• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Low end "True" UPSs

M

MartinX

One Hour Martinizing While You Wait
Joined
Jan 23, 2003
Messages
7,184
Just out of curiousity, do any reputable companies (liebert, APC, etc) produce true UPSs (i.e, not sps) pitched at the soho type end of the market (say around 500-1000va), or are they only really availiable at enterprise level/scale?

Secondly, how do you differentiate UPSs from SPSs, assuming they don't specifically shout about it in the marketing blurb, what technical terminology would one look for?
 
Hmm, I've just noticed that that the UPS I use: http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BF500-UK

In it's specs there's a description of "Topology" which says "Standby", while another model, which shows only a bit more juice (620va vs 500va), but is nearly twice as expensive, has it's "Topology" described as "Line interactive".

So, does "Line Interactive" indicate a true UPS?
 
MartinX said:
Hmm, I've just noticed that that the UPS I use: http://www.apc.com/resource/include/techspec_index.cfm?base_sku=BF500-UK

In it's specs there's a description of "Topology" which says "Standby", while another model, which shows only a bit more juice (620va vs 500va), but is nearly twice as expensive, has it's "Topology" described as "Line interactive".

So, does "Line Interactive" indicate a true UPS?
Click to expand...


Correct me if I'm wrong, but standby power supplies only "kick on" when a source power failure has occured. - Line interactive ones are actually being powered off the wall, then in turn THEY are powering your computer. You are basically running off of the battery inside at all times, was my understanding.
 
Laforge said:
Correct me if I'm wrong, but standby power supplies only "kick on" when a source power failure has occured. - Line interactive ones are actually being powered off the wall, then in turn THEY are powering your computer. You are basically running off of the battery inside at all times, was my understanding.
Click to expand...

It's my understanding also that an SPS (standby power supply), kicks in when the power goes, while true UPSs are always powering the attached devices off the internal battery, with the mains just topping-up the UPS.

However, it's looking like "Line-interactive" may just refer to an improved type of SPS that reacts quicker to mains outage, but still has an inferior response to sags/brownouts, and that "On-line" is what describes a true UPS.

If I'm correct, then true upss are a lot more expensive than SPSs (standby or line-interactive).
 
MartinX said:
However, it's looking like "Line-interactive" may just refer to an improved type of SPS that reacts quicker to mains outage, but still has an inferior response to sags/brownouts, and that "On-line" is what describes a true UPS.

If I'm correct, then true upss are a lot more expensive than SPSs (standby or line-interactive).
Click to expand...

yup

"true" smaller capacity UPS's arent common at all, the problem being the always on inverter
a far more expensive unit than the intermittently rated inverter in an SPS
that inverter is a point of failure devive, so a high quality one is a must

The DIY (or, if you must, "Ghetto") UPS
the advantage of such an animal is of course the total seperation of surges and sags without the need employ any additional filtering or MOVs, the drawback as mentioned is that always on inverter, and since your shelling out the $$$, why not add more amp hours? (more batteries with a greater uptime, not more capacity which is a function of the inverter see article)
thus the lack of them in the SOHO market where they cant really compete


you might like this, to see how it scales though
Approaches to AC, DC or Hybrid Power Solutions for Colocation & Hosting Facilities a Liebert Whitepaper (PDF)
 
There are three types of UPSs:

Stand By: Switches to battery power in the event mains power is out of tolerance range.

Line Interactive: Batteries will supplement mains power to ensure the proper voltage output. They tend to provide more regulation towards limiting higher line voltage.

Online(or as you are calling "true"): All output power is generated directly from batteries. Therefore all input power is used to charge the batteries. They provide the highest amount of voltage regulation.
 
So where does my APC Smart-UPS 1000 fall into this mess? It supplements voltage in brownouts (common) and decreases the voltage in an over voltage (uncommon) situation. And I was told it puts out a true sine-wave.
 
True Sine-Wave is something different. AC line voltage is in the form of a sine-wave, typical UPS inverters produce a pseudo sine-wave which can cause problems with some devices.

