UPS Recommendation

[Pete Goodrich]

Looking to purchase a UPS (preferably below $800, but consumer grade) for my high-ish end PC and sit/stand desk with built in power (Secretlab Magnus Pro). My power supply is 1000w capacity and the system frequently draws near the 500-800 mark. Looking for any recommendations for UPS. Also, when installing, should I plug my desk into the UPS so that all my peripherals and computer are backed up and have clean power? Also thinking this would be good for ease of use since the PC is plugged into the desk and I don’t want cables dangling around. Open to comments!

Edited April 3 by Pete Goodrich

[Aleph256]

Will depend on how much you're willing to spend, but Eaton does very good consumer-grade stuff. Been using their stuff for years at work and at home.

 

Assuming you asking if you should plug your desk into the PSU is a typo and you meant the UPS: you can, but that might require you to overspec the UPS - I'm not sure how they handle giving all their capacity on a single outlet.

[Pete Goodrich]

14 minutes ago, Aleph256 said:

Will depend on how much you're willing to spend, but Eaton does very good consumer-grade stuff. Been using their stuff for years at work and at home.

 

Assuming you asking if you should plug your desk into the PSU is a typo and you meant the UPS: you can, but that might require you to overspec the UPS - I'm not sure how they handle giving all their capacity on a single outlet.

Ah, whoops. Yes, a typo. I always switch those two initialisms around. Thanks for the recommendation on Eaton!

[AnonymousGuy]

Kinda a useless question without knowing your budget.  You can go from $200 - $2000.

 

Clean power only exists with online UPS's which are going to be closer to the $2000 range.  And I wouldn't really target that unless you know for a fact you've got power integrity issues.

 

You have to assess.  Are you *really* drawing 500-800W regularly or are you estimating?  Do you *need* all of your desk to have power during an outage when you're probably going to lose internet too if your modem and router aren't on a UPS?   How many minutes are you expecting power to be out?  Are you prepared to spend $100 every 2 years to replace lead acid batteries if you don't step up to the $$$$ lithium UPS's?

[Pete Goodrich]

13 minutes ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Kinda a useless question without knowing your budget.  You can go from $200 - $2000.

 

Clean power only exists with online UPS's which are going to be closer to the $2000 range.  And I wouldn't really target that unless you know for a fact you've got power integrity issues.

 

You have to assess.  Are you *really* drawing 500-800W regularly or are you estimating?  Do you *need* all of your desk to have power during an outage when you're probably going to lose internet too if your modem and router aren't on a UPS?   How many minutes are you expecting power to be out?  Are you prepared to spend $100 every 2 years to replace lead acid batteries if you don't step up to the $$$$ lithium UPS's?

Thank you for the context. I updated and I didn’t realize they could get that expensive. I’ve only really seen the $200 stuff. I’m looking to go no where north of $800. I think plugging into the desk is really only for ease of use since the power bank is already built in. Thank you for educating me. With the budget, do you have any lithium recommendations or they more expensive?

[AnonymousGuy]

26 minutes ago, Pete Goodrich said:

Thank you for the context. I updated and I didn’t realize they could get that expensive. I’ve only really seen the $200 stuff. I’m looking to go no where north of $800. I think plugging into the desk is really only for ease of use since the power bank is already built in. Thank you for educating me. With the budget, do you have any lithium recommendations or they more expensive?

Lithium hasn't worked its way down yet to the consumer space but it really is way better overall for UPS's since it offers 100% depth-of-discharge and the batteries will last 10 years instead of 2.  I had to build mine myself to stay under $1000 (it's basically the same thing you'd put in an RV.  Lithium battery, DC-DC charger, 12V power supply, inverter).   But it's online (aka "double conversion" because it's doing ac - dc - dc - ac) so it wouldn't be practical outside a utility closet unless you don't care about 24/7 fan noise.  And it's more expensive to run because it draws 30% more power than it supplies with the efficiency losses.  It'd be more expensive to have automatic transfer switch to run off utility power and switch over to battery fast enough to not interrupt electronics.

 

So if you want to go the standard UPS route I'd look at the runtime charts for APC / TrippLite / CyberPower and then decide how much time you need and buy from there.  Sustaining 800W for more than 20 minutes gets expensive with the readily available stuff (I personally targetted 2 hours to match the longest power outage every experienced here).  If you want to rummage around and save money you can find rackmount stuff or retired UPS's on ebay that just need new batteries put in them.  There's loads of stores that will sell replacement generic batteries.

 

It's easier to say "I just need 5 minutes to save stuff and shut down" and then play on your phone while you wait for grid power to come back.

[Pete Goodrich]

12 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Lithium hasn't worked its way down yet to the consumer space but it really is way better overall for UPS's since it offers 100% depth-of-discharge and the batteries will last 10 years instead of 2.  I had to build mine myself to stay under $1000 (it's basically the same thing you'd put in an RV.  Lithium battery, DC-DC charger, 12V power supply, inverter).   But it's online (aka "double conversion" because it's doing ac - dc - dc - ac) so it wouldn't be practical outside a utility closet unless you don't care about 24/7 fan noise.  And it's more expensive to run because it draws 30% more power than it supplies with the efficiency losses.  It'd be more expensive to have automatic transfer switch to run off utility power and switch over to battery fast enough to not interrupt electronics.

 

So if you want to go the standard UPS route I'd look at the runtime charts for APC / TrippLite / CyberPower and then decide how much time you need and buy from there.  Sustaining 800W for more than 20 minutes gets expensive with the readily available stuff (I personally targetted 2 hours to match the longest power outage every experienced here).  If you want to rummage around and save money you can find rackmount stuff or retired UPS's on ebay that just need new batteries put in them.  There's loads of stores that will sell replacement generic batteries.

 

It's easier to say "I just need 5 minutes to save stuff and shut down" and then play on your phone while you wait for grid power to come back.

Agree on that last statement. Again, thank you for all of this insight. This gives me a lot to consider.