Well, to the OP, if you have a big need for power protection, I'd say go with a refurb APC Symmetra.. one is one ebay right now for $3400, but that's overkill for home use. I've got one at work here, but all the batteries are dead in it and need to be replaced. I think this model has 16 batteries all together, so the price is pretty high.

To the question on the CyberPower model.. I haven't been using any of the larger CyberPower models in this range.. just APCs.. So, on paper, this model looks good but I can't personally verify it. The terminology seems to imply that t is a true sine wave inverter rather than the equivalent stepped approximation wave inverters on the APC 1300/1500s I currently use. hmm. It might be marketspeak, and not technically correct....

"Adaptive Sinewave technology solves the incompatibility issues experienced when a non-Sinewave UPS is attached to equipment using Active PFC power supplies. With pure sine wave output, an Adaptive Sinewave UPS provides continuous power output, preventing unexpected shutdowns or damaging stress when switching from AC to UPS battery power."

Other than that description, the CyberPower model looks like a good model. As long as your power constraints are met by it, then I say go for it.

This topic has got me thinking as well for my home box. I reently installed a Seasonic 750w Gold PS, replacing the CompUSA 430w one. I was able to immediately see an efficiency improvement going from a non-80+ to a 80+ Gold PS. The computer sans monitor draws 105W at idle. But, that box has an APC BackUPS Pro 1300 on it.. $150 retail, but it is listed as "Stepped approximation to a sinewave" so where did you find the Active PFC info? I'd like to see some dox on this.

Kinda makes me wanna replace my APC with that CyberPower model.

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There were some APC 3000VA rackmount shells at work a few years ago that were going to go into the dumpster, and I tried for a while to talk them into letting me just take them home, but they wouldn't go for it. Used 8 8-10AH batteries (can't remember what the actual AH rating was). Those units brand new were in the $3-4k range, but I found a shell (everything but the batteries) on eBay for somewhere in the $3-400 range, and then a battery kit was $180.

I haven't gotten that particular setup yet, but it's still on my to-do list. Would also require some electrical upgrades to my present power outlet situation (two 15A duplexes, each on a different 20A breaker) since the 3000VA units use a 125V 30A twist-lock plug. Could just get the 240V 20A twist-lock kind that still puts out 120V on the device side though.

Point is, you may be able to cobble together something that is >2000VA for nearly the cost of something in the 1500VA range at stores.

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Linux laptop:
record uptime: 1511d 20h 19m (ended due to the power brick giving-up)

For many batteries, 6 hour, 10 hour, or 20 hour rates are specified. There are UPS batteries that had discharge rates specified for periods down to 5 minutes. One example of this battery is at:
http://www.cdstandbypower.com/product/battery/vrla/pdf/12_1029_a.pdf. Other battery manufacturers will have similar products for the same markets. Note that at the high rates, instead of specifying amperes for a constant current load, the load is specified in watts for a constant power load. Also note that the high rate discharge voltages do not stop at the traditional 1.75 volts per cell but go as low as 1.60 volts per cell. The 12 volt (6 cell) UPS12-100MR will support a load of 179 watts per cell x 6 cells (1074 W) for 5 minutes. With the inverter losses included, this battery would support about 900 to 1000 W of ac load for 5 minutes.

The UPS battery's differences are not just data sheet information. The battery is constructed differently to provide the difference in performance. The internal conductors in the battery are sized to permit higher currents without overheating. The batteries have plates with greater surface area but thinner than the lower discharge rate batteries. This is to provide more surface area for the chemical reaction which means more current while maintaining the same ampere capacity. These differences means that the UPS batteries will cost mote to manufacture than at lower discharge rate battery.

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Currently, I have my UPS plugged into my PC via USB cable (most new USB's do this). Windows 7 recognized it without any driver installation, and my PC acts kind of like a laptop (I have a battery icon in my system tray that shows the charge of the UPS).

I've also configured BOINC to not run on batteries, so if we lose power, BOINC suspends crunching until we're back on AC, and then resumes crunching automatically. Yes, it does involve some crunching downtime, but you don't need quite as high a rating on the UPS, and it will charge back up quicker.

I've tested this and observed it in action when we had a power outage earlier today actually (for a few seconds--long enough for BOINC to suspend and resume). It's quite a nice setup. Also, Windows will automatically do a graceful shutdown when charge runs low on the batteries.

EDIT: It would be cool if BOINC offered a "computing allowed if batteries above xx%" option. But alas, it doesn't yet.

Is that the load from the outlet or just the PSU ratings? If it is just the output ratings the 750w supply could draw between 850w & 940w depending on its efficiency at full load. I would guestimate the load of your C2Q system in the 375w-450w range.

