Newegg: Cyberpower 1500 PFCLCD Pure Sinewave UPS $149.99

This is a great UPS, and will provide cleaner power on battery for sensitive electronics (compared to the squarewave stuff), and not create too much parasitic losses just sitting there most of the time. USB charging ports on the front are a nice touch. I'd buy one except I already have two.
 
The damn site will not let me check out. Its added to cart but that is as far as I can go. Tried it on Chrome and and IE and it will do nothing when I try to check out.

EDIT: I did live chat and they said it was an issue on their end and to call in and they would let me order over the phone. Well I called and it will be a 25-40 minute wait so I assume these will be out of stock by then. :rolleyes:

EDIT 2: Newegg finally called back and I got this ordered over the phone. She said it would actually be shipped from a third party and had no idea where it would be coming from. I sure hope they pack the damn thing ok...
 
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Went ahead and snagged one. No issues with my order going through.

I have one of the older 1350VA units with the blue screen, and it's worked well for me. I've had a handful of power outages, including once while I was actually gaming and it held up fine. I have an old HX650 that is probably 6 or more years old now, so it's getting to be time to replace it. I've been putting it off since I know I'll likely need a new UPS once I get a new PSU since the older units tend to have issues with active PFC power supplies.

Guess I have that covered now. Thanks for the heads up!
 
I have two of these as well. Keep in mind, even though this is a "consumer" version, their PowerPanel Business Edition virtual appliance works with it. Currently have the VM setup on my ESXi box to shut all my VMs down and the server down during an extended outage.

Read: https://tinkertry.com/configure-automated-shutdown-homelab-datacenter-15-minutes
Wow Thanks, I run fedora and it works in Linux. Uses the web page browser but wow thats cool .

Thanks!
 
Someone convince me to get a UPS. I'm still not entirely sure if it's necessary with with good PSU and motherboard surge protection.
 
If you have a RAID array or NAS, it is worth the money. Other critical applications include PLC's, point of sale machines, small business computers, medical fridge. If it is just a personal computer with nice hardware I don't think a battery is justified and would probably spend the money on a good surge protector.

I have a SurgeX SX1120RT upstream of (2) of these CyberPower batteries. One for an 8 disk array and the other for a 4 disk array. It's worked flawlessly for 3 years now. SurgeX units are affordable when purchased used but I do a thorough visual inspection and test them with heavy loads like a laser printer or clothes iron. This CyperPower UPS tends to go on sale a few times each year. These cheap consumer models usually have a power factor of 0.7 so take 30% off the rating.
 
Funny you mentioned business computers. The server at my work place had a power surge, and the geniuses who set up the system did not have surge protectors, UPS, or even a back up database. The hard drive fried and we lost all the data. But I was asking for my personal computer. No RAID or NAS. Just a normal gaming PC.
 
If you have a RAID array or NAS, it is worth the money. Other critical applications include PLC's, point of sale machines, small business computers, medical fridge. If it is just a personal computer with nice hardware I don't think a battery is justified and would probably spend the money on a good surge protector.

I have a SurgeX SX1120RT upstream of (2) of these CyberPower batteries. One for an 8 disk array and the other for a 4 disk array. It's worked flawlessly for 3 years now. SurgeX units are affordable when purchased used but I do a thorough visual inspection and test them with heavy loads like a laser printer or clothes iron. This CyperPower UPS tends to go on sale a few times each year. These cheap consumer models usually have a power factor of 0.7 so take 30% off the rating.

How do you compare the SurgeX SX1120RT rating to "Joules" since it doesn't appear to be rated the same as the more prosumer and consumer grade surge protectors.

Is it an old unit? I'm just looking at what you said was good for the $ and comparing to what else is 200-300$ used out there.
 
IMO, every computer should have a UPS, no exceptions. But not every computer necessarily needs a big expensive UPS. I picked up a tiny CYBERPOWER 550VA CP550SLG for $19.99 on their last sale, and it backs up the little Alienware Alpha, TV, and soundbar.

That way when there's a blip in power, pfft, nothing happens. And around here, that's more common than real power outages. But even when there are real outages, it connects with a USB cable and when the battery is running low it automatically does a nice controlled shut down.

Because even without RAID, its healthier for your system to power down safely, and also a downright PITA if it doesn't if you were in the middle of something and didn't save.

If you don't already have a kill-a-watt or similar, I'd pick one up just to have, and then you can measure what your average power draw is and buy an appropriately sized UPS that will give you 5-10 mins of backup time.
 
I'll agree that everyone should have a UPS. It's rather convenient, and assures that none of your stuff gets damaged during dirty outages. I personally have 2 APC SUA units (1500 and 1000) that I got off of Ebay. Not sure how these compare, but they're at a pretty good price for new units.
 
