help me choose a standby UPS?

E

ekuest

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after reading the FAQ thread about UPSes, i think that all i need is a simple, cheap, standby UPS. my power regularly flickers, sometimes more than once a day, but only for a split second. my computers restart, and my router and modem reset, which is all super annoying. i dont need something with a big battery since it will only need to provide a second or less of backup, so i want to keep it cheap. i need to plug my 2 computers, 30" monitor, router and modem into the UPS, so minumum 5 sockets on the battery, and any other outlets can just be surge protected. i dont know anything about which brands/models are reliable, so if you guys could recommend a couple to me id really appreciate it. thanks!

~evan
 
APC makes good UPSes. Some Cyberpower models are also pretty decent. Start from that. By the way, don't plug monitors into the UPS. If your power only flickers briefly, there's no advantage to having those things connected since they'll just come back on with the power and you don't lose anything from having them shut off for a few moments.
 
Zero82z said:
APC makes good UPSes. Some Cyberpower models are also pretty decent. Start from that. By the way, don't plug monitors into the UPS. If your power only flickers briefly, there's no advantage to having those things connected since they'll just come back on with the power and you don't lose anything from having them shut off for a few moments.
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ok thanks. how much should i be expecting to spend then? $20? $50? and is there a wattage or something, some number that i should be looking for?

and i want to plug in my monitor because i broke the buttons on the front and have to do everything with the remote now. and every time it powers off and on this "select language" menu pops up and it wont go away unless i turn the monitor off for half an hour since the remote doesnt work for this one menu. :/
 
For two PCs, you'll want at least 600W/1000VA, which means you're looking at around $130-150 at least. If you want to hook up your monitor as well, add another 50-100W to that.
 
Zero82z said:
For two PCs, you'll want at least 600W/1000VA, which means you're looking at around $130-150 at least. If you want to hook up your monitor as well, add another 50-100W to that.
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so it needs to support a high wattage even if the power only flickers for a split second?
 
Yes. The UPS needs to have a capacity at least equal to the full load that will be placed on it.
 
ok so something like this would be ok? just to be clear, i have a 450Wpsu in one, and a 250W psu in the other. one is my server which never does anything more than stream video, and the other is my "gaming" rig which hasnt seen a game in months and probably sits at idle 95% of the time. the monitor claims to take 180W. then theres the modem and the router and i have no idea what their power draw is. so should i go with 450+250+160+a little more to cover everything, or can i go with what they draw 95% of the time which is like 150+100+160+a little?
 
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The best thing for you to do would be to grab a cheap power meter like a Kill-A-Watt, and directly measure the amount of power all this stuff is consuming. That will tell you how much capacity you'll need. The Kill-A-Watt is not especially accurate, but it should be good enough to get a rough idea of where you're at.
 
Power Supply ratings are what the DC output is, not the AC draw on the circuit. If you overload a UPS's battery circuit, even for a split second, the unit will shut off and it would be just as bad as having them plugged into the wall.

Start by adding the power supplies together and multipling that number by 1.25, this will account for the loss in wattage during the AC/DC conversion. The modem and router have minimal draw, maybe 10watts at best. If you're wanting to handle the monitor too, we'll add that into the equation.

[(450+250)*1.25]+180+10=1065 watts of potential current draw. That's ~1440va. If you use a device like Kill-A-Watt you can measure the actual line load more accurately, but you'll want to do a test when everything is running at it's max, meaning, servers are doing file transfers, you have a 3d game running, etc... Besides that, it's guesswork for what you actually need, and therefore we have to assume theoretical maximum. If you buy a little 300va UPS just to handle the outage for 'a second or two' then you're going to just be wasting money.

Cyberpower is probably the name with the most value that you're going to find. Good protection for a decent price.
 
I've been using Liebert online GXT2-1000 for about 2 years. Had to replace the batteries last month, but no problems otherwise.

For 150 bucks it's hard to say no to a 1000VA true online/double conversion unit.
 
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