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What UPS should I choose?

J

jtvd78

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 27, 2009
Messages
303
I just built my first computer, and now I want to protect it. I want to protect it from power surges, outages, etc. The computer has a Corsair 850 Watt PSU. The PSU is not under full load, but I want the UPS to be able to 850 Watts, just for future upgrades. There are many UPS brands out there, and here is a list of the ones that I found:
Cyber power
Liebert
Tripp Lite
Powercom King
APC
There may be more than this, and if you think one is better than another on this list, feel free to post another preferred company.

I pretty much found out that I need ~1500VA UPS. Am I wrong with this? I would like to have an LCD on the PSU, just because this will be very convenient to see how much time i have left on the battery.

After looking through these companies' websites, i found three UPS's:

APC BACK-UPS RS 1500VA LCD 120V -- newegg link
Tripp Lite SMART1500LCD -- newegg link
Cyber Power CP1500AVRLCD -- newegg link

Are there any other good ones out there (that have LCDs)? Are these ones any good? The tripp lite one has very bad reviews. should I just take that off the list right now? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
 
Get a Smart UPS 1400 XL or 1500XL off ebay refurbished with new batteries for $185 or so.
 
Those are high end too. Along with the models I suggested.

http://cgi.ebay.com/APC-SU1400NET-S...ltDomain_0?hash=item1e5aa198f3#ht_2096wt_1165

I have a similar model in black. This is a massive UPS that weighs 50lb and has better runtime then all the newegg models you listed since it uses 2 12V 18AH batteries instead of 2 12V 9AH

NOTE: This may not come with a monitor cable. Mine did not. I had to make one off a diagram on the web. Also this uses a serial port and not usb.
 
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Seriously? I've always wondered why anyone thought I would pay for superfluous crap like that, that's why the UPS has a monitoring connection - but to each his own. I think any serious (ie. business) customers aren't going to care about this feature though, so you're clearly in the consumer segment of the market where quality seems lower, but flashy features more plentiful.

I'll second drescherjm, get a good refurb if you care about having a quality UPS. If you just want 'features', I have a few clients with APC models in that series and they seem to do fairly well for what they are, and I'd stand behind the brand. But...

For that money I'd much *much* rather have this. True sinewave output, double the battery life, one quarter the recharge time, and it's a Liebert datacentre product not an APC consumer product...
 
keenan said:
Seriously? I've always wondered why anyone thought I would pay for superfluous crap like that, that's why the UPS has a monitoring connection - but to each his own. I think any serious (ie. business) customers aren't going to care about this feature though, so you're clearly in the consumer segment of the market where quality seems lower, but flashy features more plentiful.

I'll second drescherjm, get a good refurb if you care about having a quality UPS. If you just want 'features', I have a few clients with APC models in that series and they seem to do fairly well for what they are, and I'd stand behind the brand. But...

For that money I'd much *much* rather have this. True sinewave output, double the battery life, one quarter the recharge time, and it's a Liebert datacentre product not an APC consumer product...
Click to expand...
Thanks for that post. That pretty much convinced me that I didn't need the LCD. I've don't a little research, and I found out that Liebert and APC are the best companies out there. Does anyone have experience with any of these companies? Also, I hear many people talking about sinewaves. What are sinewaves? There seem to be many types of sinewaves. Which one should i use?
 
If you've taken basic trig, you know what the sine function looks like, it's a smooth curve from -1 to +1 to -1. Standard AC power is delivered with this waveform, the voltage swings from negative to positive in a smooth fashion. However, this waveform is relatively difficult to generate artificially - it is generally formed by the physical relationship of the components in the electrical generator (it appears a LOT in the physical world).

500px-Sine.svg.png


When on battery power, less expensive UPS units don't try to regenerate a true sine wave (or even any smooth waveform) exactly, instead they generate high and low voltage rails and a 0, and switch between them at a timed rate because this is much easier to implement. So instead of a smooth curve, you get a waveform that starts at -1, jumps sharply to 0, then another jump to +1, timed to produce the same RMS power and voltage as a pure sine would. This is called a stepped sine or approximated sine or modified square wave or some similar term. The RMS power and voltage are the same, but the waveform is very 'harsh'. It's much harder on computer PSUs, and won't work at all for reactive loads like AC motors. It's also an indication of the quality of the electronics; true sine wave inverters are considerably more difficult to engineer and more costly to build, while offering little tangible advantage to most users, so they generally only appear in units that are well-built otherwise.

You might also find pure square wave UPSs out there. Don't buy them.

Tom's UPS FAQ covers the technologies pretty well: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248245-28-tomshardware
 
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keenan said:
If you've taken basic trig, you know what the sine function looks like, it's a smooth curve from -1 to +1 to -1. Standard AC power is delivered with this waveform, the voltage swings from negative to positive in a smooth fashion. However, this waveform is relatively difficult to generate artificially - it is generally formed by the physical relationship of the components in the electrical generator (it appears a LOT in the physical world).

500px-Sine.svg.png


When on battery power, less expensive UPS units don't try to regenerate a true sine wave (or even any smooth waveform) exactly, instead they generate high and low voltage rails and a 0, and switch between them at a timed rate because this is much easier to implement. So instead of a smooth curve, you get a waveform that starts at -1, jumps sharply to 0, then another jump to +1, timed to produce the same RMS power and voltage as a pure sine would. This is called a stepped sine or approximated sine or modified square wave or some similar term. The RMS power and voltage are the same, but the waveform is very 'harsh'. It's much harder on computer PSUs, and won't work at all for reactive loads like AC motors. It's also an indication of the quality of the electronics; true sine wave inverters are considerably more difficult to engineer and more costly to build, while offering little tangible advantage to most users, so they generally only appear in units that are well-built otherwise.

You might also find pure square wave UPSs out there. Don't buy them.

Tom's UPS FAQ covers the technologies pretty well: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/248245-28-tomshardware
Click to expand...

The sine wave explanation really helped.
 
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I've bought a few units from UPSforLess and I've been happy with them. Wasn't really recommending them in particular though, just a site I knew I could find it at. If you can find a better deal from a reputable source with new batteries, by all means go for it.

A set of good batteries for this UPS is probably in the $100 range.

Keep in mind that this unit weighs about 70lbs with batteries, so you probably don't want to pay for shipping for used batteries.
 
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