How do you compare the SurgeX SX1120RT rating to "Joules" since it doesn't appear to be rated the same as the more prosumer and consumer grade surge protectors.

Is it an old unit? I'm just looking at what you said was good for the $ and comparing to what else is 200-300$ used out there.

I picked up a 15 and 20 amp unit for around $100 or $150 each through ebay. I made sure the seller was close, had a return policy, and asked them to send me photos of the specific unit beforehand. One was 9 years old and the other was missing the serial number.

These use series mode vs typical MOV protectors. I think there are 3 large capacitors that store the hit and slowly releases it. Major advantage is to series protection, is the MOV's can only take so many hits before they stop doing their job. More expensive MOV units can record and provide information about events.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector#Metal_oxide_varistor_.28MOV.29
MOV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surge_protector#Series_Mode_.28SM.29_surge_suppressors
Series Mode

I have fiber with no cable so the only path in is through electric. If I owned a house, I would likely look into installing one at the main. Our power is pretty good here but growing up, one day I saw every house on the street with their CRT TV on the curb along with some other appliances. Last year, I tallied up the net worth of my HTPC, including (12x) 6TB drives, and decided I wanted better protection than a plastic panamax surge protector with MOV's.

http://www.surgex.com/products/rackmount-product-line.html
I'm no EE, but to answer your question, the RT models have in-rush current protection and over/under voltage protection. The spec sheet lists a Maximum Load Inrush Current During Power-up of 1000 Joules. UL 1449 Adjunct Classification Test Results 1000 surges, 6000 volts, 3000 amps, B3 pulse.

I personally don't mind running my home or work computers without a battery. They all have 1 or 2 SSD's that get automatically imaged to a NAS, twice per week, using Macrium Reflect. If one ever shits the bed, I can be running again in under 15 minutes.

Here is a photo of my older 20 amp unit with New Frontier Electronics Inc. on the PCB.

3qfhhR1.jpg
 
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WetMacula - The TL Line conditioners can handle more surge, sag and correct more. Am I wrong in thinking they're worth the price $180ish NEW for a 1800w unit compared to what you're showing as used or is there more to it? What about the ISOBAR how does it compare to what you're using?


Tripp Lite Line Conditioner (1800w) --> On-Line UPS --> PC PSU

IF you have questions about experiences with outages, surges, etc let me know. We live rural and experience minimum 2 week outages (spread out) per-year. Surges, Brown outs, power coming and going, and then completely out and randomly on/off.

We use the TrippLite LC on ALL our equipment at home that's sensitive and have never had a failure at all.

- Gas Range (electric control board -- sensitive accordingly to research)
- Gas hot Water heater (Electric control board -- really sensitive and bitch to replace, have done work on it.)
- Clothes Washer (electronics control board)
- TV
- Computer(s)

All have their own Line Conditioner.

We also have a "Whole House" surge protector (SquareD) for a little added safety factor for huge spikes.

I have some ISOBAR's may add 1 before a Line Conditioner since they're rated for 2x the surge.
 
I tried a couple metal ISOBAR's. They emitted a high pitched squeal so I returned them. If you have specific questions about SurgeX units, I recommend calling them. They are made in the US. I'm definitely not qualified to give homeowners advice on whole house protection.

The sparky's at work say the clamping speed in a MOV protector is more important than rating. Should be milli-seconds. If the protector doesn't indicate clamping speed in the spec sheet or what standards it was tested to, I would move on.

Edit: I should add the SurgeX units usually go for $700 new.
 
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Amen, this is my thought process, as I don't need a lot of time on battery backup, but considering the value of today's electronics and fact that you can lose important work, its just worth it to have at least a couple minutes of battery backup for a controlled shutdown:
If you're really serious about protecting that bit of equipment, you won't bother with a surge protector. A surge protector can only protect you from spikes and surges, after all. What about sags and outages? To get full protection from the entire gamut of power problems, you need an Uninterruptible Power Supply.

And that's why, although I own and use many Tripp Lite Ultra power strips, all my home PCs are plugged into UPSes.
The things last forever too, as after 5-years I just toss the batteries and replace them with new ones on Ebay. Easy-peasy.
 
I tried a couple metal ISOBAR's. They emitted a high pitched squeal so I returned them. If you have specific questions about SurgeX units, I recommend calling them. They are made in the US. I'm definitely not qualified to give homeowners advice on whole house protection.

The sparky's at work say the clamping speed in a MOV protector is more important than rating. Should be milli-seconds. If the protector doesn't indicate clamping speed in the spec sheet or what standards it was tested to, I would move on.

Edit: I should add the SurgeX units usually go for $700 new.

The reason I asked was the units you mentioned seemed outdated and old is all, and was hoping you could clear that up ;) compared to new or different units.

