Choosing a UPS

[IAmAndre]

Hi,

 

I'm trying to determine the size of the UPS I should buy. Ideally, I would like something to keep my system up for an hour in case of a power cut but I don't have the budget for that. Basically I want the best price to backup time ratio.

My monitor is a Samsung SyncMaster F2380. I tried to determine its power consumption. I can find here that it uses less than 40W, but when I try to calculate its consumption myself based on the information given behind the monitor, I get much more values. Here is what I see :

AC 100-240 1.0A

When I use the method described here I find 240W so I don't know who to believe.

 

Besides the monitor I have a PC with a core i3 4330 and a GTX 750 Ti. Based on these charts I can see that it will require less than 100W.

 

So I'd like to know what is the actual wattage/consumption of my monitor, then what UPS would be appropriate. What can I expect from a 390 Watts / 650 VA UPS?

 

Thanks

[Altecice]

The only way to figure that our accurately is to use a Kill-o-watt or some other Watt meter.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

my recommendation is the same as his. buy or borrow a Kill-a-watt etc and plug everything you want to back up into it. turn your monitor brightness up all the way and stress your computer as much as possible. add another 10-25% to whatever you draw and that's what you want your UPS rated for.

I have a 27 inch LED monitor, a quad core intel processor and a 660 TI and I could get away with a 400W UPS, but to be safe I have a 650W/1000VA UPS which would still be within that power envelope if I added a second graphics card.

[IAmAndre]

my recommendation is the same as his. buy or borrow a Kill-a-watt etc and plug everything you want to back up into it. turn your monitor brightness up all the way and stress your computer as much as possible. add another 10-25% to whatever you draw and that's what you want your UPS rated for.

I have a 27 inch LED monitor, a quad core intel processor and a 660 TI and I could get away with a 400W UPS, but to be safe I have a 650W/1000VA UPS which would still be within that power envelope if I added a second graphics card.

How long does your computer stay on with your 650W/1000VA UPS?

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

according to this source: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2492 your monitor should draw in the ballpark of 45 watts, about average for a CCFL 23 inch LCD

your computer will as you said probably draw in the ballpark of 100 watts if you have an efficient power supply. if your UPS can deliver 200 watts, you should be pretty safe

something as cheap as this should do just fine: http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP350SLG-Standby-350VA-Compact/dp/B004OR0V2C/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1403039330&sr=8-10&keywords=UPS

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

How long does your computer stay on with your 650W/1000VA UPS?

those ratings have nothing to do with capacity, but my computer gets about 20 minutes at general load and about 8 minutes at gaming load

[IAmAndre]

according to this source: http://www.pcstats.com/articleview.cfm?articleID=2492 your monitor should draw in the ballpark of 45 watts, about average for a CCFL 23 inch LCD

your computer will as you said probably draw in the ballpark of 100 watts if you have an efficient power supply. if your UPS can deliver 200 watts, you should be pretty safe

something as cheap as this should do just fine: http://www.amazon.com/CyberPower-CP350SLG-Standby-350VA-Compact/dp/B004OR0V2C/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&qid=1403039330&sr=8-10&keywords=UPS

That's very cheap indeed, but as I don't live in the US I'll take this one . Any rough idea of how long I can expect to keep my monitor and my computer on?

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

That's very cheap indeed, but as I don't live in the US I'll take this one . Any rough idea of how long I can expect to keep my monitor and my computer on?

looking at their graphs, I'd wager you'll get something between 40 minutes and an hour on that at idle. maybe 15 minutes on a gaming load

[IAmAndre]

looking at their graphs, I'd wager you'll get something between 40 minutes and an hour on that at idle. maybe 15 minutes on a gaming load

Thank you. That should be enough.

[Peter Vaughan Truslow]

Happy to help. If you have any specific questions you can PM me.

[Darkstar101]

Get APC.