People with nice rigs, why aren't you using a UPS?

[Satisfoxy]

I see it all over the place, people will post pictures of their $3000+ battle stations and they don't use a UPS. A surge protector is not enough! Line conditioning and battery backup should be a must even for people not in electric troubled areas such as myself. Having clean non-interrupted power prevents corruption and makes your components last longer.

[Imbellis]

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 Line conditioning and battery backup should be a must even for people not in electric troubled areas such as myself.

The thing is, most people have continuous power. Most brownouts don't shut down computers.

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Having clean non-interrupted power prevents corruption...

"Prevents corruption"? Perhaps if you're in the middle of a write, but even then, I've had *hundreds of brownouts and power outages and I've never had any critical file damaged. At most, a file that I was in the middle of download remained unfinished and was unable to continue.

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...and makes your components last longer. 

Source?

A CPU's and GPU's standard life expectancy are much longer than most people would even consider using them. They'd also run into other problems before damage, if any, from power fluctuation, would be noticeable.

Perhaps HDDs would be affected, but most have built-in fail-safes to prevent that. Cheaper ones may not.

 

Edit:*"hundreds" is probably realistically ~80.

Realistically, those with higher-end systems (and therefore higher quality PSUs) would have less to worry about.

[dizmo]

I don't need it to last longer than it already does. I replace my systems every 3ish years. Power where I am is perfectly fine, we've never had an outtage....and I don't work on anything sensitive enough that a power outtage would cost me money.

[Mira Yurizaki]

Because any decent power supply will have a good AC filtering stage and whatnot. So the only thing you're really making "work harder" is the PSU.

[Firewrath9]

I have a UPS on my NAS and wifi router. too troubling to put one near my PC. even if there is an outage. If I yank the power cord out whiles its running (don't do this), I have a good PSU so my PC will be fine. At worse, some corrupted files but i have a backup online and on my NAS.

 

Also your PWR efficency goes to hell.

[Drak3]

14 minutes ago, Satisfoxy said:

makes your components last longer.

Not by any meaningful margin. It'll be obsolete and nigh unusable before then.

 

14 minutes ago, Satisfoxy said:

Having clean non-interrupted power prevents corruption

The chances of this happening are practically nonexistant in the consumer world, and even if it was, the information on most personal systems isn't important enough for a <1x10^-100000% chance to justify spending a dime.

[Princess Luna]

Because I have never needed one.

[Mira Yurizaki]

4 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Not by any meaningful margin. It'll be obsolete and nigh unusable before then.

 

The chances of this happening are practically nonexistant in the consumer world, and even if it was, the information on most personal systems isn't important enough for a <1^-100000% chance to justify spending a dime.

I think the chance that cosmic ray flipping a bit are higher

[waterjug]

15 minutes ago, Imbellis said:

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...and makes your components last longer. 

Source?

A CPU's and GPU's standard life expectancy are much longer than most people would even consider using them. They'd also run into other problems before damage, if any, from power fluctuation, would be noticeable.

Perhaps HDDs would be affected, but most have built-in fail-safes to prevent that. Cheaper ones may not.

I think usually it's the quality of the power supply that extends the life of your components, even if there was a power surge without a surge protector, the psu should protect the rest of the machine .

[TetraSky]

Because we don't all live where there's shit power.

 

Sure there's been the occasional power outage, but they've never hurt any of my electronics, the neighbor's or really anyone else that I know. 

Our power comes from a clean, constant source without interruption (hydro) and our power infrastructure is relatively modern, especially ever since the ice storm of 1998 that knocked power for weeks for some people(2 weeks for my family), they've been going all out making sure it never happened again. And sure enough, most of our power cables are now running underground. (phonelines, fiber and other cables too) 

 

Also, a good PSU will come a long way.

[Imbellis]

6 minutes ago, waterjug said:

I think usually it's the quality of the power supply that extends the life of your components, even if there was a power surge without a surge protector, the psu should protect the rest of the machine .

Yeah, that's basically what I said at the bottom of my post; however, some really cheap PSUs do a poor job at it.

[Drak3]

17 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

I think the chance that cosmic ray flipping a bit are higher

The odds of that week* old gas station sushi being safe to eat is higher.

 

*According to that particular gas station.

[Tristerin]

Buy it to protect an investment?  I don't look at PCs as investments...I look at PC spending as part of my entertainment in life as there is a lifecycle for the things a "Battlestation" can perform.  But then again I don't make money with my PCs, I could see where if it was your money maker, or a portion at least you would want to protect it.

[-rascal-]

Power is quite stable in my area, and outages are minimal -- happens like maybe once every 2 or 3 years.

Plus, none of my computers are left on (or put into sleep or hibernate) -- unless downloading / updating / processing something overnight.

I would consider a UPS for every single PC, since building a completely new system is not...cheap... but not something urgent.

[d3adc3II]

Surge Protector is good enough to protect your computer from unstable power. 

 

UPS is only needed when you want to have time to save ur files when there is power shortage.