Uninterruptible Power Supply Reviews?

[Machinus]

I can't find a good source of reviews for these...does anyone here have any recommendations? Manufacturers? Roundups? I'm looking for about a kilowatt UPS for the two computers I use...

[twilyth]

I know people will disagree, but I don't think it matters much.

I've owned at least a half dozen different "brands" from APC to Conext (who? . . . exactly) to Triplite. The fact of the matter is that the gel-cell lead-acid batteries will go long before the electronics. I have a couple 900VA's that are on their third battery.

The best thing to do if you are cost conscious (and who isn't) is to check your local freecycle chapter to see if anyone has one to give away - even if it's not working. If you get another battery with the same specs (volts, amp-hrs, dimensions), you can almost certainly bring a dead UPS to life.

You could probably even make a decent amount of money buying dead UPS's, replacing the batteries and reselling them since I suspect that a lot of end users don't understand how they work and how simple they are to fix.

However if you are very concerned about the quality of the current coming out of the UPS because you have equipment that is sensitive to power fluctuations, then I would agree that you should try to find some reviews and buy something that has the tolerances you need.

[Machinus]

Well, I'm basically looking for a delta converstion UPS with a decent efficiency rating and a good voltage rating. I have read a bunch of individual reviews but there are few comparisons between UPS devices. Mainly I am trying to protect my RAID and my overclocked system...

[mak1skav]

If you are worrying mainly about your RAID then maybe it is better to get a raid controller with on board ECC memory and a battery backup unit installed on the raid controller.

[SoulsCollective]

That won't help protect the system from brownouts and power spikes. All a BBU will do is make sure that the data in cache is maintained in the event of a power failure; it'll do nothing to protect the HDDs attached to the card.

[EniGmA1987]

Also make sure about the sine wave it puts out. Square waves are bad.

PC Power & Cooling makes one that looks pretty nice.

[Russ_64]

I use Belkin UPS - currently 2 models: 1000va and 1500va - find it difficult to calculate size but I found that 2 OC'd rigs with 750w PSU will overload the 1kva and even push 1.5kva to 90%

[belmontrich]

we have those on school computers i'll see if i can get the brand..

[Machinus]

I use Belkin UPS - currently 2 models: 1000va and 1500va - find it difficult to calculate size but I found that 2 OC'd rigs with 750w PSU will overload the 1kva and even push 1.5kva to 90%

Yes, the VA rating is not the same as the W rating. I think I will need something like a 2kVA UPS, to power my oc'd box, netbox, and two monitors. I think this comes down to about 1200 W, which is enough to keep me safe. Also, these types of components are more efficient when you use them without saturating the load, so I think even though a slightly larger UPS will cost more, it will make up for the energy savings (both from powering the machines as well as cooling the room :) )

[Easybeat]

Also a couple of little things to check on buying a UPS are that it has control software so that in the event of a power outage it will shut down your system safely in the event you are not there. My Belkin UPS has regular plug sockets while the cheapo one I have has an female kettle flex connector so check for that.

BTW Here is a reasonable PSU and UPS calculator.

http://web.aanet.com.au/~SnooP/psucalc.php