Those are ratings from the PSU not the wall. I don't have any way of measuring that at the moment, but the guess you have is within the ballpark I was thinking. The power ratings on both of my supplies are 80+ Bronze, so it shouldn't be too far off I don't think. That's the main reason I was looking at the VA rating and what they mean because it makes it a bit better on guestimation on what you may need. Thanks for confirming what I was thinking. I may invest in a kill-a-watt before jumping on a UPS just to verify what I'm thinking.

If you mean the time it takes to switch to battery power that is normally the "transfer time" rating you will see in the specs for the device. The one you listed below switches in 4ms. The period for one cycle at 60Hz is 16.7ms or 20ms for 50Hz. With the switch time in less than 1 cycle very few pieces of equipment have problems. Computers PSUs are generally not one of them. Those $10 1200w units from fly-by-night industries might have an issue.

For the infrastructure machines I run BOINC on at work I use a batch file that the UPS software runs when the batteries start to get low. Then the load lessens and the batteries lat a bit longer. Then once the power is back another file runs to have BOINC resume.

Not being electrically inclined, I'm not sure what they say the issue is, however they do point out that an Active PFC supply does need a true sine wave UPS. However I'm not sure if that's actually fact of merely manufacturer recommendations from the UPS guys. I mean after all they do want to sell more units. But if it's going to save my butt in the long run why not?

The reason the question is really in the back of my mine is the "true sin wave" CP1500PFCLCD model isn't true sine wave it's a modified simulated sin wave, which is the closest on the market for home users the way I understand it. I could sell out about double the money and get a rack mount unit that does have all those options however that's a bit out of my budget for something like this, my thinking may be off but I just can't justify the cost to protect against something that has only happened once or twice to me in over 10 years. At this point it's almost cheaper just to replace things that get burnt lol.

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

Just a data point, maybe helpful, maybe not:
I have a Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD unit (1500VA/900W) on one of my systems, it's an i7 940 with a HD 5870 and a 24" LCD monitor on it. I've had several power outages since it was put into use and it survived them all fine. The system is running with a Seasonic 750W 80+ gold rated power supply and the UPS says it draws in the mid-400W power range when fully powered up (there's an LCD on the front that can show this).

-Dave

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For many batteries, 6 hour, 10 hour, or 20 hour rates are specified. There are UPS batteries that had discharge rates specified for periods down to 5 minutes. One example of this battery is at:
http://www.cdstandbypower.com/product/battery/vrla/pdf/12_1029_a.pdf.

What I didn't see on the spec. sheet (and I'd really like to see) is some sort expected number of cycles vs. discharge rate.

Most UPSes abuse batteries something horribly, and sure, you can make batteries that are more resistant to abuse.

The other approach (and the one I'd suggest if all you care about is file corruption due to a sudden loss of power during a "write") is a UPS that interfaces to the computer -- so the computer can shut down and then turn off the UPS.

For most of us, power glitches are so unusual that you might only need to discharge the batteries three or four times over their reasonable lifetime.

Note that a really good power surge can do really odd things, and a good UPS may not provide the lightning protection you might expect.

Well, to the OP, if you have a big need for power protection, I'd say go with a refurb APC Symmetra.. one is one ebay right now for $3400, but that's overkill for home use. I've got one at work here, but all the batteries are dead in it and need to be replaced. I think this model has 16 batteries all together, so the price is pretty high.

To the question on the CyberPower model.. I haven't been using any of the larger CyberPower models in this range.. just APCs.. So, on paper, this model looks good but I can't personally verify it. The terminology seems to imply that t is a true sine wave inverter rather than the equivalent stepped approximation wave inverters on the APC 1300/1500s I currently use. hmm. It might be marketspeak, and not technically correct....

"Adaptive Sinewave technology solves the incompatibility issues experienced when a non-Sinewave UPS is attached to equipment using Active PFC power supplies. With pure sine wave output, an Adaptive Sinewave UPS provides continuous power output, preventing unexpected shutdowns or damaging stress when switching from AC to UPS battery power."

Other than that description, the CyberPower model looks like a good model. As long as your power constraints are met by it, then I say go for it.

This topic has got me thinking as well for my home box. I reently installed a Seasonic 750w Gold PS, replacing the CompUSA 430w one. I was able to immediately see an efficiency improvement going from a non-80+ to a 80+ Gold PS. The computer sans monitor draws 105W at idle. But, that box has an APC BackUPS Pro 1300 on it.. $150 retail, but it is listed as "Stepped approximation to a sinewave" so where did you find the Active PFC info? I'd like to see some dox on this.

Kinda makes me wanna replace my APC with that CyberPower model.