Your UPS produces a proper/pure sine-wave output. As well, I believe it is a line interactive model.
 
Ok, for those of us who are ignorant on UPS issues (me), what brands are ok? I'm looking for something geared SOHO and provide good/excellent protection but minimal ( < 10 min) backup. My concern is to protect myself from dirty power and line surges and the occasional power-blip that I get. I have a 'nix box that controls my network and it doesnt always come back up clean after one of those hits.


There's an excellent sticky on what to look for in PSU's, but what about UPS/Line conditioners?
 
On this subject...

True on-line UPSes cost a fortune and they're only used in rare cases (eg medical equipment) where there's the chance that a line glitch can cause bad things to happen. When a changeover occurs in a regular UPS, there will be a brief loss of AC... but any power supply worth buying has a high enough holdup time that it won't matter.

Sine/modified sine/square doesn't matter. Computers don't give a shit if you feed them sinusoidal AC, square wave AC, or even DC. :D

As for good UPSes, middle/high end APC stuff is good. I despise their cheap stuff - eg the BackUPS 350CS attached to my HTPC, which melted part of its case during a power failure...
 
True most switching mode PSUs won't care a lot about the quality of AC wave. They may not work as efficiently though.

I have fed squarewave AC into a Deer PSU, it ran but wasn't too happy about. Course those things selfdestruct without outside help anyway. :)

As for good units. APC makes good stuff, Tripp Lite isn't bad either.
 
It'll typically be listed in the product data sheet/specification sheet. The alternative method would be to check the output with an oscilloscope.
 
Bullitt said:
Ok, for those of us who are ignorant on UPS issues (me), what brands are ok? I'm looking for something geared SOHO and provide good/excellent protection but minimal ( < 10 min) backup. My concern is to protect myself from dirty power and line surges and the occasional power-blip that I get. I have a 'nix box that controls my network and it doesnt always come back up clean after one of those hits.


There's an excellent sticky on what to look for in PSU's, but what about UPS/Line conditioners?
Click to expand...

We use all APC at work, our standard model for desktops/workstations is the smart-ups 1000 (which is sps/line interactive), the organisation is an ngo and we have PCs in some of the shittest parts of the shittest places on earth (Afghanistan, Sudan/Darfur, Somalia, Ethiopia, chicago, and about 25 other seriously third-world locations) , with some of the shittest mains supplies, and even our smallest field offices (1-2 desktops) have at least 1 APC UPS, and they've stood up extremely well under absolute worst case conditions.

And by worst case, I really mean it, apart from crappy (or non-existant) mains, we've got offices in places that really push the limits environmentally, swamps, deserts, up mountains, and the APC stuff are the only UPSs we've tried that have survived for any period of time (in afghanistan we had not one, but two non-apc upss burst into flames, and one of those wasn't even in use).

By reputation, Liebert and tripp-lite are very good aswell, but APC would be top of my list.
 
hey gee, can you explain to me why a Best Power Ferrups and my old Antec PP403X didnt play well together? from what I was able to glean off the net ferroresonant transformers and modern power supplies would oscilate and eventually crash (which is what was happening)
 
Ice Czar said:
hey gee, can you explain to me why a Best Power Ferrups and my old Antec PP403X didnt play well together? from what I was able to glean off the net ferroresonant transformers and modern power supplies would oscilate and eventually crash (which is what was happening)
Click to expand...
Ferroresonant UPSes/regulators require a minimum power factor - when you give them a large complex load, the resonant characteristics of the transformer can go completely out of whack and cause weird oscillations and other things.

You can run a PFC supply off them without any problems, or a small non-PFC load off a large ferro UPS.
 
JTY said:
I have fed squarewave AC into a Deer PSU, it ran but wasn't too happy about. Course those things selfdestruct without outside help anyway. :)
Click to expand...

