Lets talk about UPS power supplies

[CaliGirl]

1. Yes they are necessary and useful

2. How do you know what brand is good quality and worth the $130 purchase price? What company stands behind their product with a no questions asked warranty?

3. The AMAZON reviews are astounding. People buy them and a year later they are dead and it cost $20-80 to ship them back for warranty battery replacement.

4. What type of battery are they using? Lead Acid (last ~3 years)? Lithium?

5. Do they need a power drain and recharge every few months to keep battery healthy?

Reminds me of when I bought a $150 battery jump starter at Auto Zone and a year later after one use the battery was dead. I paid $40 to replace the battery.

Surely there must be a reliable and effective UPS worth buying but I can find that out with my research. Thus, I am asking you guys for real world results and experience.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

Regardless of which UPS you buy expect to replace batteries every 3-5 years as a matter of course. Expect to replace them more often if you run them down more often.

Lead acid batteries used by most UPS live and die by frequency and depth of discharge. If you experience frequent power outages you need a larger UPS to ensure you keep your depth of discharge under control.

How much load are you planning to keep alive?

 

[CaliGirl]

Thank you sir. It is too bad there is not better tech out there or a maintenance free car battery we can hook up.

I am looking to support 150 watts (Dell computer and Asus wifi Router) what VA do you suggest?

I know it is probably a good idea as everyone suggest these, but when the power does go out in the winter here and we are not home, it is often 6hrs.-72hrs so I am still reluctant to see how these are going to help with that length of time?

What do you estimate the run time is for 150watts on a 750VA? 1500VA UPS? Thank you!!!

 

[NoloC]

You can take a look at the cyber power website to get an idea of run times CyberPower Systems | Power Supply + Mgmt Solutions . It will vary even with units having similar specs, but they are designed to carry short outages to give enough time for systems to shut down gracefully or an alternate power source to come on-line. Usually no more than 20 minutes. Certainly the larger the battery bank, the longer run times. But the price goes up.

With long outages like that, and the fact that you want the BI PC to restart, it might be of questionable value. I think I would still want one for the surge protection and the small "bumps". FWIW I have had a Cyber Power and APC units that were fine for years. There's a PR1000LCD at my feet right now that has been great going on 3 years.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

For your purposes ignore VA. It is is about load. Just ensure your UPS has enough load rating to run all the items you want to connect to it. Even a 600VA UPS will power 150w. Runtime capacity is a function of your battery storage and conversion efficiency of your inverter For example if you have a 12V 7.2Ah Battery which is common in small UPS and the efficiency of the transformer is 80% the runtime (in hours) equation becomes (12 x 7.2 x 0.8)/150 = 27 minutes. this is where spending the extra money will pay off. The more efficient the inverter in the UPS, the longer the runtime

If you want 72 hours at 150w, which is 13.5kw at 80% efficiency you will need to consider a battery the size of a Powerwall 2, or a self starting backup generator, and I don't think you were intending to spend that much. Discharging lead acid batteries to zero kills them very quickly as well.

In your situation I wouldn't be considering a lead acid based UPS and would be buying the biggest lithium battery UPS you can afford. You wont have a system that will last for 72 hours, but discharging a lithium to zero wont kill it as quickly as a doing the same on a lead acid.

or you could build a franken UPS

Franken UPS - It's Alive BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA

 

[Mike A.]

Thank you sir. It is too bad there is not better tech out there or a maintenance free car battery we can hook up.

I am looking to support 150 watts (Dell computer and Asus wifi Router) what VA do you suggest?

I know it is probably a good idea as everyone suggest these, but when the power does go out in the winter here and we are not home, it is often 6hrs.-72hrs so I am still reluctant to see how these are going to help with that length of time?

What do you estimate the run time is for 150watts on a 750VA? 1500VA UPS? Thank you!!!

They won't help with anything like a 6-hour or more outage. Other than maybe shutting things down in an orderly way if you have something like a computer that supports UPS detection. Runtime for smaller consumer-level units will be measured more in minutes than hours. Ballpark for ~150 watts on a typical 750VA labeled unit say *maybe* 30 minutes. 45 minutes to an hour on a 1,500. Call those on the optimistic best-case side. The VA rating doesn't track directly to runtime since that's dependent on battery capacity and amp hours vs the VA power draw rating.

See here:

Runtime Chart for Smart-UPS
Runtime Calculator | CyberPower
UPS Run Time/Battery Backup Time Calculator

One thing that they do help with more are the quick blink-type outages. Our power rarely goes out for any length of time here but we do get a lot of those. Which can cause problems with various devices, some being more or less tolerant of quick losses and some taking longer/shorter time to power/boot back up when they shut down ending up with things out of synch or falling back to some odd state when they don't see something that they're looking for like an IP address. Then just when you get things back up it blinks off again. ; ) Much better to have even a small unit just to carry things through those types of events.

 

[Kawboy12R]

As linked above, some have done their own Franken-UPS setups. It's not at all uncommon with those that need medical gear to run at home for long periods in case of an outage. CPAP, feeding pumps, suction machines, etc. I've heard of them using marine deep discharge batteries as well.

 

[fenderman]

Your PC and router will consume way less than 150w

 

[looney2ns]

1. Yes they are necessary and useful

2. How do you know what brand is good quality and worth the $130 purchase price? What company stands behind their product with a no questions asked warranty?

3. The AMAZON reviews are astounding. People buy them and a year later they are dead and it cost $20-80 to ship them back for warranty battery replacement.

