UPS and power supplies?

[za1234ki]

Hi everyone.

I was in the middle of buying all the bits and pieces for my fancy new gaming / video editing PC. Everything went fine and dandy, until I realized that the electric system in my flat (and the entire building I suppose) is a mess: eg. flickering lights and displays(?!)...

I guess it'd be a bad idea to plug a > £1000 machine into this madness, so I might have to buy a UPS. I managed to get over the fact that it's probably gonna cost more than £100, so the next thing is compatibility. From what I could understand, there can be issues with certain power supplies, especially the ones with simulated sine-wave output (which term I'm just getting familiar with).

Any info would be much appreciated, since the articles I could find so far were rather confusing, and don't tell much about compatibility with power supplies.

Thank you!

Matt

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, za1234ki said:

guess it'd be a bad idea to plug a > £1000 machine into this madness

Unless you buy a always on line ups, it won't really help at all. PSU's have lots of input protectons and will handle that input just fine.

[Enderman]

The cyberpower PFC LCD ones are good, they are pure sine wave and very cheap, I got mine for like $170 cad last christmas.

The thing is, the pure sine wave is great but that's just for when running on battery, the USP when live will just prevent surges and brownouts.

If you want full power cleaning you need a special UPS that runs on battery 100% of the time, which degrades the battery quicker and requires a replacement every few months or years.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apc-smt1500-cyberpower-cp1500pfclcd-tripp-lite-smart1500slt,2785.html

The opti-UPS is the double conversion one, and much more expensive.

[scottyseng]

3 hours ago, za1234ki said:

-snip-

To protect against that and not just power loss, you need a line interactive UPS to correct some of the power issues to an extent. As mentioned above, if you want pure clean noise free power, you need a double online conversion UPS, but they are very expensive and somewhat noisy.

 

The Cyberpower units have a great bang for your buck. I recommend the Eaton 5S or 5P / 5PX UPS units (they are line interactice). The Eaton 9 series is the Double Online Conversion type, but they are pretty expensive / loud / probably overkill for your needs. I own a Eaton 2000VA 9130 UPS rackmount, and let me tell you, it's usually at 48dB at idle all of the time. It also cost $1,300 roughly.

 

As mentioned before, as long as you get a decent quality UPS, the battery power is usually stepped sine or pure sine. PSUs will work fine on that. It's the really bad cheap square sine UPS units you should avoid / cause issues. However, some PSUs are sensitive and will not power on stepped sine (Most will though).

[za1234ki]

On 12/7/2016 at 2:16 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Unless you buy a always on line ups, it won't really help at all. PSU's have lots of input protectons and will handle that input just fine.

So you're saying that a pricier, quality Corsair power supply will be able protect my pc from brownouts, surges, and such other nasties without a UPS?

Edited December 8, 2016 by za1234ki

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, za1234ki said:

So you're saying that a pricier, quality Corsair power supply will be able protect my pc from brownouts, surges, and such other nasties without a UPS?

Yep. A UPS won't protech you from any of that. Any decent psu will be fine with all of that.

[za1234ki]

 

On 12/7/2016 at 2:16 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Unless you buy a always on line ups, it won't really help at all. PSU's have lots of input protectons and will handle that input just fine.

Sounds great, it could save me 200 golds... But I'm still not convinced, since so many articles and forum posts recommend buying a UPS to protect PC-s from messy electric systems.

ps. I've got the power supply, a Corsair HX 750i, and I'm gonna check out its manual as well, maybe it has some info on this.

[Electronics Wizardy]

8 minutes ago, za1234ki said:

 

Sounds great, it could save me 200 golds... But I'm still not convinced, since so many articles and forum posts recommend buying a UPS to protect PC-s from messy electric systems.

ps. I've got the power supply, a Corsair HX 750i, and I'm gonna check out its manual as well, maybe it has some info on this.

A low end ups won't do anything more than a surge protector as its off unless your power is out, it won't help clean bad power. Your psu also has lots of componendts to clean up and protect its self, so i wouldn't worry at all. Only get the ups of poweroutages are a problem.

[W-L]

On 12/8/2016 at 6:23 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Yep. A UPS won't protech you from any of that. Any decent psu will be fine with all of that.

10 hours ago, za1234ki said:

Sounds great, it could save me 200 golds... But I'm still not convinced, since so many articles and forum posts recommend buying a UPS to protect PC-s from messy electric systems.

ps. I've got the power supply, a Corsair HX 750i, and I'm gonna check out its manual as well, maybe it has some info on this.

If the UPS is a good quality unit it can help protect against some of those issues, a good qulaity unit will have an AVR and be able to actively switch over to battery backup during a period of bad quality power or a power outage. Main reason to have a UPS is mainly data security as it prevent any potential loss. 

[za1234ki]

2 hours ago, W-L said:

If the UPS is a good quality unit it can help protect against some of those issues, a good qulaity unit will have an AVR and be able to actively switch over to battery backup during a period of bad quality power or a power outage. Main reason to have a UPS is mainly data security as it prevent any potential loss. 

I see. Data loss doesn't really concern me, I'm only worried about the hardware components. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that some basic surge protector will be enough. Although some sources are telling me that it's not just the surges, there are also power sags and swells, and brownouts, etc. And the flickering lights are still worrying in my house. My issue is, that apparently most domestic UPS-es don't provide that brilliant of a protection from any of these anomalies unless it's running on the battery... Which feature I don't really need.

[W-L]

7 hours ago, za1234ki said:

I see. Data loss doesn't really concern me, I'm only worried about the hardware components. I'm starting to come to the conclusion that some basic surge protector will be enough. Although some sources are telling me that it's not just the surges, there are also power sags and swells, and brownouts, etc. And the flickering lights are still worrying in my house. My issue is, that apparently most domestic UPS-es don't provide that brilliant of a protection from any of these anomalies unless it's running on the battery... Which feature I don't really need.

Most can protect from those what they usually do instead is just switch over to battery backup even if there isn't a power outage but just poor quality power. For flickering if it's variations in voltages a good unit with a built in AVR can aleviate most of those issues.