Pure square wave is completely bad for a power supply - 120VAC square is 120 volts peak, and 120 volts RMS. Non-PFC supplies expect 170 volts peak/120 volts RMS, which will rectify to ~160VDC on the input capacitors (varies with load, input capacitor size, etc) but a square wave will rectify to 120VDC on the input capacitors... so the supply has to work at a higher duty cycle.

Effectively it's the same as running a power supply off 90 volts AC. This can certainly kill a deer supply...
 
gee said:
Ferroresonant UPSes/regulators require a minimum power factor - when you give them a large complex load, the resonant characteristics of the transformer can go completely out of whack and cause weird oscillations and other things.

You can run a PFC supply off them without any problems, or a small non-PFC load off a large ferro UPS.
Click to expand...

Hey!!!
I can use that with my PCP&C then :D :D

now to find some batteries for it
(of course its horribly inefficient but what the hell)

Thank You gee, that increases the number of boxes I can put under UPS protection
and the power conditioning on the Ferrups would likely be better than the APC Im assuming
 
Ice Czar said:
hey gee, can you explain to me why a Best Power Ferrups and my old Antec PP403X didnt play well together? from what I was able to glean off the net ferroresonant transformers and modern power supplies would oscilate and eventually crash (which is what was happening)
Click to expand...
So Ice, how much did you pay for that BP Ferrups...? My recollection was that back in the day they cost fortune. My other recollection is that there was nothing in the mountain of Best literature that specifically warned the user about ferroresonant "ringing" when used with the (then) single most likely component, and non-PFC switcher on small computer equipment. Being an instrument mfg. we had folks that warned us off them for office use, but I've heard this same story from several business users that bought them over the years.

oc
 
$0, I salvaged it

around these parts once a year the local recycling authority has a free hard-to-recycle dropoff
so I took a chance on a massively heavy Best Power Ferrups ME1 1.4KVA
other than the dead batteries the ferroresonant transformer (which is huge) seemed to work fine
and for awhile I thought I had a great score and was looking for batteries, when the crashes started, at the time I had dual 400 watt synchd supplies running off it (for a RAID) and neither where PFC

then I started researching and found the "issue"
so its been sitting in the back of the closet for 2.5 years now, I had plans of employing it as backup power for my chip chiller, but now its time to dig it out and do some judicial testing :D

its original list price was $2030 something like 8 years ago :p

cool looks like I can use freeware\opensource software to monitor it
http://us1.networkupstools.org/
and I was just looking at some deep cycle 90 amp hour marine batteries for it
I can vent the enclosure to the outside easier than I can pony up the $$$ for sealed lead batteries
 
MartinX said:
We use all APC at work, our standard model for desktops/workstations is the smart-ups 1000 (which is sps/line interactive), the organisation is an ngo and we have PCs in some of the shittest parts of the shittest places on earth (Afghanistan, Sudan/Darfur, Somalia, Ethiopia, chicago, and about 25 other seriously third-world locations)
Click to expand...
Due to the addition of Chicago as a third-world location, I was tempted to put this in my sig.
:D
 
Ice Czar said:
$0, I salvaged it
Click to expand...

When I was working for a mom-n-pop shop in the mid 90's, we got some of these BP systems incredibly cheap used. Each of them was bigger than a 2-drawer file cabinet and could go from 1.4-2.3kva depending on the batteries you put in them. They also weighed a ton.

We had to replace the batteries, but of the six or so we got, I think four or five of them were in good shape. We sold them to some businesses and made a fair amount of money off it...and used one of them to handle our file server, backup server, phone room, and our ISDN equipment.
 
I have been hearing the argument about "true" UPS's and such for a while, and all i can say is, i love my smartups's :)

i have a lot of stuff on a lot of UPS's and i have never had a problem with a standby/line ineteractive ups taking long enough switching from mains to inverter to reboot a system or cause any down time... and trust me, they get a lot of practice down here in miami, you should add that to your list of 3rd world power countries lol

power goes out/sags at least 2 or 3 times a day :rolleyes:
 
well Ive considered Florida a 3rd World Country ever since the 2nd Hurricane last year :p
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top