4. What type of battery are they using? Lead Acid (last ~3 years)? Lithium?

5. Do they need a power drain and recharge every few months to keep battery healthy?

Reminds me of when I bought a $150 battery jump starter at Auto Zone and a year later after one use the battery was dead. I paid $40 to replace the battery.

Surely there must be a reliable and effective UPS worth buying but I can find that out with my research. Thus, I am asking you guys for real world results and experience.

2-APC or Cyberpower. Good suggestions in your other thread.

3-Batteries can be purchased locally or online for very reasonable prices.

4-Lead Acid-3-5 years.

5-No

 

[tangent]

Your PC and router will consume way less than 150w

yep, but if you throw the PoE switch/cams on that will add a fair amount.

 

[essjay]

To me the question would be - what do you want the UPS to do?

In my case I have a UPS just to protect the PC from short power outages like when a laptop PSU trips the switches which are usually only minutes at a time. For longer outages I use it for a graceful shutdown. The UPS would never last long enough for a major outage so it's not what I use it for.

 

[Kitsap]

Instead of speculating on what your power requirements are, it would pay in the long run to have a small watt meter available. Look up the P3 P4400 meter on Amazon. Around $25.

 

[tangent]

Instead of speculating on what your power requirements are, it would pay in the long run to have a small watt meter available. Look up the P3 P4400 meter on Amazon. Around $25.

Always a good idea, but many people just buy a UPS and if it doesn't meet their needs use it on another machine or on their modem. The nicer UPS also give you load stats.

 

[fenderman]

yep, but if you throw the PoE switch/cams on that will add a fair amount.

I dont think op intends to put cameras on the ups..regardless, even with 10 dahua poe cams and the pc you would not break 100w on average...

 

[bp2008]

I have several of these: Amazon.com: CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD Series UPS 1500VA 900W AVR Mini-Tower -New Design and More Features: Home Audio & Theater

They work just fine for me at home. I've had to replace a few batteries (after 3+ years of ownership), after finding drastically reduced battery capacity but I guess that is expected.

A significantly more expensive model supports something called "Active PFC" which basically means it outputs cleaner power. Amazon.com: CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS 1500VA 900W PFC Compatible Mini-Tower: Home Audio & Theater I got one at home a couple years ago but I could never tell any practical difference between it and the cheaper ones. However I wouldn't write them off entirely. I have two workstations at my office (I'm a software engineer and sometimes it helps having two physical machines) and both of them used to crash every couple of weeks for no apparent reason. It went on for years. Well a couple months ago I talked the boss into buying one of these Active PFC UPS for me and it has in fact seemed to end the crashes. It doesn't explain why none of the other machines in the office were ever unstable, but I'll take what I can get.

 

[fenderman]

I have several of these: Amazon.com: CyberPower CP1500AVRLCD Intelligent LCD Series UPS 1500VA 900W AVR Mini-Tower -New Design and More Features: Home Audio & Theater

They work just fine for me at home. I've had to replace a few batteries (after 3+ years of ownership), after finding drastically reduced battery capacity but I guess that is expected.

A significantly more expensive model supports something called "Active PFC" which basically means it outputs cleaner power. Amazon.com: CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD PFC Sinewave UPS 1500VA 900W PFC Compatible Mini-Tower: Home Audio & Theater I got one at home a couple years ago but I could never tell any practical difference between it and the cheaper ones. However I wouldn't write them off entirely. I have two workstations at my office (I'm a software engineer and sometimes it helps having two physical machines) and both of them used to crash every couple of weeks for no apparent reason. It went on for years. Well a couple months ago I talked the boss into buying one of these Active PFC UPS for me and it has in fact seemed to end the crashes. It doesn't explain why none of the other machines in the office were ever unstable, but I'll take what I can get.

the power supplies on the tower and sff (not micro) optiplex like the op has require the pfc sinewave ups because they have active pfc power supplies...others may or may not work..

 

[logbuilder]

@CaliGirl

Seems to me you are looking for a UPS with the following capabilities:

1. Ability to ride out intermittent short duration ( ~5 mins or less) outages. Maybe 15-20 minutes total outage duration.
2. Once UPS battery capacity gets low, issue a shutdown command to the PC so that it goes down in a nice orderly fashion.
3. Once power is restored and the UPS determines that power is again stable, issue a startup command to the PC.

We used to have UPSs 20 years ago with those capabilities. Motherboards used to have a connection for issuing those commands. I'm not up on current UPS or motherboard technology but fundamentally those characteristics seem to be what you are looking for.

 

[tangent]

We used to have UPSs 20 years ago with those capabilities. Motherboards used to have a connection for issuing those commands. I'm not up on current UPS or motherboard technology but fundamentally those characteristics seem to be what you are looking for.

It's turning the PC back on they may be difficult. The simplest option is to set the bios to power on after loss or power. You'd have to test if it works after a nice shutdown or if you have to do a hard shutdown. The edge case that could bite you is: power outage > UPS getting low, PC shutdown triggered > Power comes back on and the UPS never loses power. As a result the PC wouldn't turn pack on unless there's a way to signal that from the UPS. I haven't seen too many computers with something like a keyboard power on since the days of PS/2. 0

-Simplest option a hard shutdown and deeper depletion of UPS battery
-Fancy diy option rig up a circuit that checks of the PC is on and if not hits the power button

i had a mobo from 2005 that could power on from the kb but it was finicky.

 

[fenderman]

it may be possible to do this via wake on lan...but you would have to automate it..

 

[logbuilder]

Here is a good article on graceful shut down with a UPS.
How to Gracefully Shutdown Your PC with a UPS Unit (and Why You Should)