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UPS brands besides APC?
- Thread starter Valnar
- Start date
+1.
+1
I've been running a Cyberpower UPC for almost 2 years without any issues. The Cyberpower before that lasted nearly 4 years before the battery died.
drescherjm
[H]F Junkie
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For inexpensive UPSs I like Powercomm King Pro units. You can get 1000VA to 1500VA units typically for less than $150USA shipped. I have over a dozen of these at work. They use the same 12V 7.2 AH batteries that APC uses in a lot of their models. I replace them with 9AH tempest batteries from batteryspec.com
http://www.batteryspec.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?action=link&product=158
Also at work I have Triplite and Cyberpower units. All of these work great and I have had little problems at all with them. The only units I have had issues with are the low end APC BackupUPS models with a single battery. I did not buy them (I would never buy a single battery ups) but inherited them.
At home I have a King Pro 1000VA UPS I bought in the 1990s for $135 shipped on an auction site other than eBay (not sure they were big back then). Also I have a APC SmartUPS 1400 XL with 2 18AH batteries. I bought that used on eBay for $185 shipped. This unit is about 2 times the size of the Powercomm and weighs over 45lb. Supposedly I should get 2 hours runtime with that but I have not tested that yet. The King Pro with 2 9AH 12 V batteries lasted for about 65 minutes while recording analog video on a quad core. This was tested more than once.
http://www.batteryspec.com/cgi-bin/cart.cgi?action=link&product=158
Also at work I have Triplite and Cyberpower units. All of these work great and I have had little problems at all with them. The only units I have had issues with are the low end APC BackupUPS models with a single battery. I did not buy them (I would never buy a single battery ups) but inherited them.
At home I have a King Pro 1000VA UPS I bought in the 1990s for $135 shipped on an auction site other than eBay (not sure they were big back then). Also I have a APC SmartUPS 1400 XL with 2 18AH batteries. I bought that used on eBay for $185 shipped. This unit is about 2 times the size of the Powercomm and weighs over 45lb. Supposedly I should get 2 hours runtime with that but I have not tested that yet. The King Pro with 2 9AH 12 V batteries lasted for about 65 minutes while recording analog video on a quad core. This was tested more than once.
Last edited:
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Another recommendation for Cyberpower. I have a 900AVR and 1500AVR that are still going strong after 6 years. It's the only brand I recommend.
BillR
Born Again Cynic
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If you shop around a bit you can get some great deals on Leibert, Emerson Leibert and APC rack mount units as "Pulls". As in ones pulled from systems being scrapped, the government is notorious for this.
Use your Googlefu and you will probably come up with some winners and save a lot of money.
Like a good PSU, don't cheap out on a UPS.
I have an APC SmartUPS 1500 now that I got from work. 'Got the ethernet management card and everything. However, it's an older one and I've been on a power saving kick lately. The problem with it is it's not very efficient, and I only have about a 250W load on it. So while my uptime is awesome at 45 minutes or so, I'm wasting a lot of money by using it 24/7 because of it's inefficiency. I'd rather have less uptime and hit the middle of the curve.
So I see that APC has some newer 90%+ efficient units out there, but before I jump on one out of sheer brand allegiance, I figure I should check out others to see if anyone hits the 90% mark, especially at lower wattage.
siliconnerd
[H]ard|Gawd
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Well atleast with a cheap UPS, a good PSU will help protect your hardware from it.
Riddleofsteel
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I'm looking at the Powercom King Pro units, mainly because they're in my price range. I'm kind of perturbed that they don't have a USB interface. Would a semi-recent motherboard even have the kind of cable port the King Pro uses?
Probably not, but USB->RS-232 dongles are extremely cheap.
drescherjm
[H]F Junkie
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How often are you on batteries? If you are not on batteries you wast very little. I calculated my SmartUPS 1400 XL costs me $1 to $2 per month which I consider minimal.
Perhaps I'm wrong, but I assume the efficiency curve is on the input from the wall, not the output from batteries. Most UPS's (just like power supplies) don't ramp up to their most efficient use of power until close to 30-40%.
When drawing power from the wall, the efficiency of a UPS will basically be 100% outside of whatever power it requires for its own operation. The efficiency stated is for the DC to AC conversion process when running on battery power.
dandragonrage
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I only run Liebert and APC.
I stand corrected. Thanks.
dandragonrage
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Not true for an online UPS.
Likewise. I have one of each. Liebert's online UPSs are nice (though not the quietest under high loads).
True. I wasn't referring to online UPSes.
Riddleofsteel
[H]ard|Gawd
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I had the batteries in my APC Back UPS 1500 XS replaced last summer by a store that specializes in batteries. Batteries Plus I think. I don't know what quality their batteries are but putting their brand in my UPS didn't fix my problem of the alarm going off all the time. Used to be just during the night and now it's all day sporadically. I'm running out of ideas. If there was a "best" battery to use for my model, what would it be? Thanks.
I have had good luck with CyberPower. Where I live power blips are a fact of life and they get tested frequently. I also have an older APC that has served well but If I were to buy today I would go with the CyberPower. Best Buy's Geek Squad UPS's were re-branded Cyberpower units. They appear to now call them Rocketfish for some reason, but they appear to be the same UPS as before. You can catch them on sell and get a good bargain.
Riddleofsteel
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Thank you djlenoir. I might get those batteries when they come in stock. Does anyone have any thoughts as to why my alarm goes off all day? I've had the UPS since 2006 I think, and maybe it just needs to be fully charged, drained, and re-charged as I've never done that with it.
I'm not an expert, but when I recently got my refurbished ups, the first day the alarm kept going off. After trying many things, the battery connector was connected but wasn't making a good contact so i just tweaked it and the alarms stopped immediately. I would check all the battery cables and connectors.
Michaelius
Supreme [H]ardness
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You are forgetting one thing.
Most affordable consumer grade upses are using off-line or line interactive technology. That means UPS is powering the load through bypass so energy loses during that state are small.
Now where UPS efficiency is important is in corporate enviroment when you use double conversion Online UPS (ups where rectifier changes input AC power into DC and then that DC is used to power battery charger and inverter which gives near perfect AC voltage into loads). Then if you have 80 kW of loads having 92% of efficiency instead of 95% is real measurable in power bill problem.