$700 new $200 used... ?? So what, it's used enterprise gear it goes for dirt all the time on ebay. $8k system $2k to my door, etc... don't buy shit just because it's cheaper than new if you're not 100% what it is...

And, it seems like you know a good bit about these so that's why I'm questioning you, not to insult you :D
 
I'm not offended. No worries. The models I mentioned are not old (obsolete or deprecated). See here:

http://www.surgex.com/products.html

The specific units I purchased were about 9 years old. After a conversation with their tech support, I discovered they are constantly making minor revisions but still sold under the same model number. I interpreted this as the basic schematic, components, or specs were not changed but rather their suppliers or PCB layouts. In the past they offered a lifetime warranty and their product sheet now says 16 years. That's outstanding compared to warranty's for most equipment.

After reading up on surge protection, I learned metal oxide varistors have limited life and the cheap ones don't provide feedback other than a fault LED. I also read an article where someone torture tested a small sample of typical surge protectors and discovered some of the cheaper strips outlasted bigger names like TL, APC, Panamax. After seeing this and reading mixed reviews, I decided none of the consumer level MOV surge protectors could be trusted. The concept of series mode protection made more sense to me, but I've never witnessed a direct lightning strike to the house (with either type of protection). If I knew nothing about the subject and had to pick one technology just by looking at the entrails of each unit, the choice would be clear.

I don't have any affiliation with or stock in SurgeX. Zero surge is another company making similar stuff.

http://www.zerosurge.com/history/

The wiki explains why these devices are not rated in joules:

These devices are not rated in joules because they operate differently from the earlier suppressors, and they do not depend on materials that inherently wear out during repeated surges. SM suppressors are primarily used to control transient voltage surges on electrical power feeds to protected devices. They are essentially heavy-duty low-pass filters connected so that they allow 50/60 Hz line voltages through to the load, while blocking and diverting higher frequencies. This type of suppressor differs from others by using banks of inductors, capacitors and resistors that suppress voltage surges and in rush current to the neutral wire, whereas other designs shunt to the ground wire.[30] Surges are not diverted but actually suppressed. The inductors slow down the energy. Since the inductor in series with the circuit path slows the current spike, the peak surge energy is spread out in the time domain and harmlessly absorbed and slowly released from a capacitor bank.[31]

Experimental results show that most surge energies occur at under 100 Joules, so exceeding the SM design parameters is unlikely. SM suppressors do not present a fire risk should the absorbed energy exceed design limits of the dielectric material of the components because the surge energy is also limited via arc-over to ground during lightning strikes, leaving a surge remnant that often does not exceed a theoretical maximum (such as 6000 V at 3000 A with a modeled shape of 8 x 20 microsecond waveform specified by IEEE/ANSI C62.41). Because SM work on both the current rise and the voltage rise, they can safely operate in the worst surge environments.

SM suppression focuses its protective philosophy on a power supply input, but offers nothing to protect against surges appearing between the input of an SM device and data lines, such as antennae, telephone or LAN connections, or multiple such devices cascaded and linked to the primary devices. This is because they do not divert surge energy to the ground line. Data transmission requires the ground line to be clean in order to be used as a reference point. In this design philosophy, such events are already protected against by the SM device before the power supply. NIST reports that "Sending them [surges] down the drain of a grounding conductor only makes them reappear within a microsecond about 200 meters away on some other conductor."[32] So having protection on a data transmission line is only required if surges are diverted to the ground line.

In comparison to devices relying on 10 cent components that operate only briefly (such as MOVs or GDTs), SM devices tend to be bulkier and heavier than those simpler spike shunting components. The initial costs of SM filters are higher, typically 130 USD and up, but a long service life can be expected if they are used properly. In-field installation costs can be higher, since SM devices are installed in series with the power feed, requiring the feed to be cut and reconnected. But since the SM devices do not wear out and are not required to be replaced every few years, the overall cost of ownership is much lower.

Edit: check out these (biased) videos

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RixUrc-FRcM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79p3ysUnx_Y

I suppose the question is, how bad do you want to protect your stuff? In my case, there were (2) expensive computers, an irreplaceable DLP TV, an AVR, speakers, (2) NAS boxes with (12) 6 TB drives, a $1000 monitor, and some expensive keyboards. In my opinion, the investment is worth it...if the surge protectors and batteries do their job. If the batteries or inverters fail, I'm looking at multi-day rebuild time for each disk array. If a surge gets through and releases the magic smoke, it's game over man. Time will tell.
 
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I'm not offended. No worries. The models I mentioned are not old (obsolete or deprecated). See here:

http://www.surgex.com/products.html

The specific units I purchased were about 9 years old. After a conversation with their tech support, I discovered they are constantly making minor revisions but still sold under the same model number. I interpreted this as the basic schematic, components, or specs were not changed but rather their suppliers or PCB layouts. In the past they offered a lifetime warranty and their product sheet now says 16 years. That's outstanding compared to warranty's for most equipment.

