Time for a new UPS...

[Mize]

My lead acid battery is dead and I've had this UPS long enough not to trust its MOV-based surge protection...so now I need to find a new one.

This CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD looks good but doesn't say if it's using MOVs or diodes for surge protection. It's not cheap at $200 but not terrible.

Any recommendations?

 

[Silent_Buddha]

I've been using Cyberpower for my last 2 UPS's. It's decent but there is a split second delay when it switches from mains power to backup power when there's a brownout or blackout. My computer handles it fine but for some reason it causes my DSL modem to lose connection and require a power cycle. O

obviously not a problem with blackouts since you'll have to shut everything down anyways, but annoying with brownouts where everything continues to work fine but I have to power cycle the DSL modem. I'm not sure if that modem would have a similar problem with other UPS devices or not as I only have the 2 Cyberpower UPS devices right now.

Regards,
SB

 

[Davros]

Ive never heard of anyone in the u.k that uses a ups

 

[Ty]

I generally only stick with APC. If you're worried about MOVs, then maybe something like brickwalls are what you want to use as a first line of defense (i.e. plug a UPS into that)

 

[Mize]

Ive never heard of anyone in the u.k that uses a ups

I guess the electrical over there is better than the plumbing.
No brownouts/blackouts?

Well, it's not like the island gets horrendous weather I guess.

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

I guess the electrical over there is better than the plumbing.
No brownouts/blackouts?

Well, it's not like the island gets horrendous weather I guess.

240v is better than 110v at that kind of thing, along with proper earthing on everything. There was an old thread here on UPSes that had links and other info, it might be worth your time to search for it.

 

[Mize]

240v is definitely better. I did read the old article (in which I also participated) yesterday. I went with the model I mentioned above. I like APC better but they carry a huge price premium.

This one has a power-draw meter and it's cool to see that my i7-2600k/6970CFX/16GB/4 HDDs rig pulls only 118W at idle (well 500W when running furmark), monitor not included.

 

[Davros]

plus we have a national grid so a powerstation failure isnt a problem

 

[Mize]

plus we have a national grid so a powerstation failure isnt a problem

The US has a national grid (albeit rather wonky), but if an old tree gets an inch of freezing rain on it and it falls onto a power-line feeding a neighborhood then the power is out for that neighborhood until the line is replaced. Likewise if a squirrel decides to cook himself in the transformer for your block of houses...no power for a while.

Newer neighborhoods have underground power-lines, but I live in an older neighborhood with old, bit trees and overhead lines. We get about 1-3 outages per year with most lasting less than a minute. When we get ice storms (freezing rain) we're almost certain to have a 1-2 hour outage if the ices gets more than 0.5" thick on the trees. The only substantial outage (36 hours) in the 11 years I've lived her was from Hurricane Ike - 80-90 mph winds for the better part of 12 hours took down trees and power poles all over the place and about 1M people were without power for 1-7 days.

I can only imagine what might happen to the UK or some European areas if they got hurricane force winds for 12 hours...hell, you Europeans start dropping like flies when things get above 28 C.

Don't get me wrong, I love Europe's climate. That's kinda the point...

 

[westom]

I can only imagine what might happen to the UK or some European areas if they got hurricane force winds for 12 hours...

BBC often makes this point when FL is without power after a hurricane. America still puts wires overhead. Much of Europe put those wires underground.

240 volts is better? Learn what happens inside every electronics device. Power from 120 or 240 volts is still converted to well over 300 volts DC. Makes no difference which voltage is input. Electronics is still powered from well over 300 volts.

Line conditioning? Does not matter how 'clean' that incoming power. Power supplies convert it back to 'dirtiest' power. Converts AC to DC. Then converts that DC to radio wave power. Power is made even dirtier before it is converted to low voltage, rock solid, DC voltages. Most who recommend magic solutoins on a power cord have no idea what goes on inside a power supply.

Now, I am not sure what you are trying to solve. For example, that UPS is provides temporary and 'dirtiest' power during a blackout. It does nothing for hardware protection. It provides time for one to finish and save unsaved data. Or to avoid waiting for a computer to reboot.

