I found Eric S. Raymond's article on how bad UPS offerings are to be pretty interesting. I've been running a random Cyberpower now for long time, and I never think about it, but it's done its job just fine on the small power outages I've gotten.
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So how critical is a up for the safety of a machine?
Im mostly worried about power surges, lightning, etc.
I don't really run a lot of mission critical stuff that can't suffer from down time
I pounce on the cyberpower PFC version 1500VAs whenever they go on sale for $140 or less. The most recent time was $120, picked up 3. I have put about a dozen of these in different places and they do the job just fine. Life has taught me that if the power is out for more than a few minutes, its going to stay out.
If you want real uptime, get a fucking generator, and the ones that don't fuck up electronics (honda, trust me) are not cheap. My dream house would have natural gas and a sweet house house setup (or at least several breakers worth).
Get a whole house Generac setup, that runs off of Natural gas, if I ever win the lottery and build my dream house, that's going to be on the list, a 10KW auto switching generator that runs off a big ass tank (that also runs a nice gas range and gas furnace) should do nicely.
I've given up on trying to use a UPS to power my main computer, but I do use one to power my cablemodem, router, and access points. This at least lets me continue having internet for my tablets, laptops, phones, and other devices without having to rely on 4G internet.
So will these protect against lightning strikes?
From what I've read, that's non-ideal. In a situation where the surge protector/ups is protecting against higher voltage, having everything plugged into a separate sources can mean a voltage differential and cause problems in and of itself. So if lighting strikes the line that feeds cable, it travels into the house, hits the cable box, jumps to the TV, and since the TV has a higher relative voltage, a discharge occurs between the cable box and the TV. I'm not sure how true/likely that situation is, but I've tried to play it safe since reading that and have kept every system in a single unit.Instead of buyiing large UPS units, I've gone the route of purchasing multiple smaller units in the 350w-450w range. TV and DVD on one, Cable Box and Receiver on another. Cable Modem and Router on one. System in my Sig is on a larger, 1500VA unit simply because I do no heavy lifting with both comps at the same time (incremental backups from one to the other is about as hard as I push the two comps at the same time)
Why has it not worked out for you?
This exactly. These units work around 4 to 5 years, then I chunk them.I pounce on the cyberpower PFC version 1500VAs whenever they go on sale for $140 or less. The most recent time was $120, picked up 3.
I have a Cyberpower 1500VA/900W simulated sine wave UPS hooked up to 2 gaming rigs, both with active PFC power supplies, and its saved our asses a handful of times. During the summer (in CA) our circuit breaker would occasionally trip during the day, so the UPS always kept the PCs powered until we got the power back on. We also had some California Edison techs working on something for our neighbors, and they didnt' tell us... power was down for nearly 20 minutes and I kept gaming (I was curious how long it would last) until the power was restored.