UPS Brand

Pkai · June 14, 2017

Hey guys, there is a UPS brand in my country called "Best One". Is it fine if i buy a 1200VA UPS from the mentioned brand ? Could a cheap UPS harm the PC ? I just want a UPS because we usually have blackouts in our country and i want to properly shutdown my PC. I have a 730W PSU and a 144Hz screen.

DrMikeNZ · June 14, 2017

23 minutes ago, Pkai said:

Is it fine if i buy a 1200VA UPS from the mentioned brand ?

Is that seriously a brand?

23 minutes ago, Pkai said:

Could a cheap UPS harm the PC ?

Yes.

24 minutes ago, Pkai said:

I have a 730W PSU and a 144Hz screen.

PSU size doesn't really matter much, what is more important is the systems actual peak power draw which will be much lower. This can be determined empirically with a power meter device, or theoretically by calculation based on the total system parts list.

Pkai · June 14, 2017

3 minutes ago, DrMikeNZ said:

Is that seriously a brand?

Yes.

PSU size doesn't really matter much, what is more important is the systems actual peak power draw which will be much lower. This can be determined empirically with a power meter device, or theoretically by calculation based on the total system parts list.

The mentioned brand's name is "Best One". I already said that in the post but maybe you didn't recognize it. Thank you for your help. Much appreciated.

mariushm · June 14, 2017

A lot of brands just buy OEM designs from a handful of UPS manufacturers and rebrand them, they put their own logos on them

So for what I assume is a local/regional brand, we have no idea what actual design is inside that product and how good the quality is

It's kind of like with power supplies which are also sold under various brands, but mostly made by let's say 10 big manufacturers and then brands put their logos on the power supplies. Some of these major manufacturers don't allow a lot of customization so the brand may only change the fan or the case of the power supply and keep everything the same (and you know the quality of the electronics is high and consistent) but some other major manufacturers may be much more flexible and allow the brand to replace some components with lower quality / cheaper ones in order to bring the overall cost down but trading quality and life for the price (for example a power supply design originally meant to have 5 year warranty would now have only or 3 year warranty because these cheaper components would degrade or go bad much faster)

The only way we would know how good that UPS is would be if you manage to find some pictures with the insides (the circuit boards, the transformer used, the batteries the UPS uses) ... maybe you find on some websites from your country some reviews for that particular UPS or a UPS from the series you're interested in.

If you find some pictures, post them here and me and maybe others that are knowledgeable can tell you if it's worth the money or not.

One more thing to note... you say you have a 730w power supply. 730w is really an odd number, it's not really used that often. Most power supplies tend to be sold with 20 or 50 at the end .. for example 420w, 500w, 520w, 550w, 650w, 750w ...

I have a suspicion that your power supply may also be one of low quality / some local brand / made by some Chinese no-brand which may exaggerate the capabilities of the power supply or add the numbers in a creative way to make the power supply look like it can provide more power than it can actually do.

If this is the case, cheaper power supplies or these power supplies that are made by various Chinese manufacturers for which you can't figure out who made them (who the OEM is),these power supply often have very basic input filtering or circuitry meant to filter the input AC voltage and make it good for the power supply.

Some of these power supplies don't have Passive PFC or Active PFC , which are circuits that would normally help when it comes to using power supplies with UPS.

See, there's several types of UPS .. offline, line-interactive and online (offline is cheapest but slowest to react to power failures or fluctuations in power , line interactive is a bit more expensive and works better with power fluctuations and online is more expensive and best) ... your UPS is probably offline or line interactive.

Then there's also two types of UPSes based on how the AC voltage they output looks.. they output either true sine wave ac voltage (expensive) or simulated sine wave where the AC voltage is created in a cheaper way. This simulated ac voltage can be bad for power supplies that have no PFC circuit and/or minimal input filtering, this ugly sine wave can stress components in the power supply and damage them over time or the power supply may even turn itself off or make ugly sounds while it's running from UPS

So the UPS may actually work OK if you have a quality power supply but if your power supply is also a cheap low quality one you would have to be slightly more careful about what you buy.

It would help if you take some pictures or at least write what's written on the label of the power supply or maybe post some links to a store that sells the power supply you have so we can see pictures with the labels on your power supply or some technical information and go from there.