I suppose the question is, how bad do you want to protect your stuff? In my case, there were (2) expensive computers, an irreplaceable DLP TV, an AVR, speakers, (2) NAS boxes with (12) 6 TB drives, a $1000 monitor, and some expensive keyboards. In my opinion, the investment is worth it...if the surge protectors and batteries do their job. If the batteries or inverters fail, I'm looking at multi-day rebuild time for each disk array. If a surge gets through and releases the magic smoke, it's game over man. Time will tell.

Thanks for all that info. I'm trying to wrap my head around it all. I read all your links. This stuff seems to be crazy expensive. The cheapest surge protector I could find from SurgeX is $178 http://www.amazon.com/SurgeX-SA-966-Surge-Eliminator/dp/B00DWPMQV6
That's just for surge protection. Right now I'm using a $30 surge protector. The cheapest SurgeX surge protection with a batter backup I could find is $1,299 http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=&sku=937454&gclid=CJuY9LWrusUCFVURHwodrHUA_g&is=REG&Q=&A=details
That's just way out of the budget for me.

I don't doubt they are worth it if you suffer a direct lightning strike but at some point you have to play the odds vs the price. Even though the surge eliminator costs 6 times what a normal "good quality" surge protector costs maybe I could see paying the $178 for it and then plug a "cheap" $150 battery backup into it.
 
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:D That's why I rolled the dice and bought used from Ebay (Amazon had some at the time). If I remember, I made the guy an offer that was much lower than the asking price and he accepted. If you go this route, make sure the merchant is relatively close, has a return policy, and ask them to send photos of the specific unit before buying (some of the ones on Ebay looked pretty beat up, others were pristine). Upon receipt, open it up and look for obvious damage, then test it with a heavy load like a heater, iron, or laser printer.

I ended up getting a couple rack mount RT versions with in-rush current protection, over/under voltage protection, and remote dry contacts for slightly less than the 966 model you listed (which does not have those features).

I plugged a couple of the CyperPower batteries into them...which is what brought me to this thread. I only buy at the sale price of $150.
 
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Well I just got mine today and the lazy third party bastards did not even put it in another box. Three years ago when I got my Cyberpower 1000 PFCLCD, Newegg had started doubled boxing because so many people had been complaining.

I am not even going to open it because this thing is going back as the box is pretty beat up and has a couple holes in it and half the tape has come off.
 
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Awesome info being shared here, much appreciated it.

What do you consider the best way to "Test" the $150-200$ used units? Those are what I'd be after too for my rack(s), but would also want to make sure a $200 part doesn't screw-up 15k$ in server gear either :)
 
:D That's why I rolled the dice and bought used from Ebay (Amazon had some at the time). If I remember, I made the guy an offer that was much lower than the asking price and he accepted. If you go this route, make sure the merchant is relatively close, has a return policy, and ask them to send photos of the specific unit before buying (some of the ones on Ebay looked pretty beat up, others were pristine). Upon receipt, open it up and look for obvious damage, then test it with a heavy load like a heater, iron, or laser printer.

I ended up getting a couple rack mount RT versions with in-rush current protection, over/under voltage protection, and remote dry contacts for slightly less than the 966 model you listed (which does not have those features).

I plugged a couple of the CyperPower batteries into them...which is what brought me to this thread. I only buy at the sale price of $150.
Well you sold me brother. I saw Adorama camera had a used SurgeX SX1120RT on eBay. It has a 30 money back guarantee and a 90 day warranty. They were asking $139.00 with free shipping. I offered them $120.00 and they accepted.

Thanks for posting all that info and all those links. Do you know any way to test the surge protection?
 
Well you sold me brother. I saw Adorama camera had a used SurgeX SX1120RT on eBay. It has a 30 money back guarantee and a 90 day warranty. They were asking $139.00 with free shipping. I offered them $120.00 and they accepted.

Thanks for posting all that info and all those links. Do you know any way to test the surge protection?

So you're why my offer didn't get accepted on that item :p :p lol
 
That is a real nice price. Hope it works out for you. I don't know the best way or if it's possible to test these without specific equipment. Attach a kite on a stormy night to one of the receptacles?

I would (with the unit unplugged) remove the screws and inspect the internal components for water or burn damage. Don't touch the capacitors. Then button it up and plug something expendable into it like a box fan. You may need to jumper one of the remote contacts. If you are plugging a 20 amp unit into a 15 amp receptacle, you will need an adapter or attach a 15 amp plug but don't overload the circuit! I used a Kill-o-watt to record my peak starting voltage by turning everything on at the same time. Then I measured peak usage by loading the cpu, gpu, and turning up the AVR volume. Haven't burned the house down yet.

Edit: there should be a sticker with serial number and date of manufacturer
 
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