What UPS to pick
On 1/22/2025 at 10:48 PM, Mad Jester said:what the best UPS to choose
I recently got my first UPS, a 1000W APC UPS with a data port to trigger a soft shutdown when on battery and it's running low. The unit new was just over $200 but I got it used with a dead battery for $60 and then spent $64 on a LiFePO4 battery instead of a lead acid that came standard since those have a 3-5 year replacement cycle vs ~10 years.
That said, if you're using a 5090 that won't work and may have to buy new to get something with enough wattage to handle a 5090, 9950x, and possibly your modem, router/switch, and monitor if you want to keep playing through a brief power outage. Otherwise, just plug in the computer for the safe shutdown functionality.
The two big consumer brands are APC and Cyberpower with the former being seen as the industry standard and the latter being slightly less expensive with occasional QC issues (per Reddit commenters). Eaton comes up at the lower end of the higher range (1200w+) that you're looking at but I have no personal experience with them. I've heard decent things, though.
The industry standard is somehow still lead acid batteries that have no fire risk and allow for rapid discharges but do need replacement every few years, but APC sells some Lithium UPS units- for a very healthy price premium. Alternatively, especially at the lower and midrange you can put in a drop-in LiFePO4 replacement, but the maximum discharge rate may not be quite as good as a lead acid and trigger the internal battery management system to shutoff if it detects too much power draw in a short time frame. At 575 Watts for just the GPU and then the CPU etc on top I'd not risk using a drop-in replacement to save money without some extensive research on discharge rates etc.
It would defeat the purpose of a UPS if it shut itself off from too much power draw when you actually needed it instead of going for some time and then triggering a safe shutdown via the data cable (or network card on the higher end models) when the battery reaches a defined level of low.
I could talk about VA vs W numbers, stepped sine-wave models, pure-sine wave models, models intended for servers, standby UPS vs Line interactive vs double conversion (listed in order of safety and price) and more I encountered in my research to get a good 1000W for myself, but ultimately it mostly depends on your budget.
If you're going to drop $2k on a GPU and more on the CPU it makes no sense to risk potential damage by cheaping out on the PSU or UPS, especially if an area has occasional outages you may as well get a 1200W, pure-sine wave, Line interactive or double conversion model if you can find a deal. Someone else can tell you if you can get away with a 1000W UPS as it's a decent price increase from 1000W to 1200W. I hope that helps.
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