gotten better since Katrina as that acted as a wakeup call to the Regional electric provider to keep the power lines tree limb free, but has done little to stop the random suicidal squirrel.

Before you "pull the trigger" on that UPS I suggest you price out the battery replacement cost and then after a 2 or 3 years buy the replacements to have on hand in the event the batteries die. Either that, or decide at that time if the UPS is a necessary thing.

Just my 2¢. Hope this helps.

Chuklr said:

I have APC brand UPSes on my main desktop and printer, modem, and living room flat screen t.v. I have them because the power will occasionally go out for one reason or another. It has gotten better since Katrina as that acted as a wakeup call to the Regional electric provider to keep the power lines tree limb free, but has done little to stop the random suicidal squirrel.

Before you "pull the trigger" on that UPS I suggest you price out the battery replacement cost and then after a 2 or 3 years buy the replacements to have on hand in the event the batteries die. Either that, or decide at that time if the UPS is a necessary thing.

Just my 2¢. Hope this helps.

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I'd leave the printer off of the UPS.

I have a few of the APC Smart UPS SMT1500. I was given a few APC 9631 network cards for them so I can set my hosts to shutdown after a specified period of time.

I've used CyberPower and APC, and they're fairly comparable. Good products for the most part, and the warranty service is good with both companies in my experience.

A UPS is worth it if you have one of two things:

1. You do critical work and an unexpected power outage would cost you money or significant time. Or your gear would be damaged or require hours of work to restore with an unexpected shutdown.

2. The power input in your area is unstable. Frequent brown-outs, black-outs, voltage surges, sags or spikes.

I lived in an area like that for a while, so I have a good sized UPS for my TV/Cable Box, one for my desktop, and one for my network gear (router, switch, AP and NAS). If I had to rebuy things now, I'd probably only get one for the NAS to ensure it has time for a safe shutdown when the power goes out.

Uptime.. it's all about uptime at home for the family.
APC 1500 UPS (with network card) - powers my Dell R710 running VMWare (hosting Plex, AD, SAN VM, and a couple other VMs)
HP 1500 UPS - powering my Cisco switch and DroboPro
APC 900VA UPS - powering my Edgerouter, Aruba RAP (for work) and a HP microserver that is used for backups but also runs OpenVPN so I can connect remotely and troubleshoot issues for the family when I'm at the office.
APC 900VA UPS - living room TV, Roku, and home theater
APC 750VA UPS - work laptop docking station and two monitors
Tripplite 350 VA UPS - upstairs closet powering a small 8 port switch for various devices around the house, Ubiquiti AP, and a Magicjack.

Granted, the only one I've bought retail would be the 900VA in the living room. The HP came with a 24u rack I picked up for $100 and the batteries just now need to be replaced so I'll have to decide if I still need it. The 750VA came from work as part of the WFH agreement. The others were salvaged from work (decommissioned long before their life was up).

because my apartment has crap power. Over and under voltage daily and outages every few months.
I am partial to the apc sau1500 or sau1000. Line interactive/avr is important with my power issues.

I use this thing for my main PC, main display, ESXi host, cable modem, router, and switch.

Primarily because the house I was in constantly experienced brown-outs, short power losses, and just generally had shitty, unstable power. I plan on acquiring another one just to run my other PCs from it because power outages actually don't seem to be as bad as the surge that comes when the power comes back on.

Least expensive apc models. I had a ton of outages that were only enough to make me reprogram the time on my microwave. They give me enough time to save anything if needed.

I have had an APC SmartUPS protecting my systems and TVs for over 20 years.
Why? Because I have power that sometimes blinks or trips up to 3 times before finally dropping out completely, or not. And sometimes the power "brown's out" to something like 3/4 voltage or 1/2 voltage but does not go out completely for many seconds at a time. It makes me cringe when that happens because I can imagine what my non-UPS supplied devices are going through, such as my fridge and heating system.
While I cannot practically protect my fridge or heating system, I can protect my computers, TVs and all peripherals (except laser printers).
I don't want my $2000+ computer system and peripherals dying because of some crap power problem that I cannot control.
With a UPS, I ride out these problems and don't have to worry about my system failing due to electrical stress.
I replace the battery about every 3 years for $100, and bitch about the price every single time, but I pay it and am thankful I did every time the power does something stupid. It's peace of mind.

tl;dr I have UPS because I don't want to worry about my expensive computer system dying from a crappy power situation (storm, car accident, whatever). I spent the extra money for an APC SmartUPS because I wanted a reliable UPS with true sine wave output when under battery power with cold start capability and replaceable batteries. I'm at 11 years on my current model SUA1500 UPS and still going strong.

