Why dont PSUs come with Battery Backups?

[MuscularPotato]

With battery technology getting better and better, and with the laptop market already doing this, why aren't PSU manufacturers building in some kind of battery backup for desktop PCs?

 

I'm not talking some multi-hour deal, but something with just enough grunt to give your PC 5 minutes to shut down should be enough, right? It wouldn't even need to power the peripherals or the monitor as you could bake in a shutdown sequence, like with UPSs, to put the PC in a hibernation state.

 

I dunno, just an idea that's been bouncing around my head (might be a good topic for an ltt or techquickie video)

[DailyProcrastinator]

The PSU would have to be pretty big, not something that would be easily accepted into PC building space, especially since ATX/SFX is standardized with cases now. And I product already exists for that, a UPS (uninterrupted power supply).

[MuscularPotato]

I feel like the modern UPS is a bit overkill for the kind of thing I'm talking about though. They are bulky mainly because they power so many bits. I'm talking more to having the ability to soft shutdown the PC in the event of a power outage so it would only be powering the tower and not the screen or whatever other kind of stuff you'd normally daisy chain off of a UPS

[Electronics Wizardy]

The other issue is tht you often wnt other things running if the power goes out, like the monitor.

[Guest]

Cost and size.

 

Lithium Ion batteries aren't cheap.  If you can really use a laptop battery to run your PC, you don't have much of a PC.  Look at the gaming latptops.  They now have MINIMUM 240W adapter and throttle when the brick's not plugged in because the battery can't support that much  power.

 

And even though Lithium Ion batteries are smaller than SLA, it still needs to go somewhere.  You can start with a very power dense PSU like an SFX and fill the gaps that differentiate the size between SFX and ATX with batteries, but that's not going to give you much power.

 

I agree that current UPSs are highly inefficient.  You have to convert from AC to DC, then back to AC so the PSU can convert back to DC again.  Half the damn size of a UPS is the transformer doing the AC to DC conversion.  But even then, you still can't get anything small enough to power, say, 350W inside an ATX housing if you expect it to run for 5 minutes.

 

That all said, there is a company called Nipro that makes a PSU (small, really only suitable for a PC with on CPU graphics) with a battery pack that fits in a 3.5" drive bay (or 5.25" if you need more capacity) that will keep the PC running for about 5 minutes:  http://www.nipron.com/extra/psu/nonstop/

[DailyProcrastinator]

53 minutes ago, MuscularPotato said:

I feel like the modern UPS is a bit overkill for the kind of thing I'm talking about though. They are bulky mainly because they power so many bits. I'm talking more to having the ability to soft shutdown the PC in the event of a power outage so it would only be powering the tower and not the screen or whatever other kind of stuff you'd normally daisy chain off of a UPS

I know what you are inferring but practically it really does not make a ton of sense to implement, and a lower power UPS would do the trick. And lets be honest with no screen most users aren't getting very far or you are powering down by holding the power button. A UPS makes way more sense. 

[MuscularPotato]

I'm talking about a non-interactive shutdown to soften the blow from an instant power disconnect, no your typical "save your work and shut down" shutdown

[Guest]

2 hours ago, MuscularPotato said:

I'm talking about a non-interactive shutdown to soften the blow from an instant power disconnect, no your typical "save your work and shut down" shutdown

Wait.. are you just talking about nor knowing there's been an open source software for UPS's that initiates system shut down on power failure for the last couple decades?

 

Bruh.. What kind of crappy UPS's are you using that don't have communication with the PC?

[MuscularPotato]

3 hours ago, jonnyGURU said:

Wait.. are you just talking about nor knowing there's been an open source software for UPS's that initiates system shut down on power failure for the last couple decades?

 

Bruh.. What kind of crappy UPS's are you using that don't have communication with the PC?

I'm talking knowing that. I'm talking about making UPSs redundant by making every pc able to soft shutdown on blackout without needing a UPS. I don't know why this concept is so hard for all of you

[Guest]

10 hours ago, MuscularPotato said:

I'm talking knowing that. I'm talking about making UPSs redundant by making every pc able to soft shutdown on blackout without needing a UPS. I don't know why this concept is so hard for all of you

Ok.  Then read my first reply.

 

I don't know why that concept is so hard for you.

 

[Mick Naughty]

Seems quite impractical. Not all PCs are the same. Even my “big bulky” ups won’t give me more than 5 minutes at load. So I’d have to rush to shut shit down to have enough time to make it worth it. So that’d have to be a giant psu to save all that precious data that’s important enough to warrant shutting down.