Will a Simulated Sine Wave UPS be an Issue?

[FCBoi]

Will a Simulated Sine Wave be an Issue? I heard that a Simulated Sine Wave UPS can be an issue for a PSU PC with a PFC on it. But my budget is only for a Simulated Sine Wave UPS.

If the lights go out, I wont game on it, but lets say the power did go out while gaming. I am consuming around 300 watts on my PC and now its on a Simulated Sine Wave and since the lights go out, I just simply turn off the game and turn offed my PC and wait for the power to come back.

Will that be an issue, like 30 secs of gaming cause of the exit transition and then properly shutting down my PC off? My PSU is a 80+ Gold 650 Watts.

And is a 1000VA/600W Enough Time to shut my PC down after gaming? my typical load is 300-400W in Hard Gaming

Thanks everyone! I am really scared that it will break the PC and I am not an electrical engineer

[Poinkachu]

19 minutes ago, FCBoi said:

Will a Simulated Sine Wave be an Issue? I heard that a Simulated Sine Wave UPS can be an issue for a PSU PC with a PFC on it. But my budget is only for a Simulated Sine Wave UPS.

So far I never had problem with my PC and my Cyberpower budget Simul Sine UPS, the PC in total prob uses around 400-500 from the wall.

Just had a blackout 4 days ago in fact, quitted the game, put PC to sleep as usual. Power came back, turned PC back on to game again. Everything was fine.

 

The same goes for my previous system.

 

24 minutes ago, FCBoi said:

I am consuming around 300 watts on my PC

Best to measure it using a wattmeter on the wall socket.

Saying it just in case you only measured it using afterburner / hwinfo in OS.

[FCBoi]

1 minute ago, Poinkachu said:

So far I never had problem with my PC and my Cyberpower budget Simul Sine UPS, the PC in total prob uses around 400-500 from the wall.

Just had a blackout 4 days ago in fact, quitted the game, put PC to sleep as usual. Power came back, turned PC back on to game again. Everything was fine.

 

The same goes for my previous system.

 

Best to measure it using a wattmeter on the wall socket.

Saying it just in case you only measured it using afterburner / hwinfo in OS.

my 5700x3d undervolted around 75 watts at ultimate max (never constant 75w load cause its gaming not a stress test) and my RX 7900 GRE Overclocked at 300w+ (never constant 300w+ load cause its gaming not a stress test) 

[Poinkachu]

12 minutes ago, FCBoi said:

my 5700x3d undervolted around 75 watts at ultimate max (never constant 75w load cause its gaming not a stress test) and my RX 7900 GRE Overclocked at 300w+ (never constant 300w+ load cause its gaming not a stress test) 

The point of measuring it at the wall socket is because PSU efficiency and such things gonna have a play.

 

If your system let's say uses 300w in HwInfo, and your PSU efficiency at that load is 80%, means you atleast pull 375w from the wall.

Meaning the UPS have to provide 375w for your PC, if you make the UPS as the power provider. Since it becomes the "wall socket"

Edited June 17 by Poinkachu

[FCBoi]

6 minutes ago, Poinkachu said:

So far I never had problem with my PC and my Cyberpower budget Simul Sine UPS, the PC in total prob uses around 400-500 from the wall.

Just had a blackout 4 days ago in fact, quitted the game, put PC to sleep as usual. Power came back, turned PC back on to game again. Everything was fine.

 

The same goes for my previous system.

 

Best to measure it using a wattmeter on the wall socket.

Saying it just in case you only measured it using afterburner / hwinfo in OS.

also, I just wanted to ask. Are these people that I heard that "Simulated Sine Wave is Bad for your PC" just either got Bad PSU or just unlucky?

[Poinkachu]

6 minutes ago, FCBoi said:

also, I just wanted to ask. Are these people that I heard that "Simulated Sine Wave is Bad for your PC" just either got Bad PSU or just unlucky?

Idk for sure.
But I think part of it is from old time era, where PSU and/or UPS technology wasn't as good as nowadays. Or you know, PC parts wasn't as tough as nowadays.

 

I mean, I still hear the usual paranoia about static electricity, while in test that LTT + Electroboom performed, it was actually quite hard to murder modern pc parts by static. Like...you'd have to be quite unlucky?

But of course taking the safer approach is always more preferable if it can be done.

Edited June 17 by Poinkachu

[leadeater]

9 hours ago, FCBoi said:

If the lights go out, I wont game on it, but lets say the power did go out while gaming. I am consuming around 300 watts on my PC and now its on a Simulated Sine Wave and since the lights go out, I just simply turn off the game and turn offed my PC and wait for the power to come back.

Will that be an issue, like 30 secs of gaming cause of the exit transition and then properly shutting down my PC off? My PSU is a 80+ Gold 650 Watts.

And is a 1000VA/600W Enough Time to shut my PC down after gaming? my typical load is 300-400W in Hard Gaming

Simulated sine wave and Active PFC will only have potential issues at the exact moment of a power interruption. It's simply down to how Active PFC works and the waveform shape of the UPS, it can interfere with the PSU's ability to modulate the voltage/frequency and the PC can just outright shutoff when power is lost and the PSU transitions from getting true sine wave to simulated sine wave.

 

It's really only a concern when at the higher end of the power draw capabilities of the PSU (not the UPS) and the exact timing in the waveform. Simply you'd almost always be fine, having your PC shutoff is probably in the 1/1000 odds realm but how good the UPS is at simulating a sine wave does also factor in to it.

[Kisai]

On 6/16/2025 at 8:11 PM, FCBoi said:

Will a Simulated Sine Wave be an Issue? I heard that a Simulated Sine Wave UPS can be an issue for a PSU PC with a PFC on it. But my budget is only for a Simulated Sine Wave UPS.

If the lights go out, I wont game on it, but lets say the power did go out while gaming. I am consuming around 300 watts on my PC and now its on a Simulated Sine Wave and since the lights go out, I just simply turn off the game and turn offed my PC and wait for the power to come back.

Will that be an issue, like 30 secs of gaming cause of the exit transition and then properly shutting down my PC off? My PSU is a 80+ Gold 650 Watts.

And is a 1000VA/600W Enough Time to shut my PC down after gaming? my typical load is 300-400W in Hard Gaming

Thanks everyone! I am really scared that it will break the PC and I am not an electrical engineer

It mostly affects the ability of the UPS to operate. It doesn't damage the PSU. Your UPS is also a big expensive surge suppressor.

 

In the place I currently live, usually 3-4 times a day the UPS kicks in for a few seconds, and the lights dim, and every time it spooks me. I don't know what's going on, but I expect the UPS to eventually kick the bucket from the frequent events.

 

What happens when your UPS doesn't handle a Simulated sine wave, is that the estimated runtime is essentially random. I used that combination for my i7-4770 (2013) right up until it randomly died around march 2021. I had to swap the PSU during this time because it literately died because it couldn't handle the system load. 

 

The inverter on the UPS will die first. If you have a RTX xx90 + i7/i9 CPU that is a close to 1000w system load, and most UPS's are not going to handle it full tilt. When my 11th gen system is full tilt on the current 1200VA (maximum you can get before you get into server UPS's) I had about 3 minutes. I had enough time to shut the computer down. If however you just keep going, you're going to damage the PC when the power just shuts off randomly while it writes to the drive.