Azrak basically sums it up, save my stuff and give me time to shut down due to power outage or blip. I have an old APC 1500va powering my server, and that just happens to be my only APC. The rest are all Cyberpower: a 625va on the fios ONT, a 625va for the router and switch, an 825va for my girlfriend's pc, a 1500va for my pc, and a pure sinewave 1500va for the movie room (projector, receiver, etc.)

Don't buy into the pure sinewave BS for computer based use. If your active PFC power supply cuts out on a simulated sine wave unit, that means the power supply has undersized caps and cannot cope with the milliseconds without power as it switches over. Pure sinewave units switch faster, but everyone thinks having an active PFC power supply means you need pure sinewave, you don't. If this happens, you have either a defective or poor quality PSU. My girlsfriend's Corsair RM850 power supply is active PFC and it switches fine on even the 625va units.

arnemetis said:

Azrak basically sums it up, save my stuff and give me time to shut down due to power outage or blip. I have an old APC 1500va powering my server, and that just happens to be my only APC. The rest are all Cyberpower: a 625va on the fios ONT, a 625va for the router and switch, an 825va for my girlfriend's pc, a 1500va for my pc, and a pure sinewave 1500va for the movie room (projector, receiver, etc.)

Don't buy into the pure sinewave BS for computer based use. If your active PFC power supply cuts out on a simulated sine wave unit, that means the power supply has undersized caps and cannot cope with the milliseconds without power as it switches over. Pure sinewave units switch faster, but everyone thinks having an active PFC power supply means you need pure sinewave, you don't. If this happens, you have either a defective or poor quality PSU. My girlsfriend's Corsair RM850 power supply is active PFC and it switches fine on even the 625va units.

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Good to know. I also heard that using simulated sinewave would drop the efficiency of PSU by a lot. Should I be worried about this?

^ Probably only when you are on battery power, which should not be for very long.

When you are not on battery power, the UPS by itself uses very little power.

I have an APC 3000RM3U.

Its batteries are common generic cheap 12v 7ah that i get relatively cheap.

It powers and protects all my IT equipment (network stuff, main gaming pc and home server).

I mod it quite a bit, mainly because i dont use it in a rack so i opened its top lid and made a custom acrylic cover to increase airflow and battery life.

I don´t believe i can be happier.

Get alot of power outages. and until i bought a ups didn't know how many brown outs we had, which is a lot. Answers the why do we go through so many microwaves and coffee makers. So it really was the best thing i ever bought for my pc in particular. Cyber power 850, cost like 150 bucks, still works fine going on 5 years. It's basically just a power conditioner and surge protector and shuts down my pc a few minutes after power goes out if it doesn't come right back up. I consider it an essential part of my system.

Avalanche said:

I'd leave the printer off of the UPS.

I have a few of the APC Smart UPS SMT1500. I was given a few APC 9631 network cards for them so I can set my hosts to shutdown after a specified period of time.

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-Depends on the printer and how much power does it "draw". I use a basic-home Canon printer with an APC SmartSMT750 ( https://www.amazon.com/APC-Smart-UP...=1493917829&sr=8-1&keywords=apc+smart+ups+750 ), and never had an issue (*i own this UPS for more than a year )
-For my brother's PC i use the APC SmartSMT1000 ( https://www.amazon.com/APC-Smart-UP...1493918138&sr=8-2&keywords=apc+smart+ups+1000 ), and i'm also very pleased from its use.
P.S. In the past, i also used some Cyberpower UPSs and don't have any complain about them as well. I just have more faith to APC as a brand.

ink jet printers are fine on a ups its laser printers that should not be connected to a ups.

For the small to medium stuff we almost always use either APC or Libert.

For the larger stuff we have moved over to the Cat systems.

Emerson Liebert here 1500VA, does the job batteries lasted 2-3 years. Swapped batteries recently. My old business had 5 of them, only issues were one power switch failing due to liquid. Our fault. Going to hook up a 12V car battery and see how it does..