In the past a UPS would just put out a square wave when you were on batteries. Maybe whatever issue this caused is not a problem with the stepped sinewave output that everyone seems to use now.

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Just a data point, maybe helpful, maybe not:
I have a Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD unit (1500VA/900W) on one of my systems, it's an i7 940 with a HD 5870 and a 24" LCD monitor on it. I've had several power outages since it was put into use and it survived them all fine. The system is running with a Seasonic 750W 80+ gold rated power supply and the UPS says it draws in the mid-400W power range when fully powered up (there's an LCD on the front that can show this).

-Dave

Thanks for that information! That was the one I was looking at before because you can grab them up for like $139 bucks right now. So is this true sine wave merely a marketing gimmick to get you to buy another UPS? When the power goes out about what kind of time do you get from it?

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Traveling through space at ~67,000mph!

I think in the future I will spend the extra for one of those "pure sinewave" models as I just looked at the output of my UPS with my scope. The power company give me a nice neat sinewave & APC says this is a "Stepped approximation to a sinewave". It has been a few years since I got my electrical engineering degree, but when I went to school we called that a square wave.

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some of the older ups's from apc were true sinewave and pretty efficient. more then new models anyways. they also had really cool features.

i have a 10 year old apc on my 55 gallon fish tank that runs the pump heater lights etc and uses an external deep cycle marine battery for power. the tank can run for 14 hours on the battery. the older apc also produces true sine wave and has potentiometer adjustments for a/c frequency, a/c voltage, 12v charging voltage, and a/c high-low voltage switch over points, where if the mains voltage goes too high or low, you can adjust the point at which the ups cuts off mains and switches to battery mode.

i also have an older apc sine wave again running off a deep cycle battery on my home office for my work computer. it is basically the same thing as my fish tank one, but just 2x larger capacity.

my desktop in the computer room also uses apc, but its a newer unit that is a stepped square wave and has no adjustments. i dont like it at all. its noisy on battery mode. i can hear little humming things and electric noises comming out of it. but it was nearly free after rebate so i digress... the little SLA only runs the pc for about 3 minutes before windows shuts the computer off when battery power reaches 10%.


dont let the ups makers fool you guys. sine wave ups are not a new thing. and they are not much more expensive to make. tesla invented sine wave when he invented the a/c generator. sine wave ups are nicer because they are more enegry efficient. (directly related into a/c in converted to 12v and then inverted to a/c out. they make more efficient use of whatever battery capacity you have.) but most computers have no problem running off square wave, or modified square wave. infact the SWITCHED MODE power supplies in modern computers do not care about the quality of the sine wave. they are perfectly happy running off square wave all day long. the reason active power factor correction psu's suggest using a sine wave is because the active pfc does not work correctly on modified or square wave. at least that is my take on it. i do not know exactly how they work because i have never bought one or opened one up to see. i dont think that using a square wave would actually hurt the active pfc portion of the power supply, but it wont function properly.
by the way, active pfc power supplies are the same internals as standard ones, but they have an additional circuit inside them to actively manage power factor correction, instead of the passive correction that older or cheaper power supplies use. every power supply i have taken apart since the days of the 486 had passively used capacitors and or inductors on the mains side of the power supply, which were oin use 100% of the time, to try and correct the lead or lagging portion of the sine wave.
that works ok for getting the power factor up closer to unity. most are running around .7 to .85. the problem is you need different size capacitor for a low power pc, or one sitting at idle, then a high power pc or one running seti. i never measures an acrtive pfc because i never had the need to buy one. my electric company measures electricity i use by kilowatts not va or var. so i dont care of i have a crappy power factor. it doesnt increase or decrease by electric bill so i just dont care. id suspect that nearly all of you also have youre electricity usage measures in watts not volt amps so active power factor correction would not help you either.

active pfc is nice though, if you run the computer off a ups for an extended time because it reduces the amount of VA drawn from the ups inverter. id personally rather hook up deep cycle marine batteries for $60 and not worry about it. but im an elctronics geek and i can do that stuff without hurting myself.

I think in the future I will spend the extra for one of those "pure sinewave" models as I just looked at the output of my UPS with my scope. The power company give me a nice neat sinewave & APC says this is a "Stepped approximation to a sinewave". It has been a few years since I got my electrical engineering degree, but when I went to school we called that a square wave.

Take a look at the schematic for the typical PC switching power supply.

It's pretty normal for them to start with a rectifier, then a capacitor for filtering, and that rough 120-ish volt DC gets chopped at 20khz and fed through a flyback transformer.

If anything, square waves would be better. 100v DC would be nice too.

I can't speak to what happens with active power factor conversion -- it doesn't mean anything unless you have a LOT of computers (and not enough wiring), or if you're a big industrial user. We pay the utility for watts, not VA.

Thanks for that information! That was the one I was looking at before because you can grab them up for like $139 bucks right now. So is this true sine wave merely a marketing gimmick to get you to buy another UPS? When the power goes out about what kind of time do you get from it?

I can only say that I've had my PC run 6 or 7 minutes before I got to it to shut it down, I haven't tested to see how long it will actually run. I could have waited to see how long it took before it shut itself down, but it beeps annoyingly the whole time, so I always just power down myself. I have three PCs and some home entertainment stuff on UPSs that all beep when the power goes out, so I usually wait a minute or two to see if it is coming right back on, and if not, I start shutting things down. I only have the 1 Cyperpower one, the others are all APCs.
Can't answer about the sine wave thing, but there do seem to be a few unhappy comments in the reviews of the unit on Newegg that indicate some people haven't been able to use it with their systems. HTH.

-Dave

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I think in the future I will spend the extra for one of those "pure sinewave" models as I just looked at the output of my UPS with my scope. The power company give me a nice neat sinewave & APC says this is a "Stepped approximation to a sinewave". It has been a few years since I got my electrical engineering degree, but when I went to school we called that a square wave.

Take a look at the schematic for the typical PC switching power supply.

It's pretty normal for them to start with a rectifier, then a capacitor for filtering, and that rough 120-ish volt DC gets chopped at 20khz and fed through a flyback transformer.

If anything, square waves would be better. 100v DC would be nice too.

I can't speak to what happens with active power factor conversion -- it doesn't mean anything unless you have a LOT of computers (and not enough wiring), or if you're a big industrial user. We pay the utility for watts, not VA.

All of the PSUs I have bought in the past 5 or 6 years have been auto voltage switching from 100-240v with active PFC. I haven't made any effort to get active PFC units it just happens all of them I have bought are. Probably cheaper for the manufactures to make 1 design for international sale. With the auto voltage switching I figure the supply should be able to handle some variance and set the limits on the UPS to 103v and 130v.

For the UPS output I'm really more concerned with the other things I have in the living room with my HTPC. I recent had the replace the bulb in my rear projection TV much earlier then expected. Now I wonder if it didn't care for the output from the UPS after it passed though the HV transformer to the bulb.

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Well you could also build your own and even though the link is old the basis principals still apply, plus someone may feel like going totally solar powered with mains backup (depending on their thinking and their wallet). ;)

Cheers.

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For the UPS output I'm really more concerned with the other things I have in the living room with my HTPC. I recent had the replace the bulb in my rear projection TV much earlier then expected. Now I wonder if it didn't care for the output from the UPS after it passed though the HV transformer to the bulb.

The typical standby UPS is for all intents and purposes a wire when the mains power is on.

If you're interested in protecting your TV, then I'd think about surge protectors, and not worry about keeping it powered during an outage.

For a computer you want one of two things:

A graceful shutdown when power fails suddenly
To keep running through a power failure

A small UPS will insure a graceful shutdown. You need just enough time on batteries for that clean shutdown.

If you don't want things to blow, consider a whole-house surge suppressor http://www.deltasurgeprotectors.com/

For the UPS output I'm really more concerned with the other things I have in the living room with my HTPC. I recent had the replace the bulb in my rear projection TV much earlier then expected. Now I wonder if it didn't care for the output from the UPS after it passed though the HV transformer to the bulb.

The typical standby UPS is for all intents and purposes a wire when the mains power is on.

If you're interested in protecting your TV, then I'd think about surge protectors, and not worry about keeping it powered during an outage.

For a computer you want one of two things:

A graceful shutdown when power fails suddenly
To keep running through a power failure

A small UPS will insure a graceful shutdown. You need just enough time on batteries for that clean shutdown.

If you don't want things to blow, consider a whole-house surge suppressor http://www.deltasurgeprotectors.com/

The UPSs I have bought offer surge protection. Up to whatever the joule rating on them indicates. I also have the UPS plugged into a single outlet surge protector. It is a little cube and also help by having its outlet on the bottom. So I get a 90 degree turn out of it making the cord not stick out as far. Kind of like this thing http://www.wiredzone.com/Tripp%20Lite-SPIKE-CUBE-Surge-suppressor-%28-external-%29---AC-120~31003635~0.htm

For projection TV's they need to have a graceful power down so the fan can cool the bulb off. At least the manual is pretty adamant about that. Lot of warnings and scary doom foreshadowing if it isn't treated right.

I also don't like being interrupted when I am watching a movie. We have the technology, so I make it happen.

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