Its surge protection is near zero. Just enough above zero so that advertising can hype it into 100% protection. MOVs do not absorb surges. Never did. But most have been told that by advertising and liars. Makes learning reality that much more difficult. Learn the difference between a UPS (for temporary power) and something completely different - surge protection.

What exactly are you trying to solve? Which electrical anomaly is problematic to what? You cannot solve something without first defining the problem.

A UPS is made as cheaply as possible. Its battery life expectancy is three years. It outputs power so 'dirty' as to even harm small electric motors and power strip protectors. Since all electronics are already so robust, that same 'dirtiest' power is ideal power to all electronics. Now what are you trying to solve?

 

[Davros]

you Europeans start dropping like flies when things get above 28 C.

How do you know europe have never experience such temps

 

[Mize]

How do you know europe have never experience such temps

I was in London for those temps one year and Wiesbaden another year for nearly that.
It was sad.

 

[Grall]

Likewise if a squirrel decides to cook himself in the transformer for your block of houses...no power for a while.

No country in Europe (that I know of) uses exposed transformers up on poles, with power lines strung from lines along streets. Well, if you live out in the boondocks, then yeah, but standard mains voltage power going out to individual houses in an urban area are all underground, and transformers inside encased buildings. So our wee cuddly lil squirrels are quite safe!

When we get ice storms (freezing rain) we're almost certain to have a 1-2 hour outage if the ices gets more than 0.5" thick on the trees.

That phenomenon is very rare here. I probably could count the number of times I've seen it in my life on the fingers of one hand...

Btw, seen the Ang Lee movie with the same name? Fucking fantastic. Not a commercial success though (which I can understand), but the cast performances (which the director is part responsible for I guess) and the script is brilliant.

I can't find it on DVD over here, it's listed as out of print, but maybe you got some movie download service that carries it. If you haven't seen it, do it now.

I can only imagine what might happen to the UK or some European areas if they got hurricane force winds for 12 hours...

Hurricane Gudrun did cause quite a mess a couple years back.

 

[Mize]

No country in Europe (that I know of) uses exposed transformers up on poles, with power lines strung from lines along streets. Well, if you live out in the boondocks,

If you compare the population/area of EU to the USA most of the USA is "boondocks."
Last time I checked the population density of Europe was something like >4x that or North America.

I'll have to look up that movie...
No wait, I know the movie. It's excellent. Depressing as all hell but a great flick.

 

[Grall]

I was thinking of getting a new UPS as well, I got one that is over half a decade old now and only has those 3-prong PC-type power plugs. It doesn't have to be powerful, I was thinking of foregoing my PC (since it's kind of a power hog and would need a big expensive unit) and only plug the Mac, DSL modem and possibly TV/console (right now only amounting to a Wii, after the PS3 croaked) into it.

Are there any recommendations for something of decent quality yet affordable, and with regular wall socket-like power plugs? I'd want one that has Macos support, so the computer can monitor battery status and shut down properly...

 

[CNCAddict]

Cyberpower has some really nice units these days. This is the one I purchased. Really neato screen on the front that tells you power draw among other things so you can actually see what your GPU is doing Build quality also seems very good from the outside, although I haven't opened it up yet. Been working great for a few months now.

http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-systems/adaptive-sinewave-series/CP1000PFCLCD.html

 

[Grall]

That does indeed look like a schweet UPS, thanks a lot for the suggestion! One small problem though... Cyberpower does not seem to have a big retail presence over here. I'm going to ask my preferred PC vendor if he can shake one of these up for me.

The real sine output this one offers looks like a nice advantage, the APC UPS I got now has square wave. Not sure if APC offers sine wave nowadays though. I took a look at their site a while back and didn't really see anything mentioned about it, but this may have changed now. Apparantly active PFC-utilizing power supplies don't like square wave input (and PFC is mandated by EU regulations these days), so it would be a big advantage I can imagine.

 

[CNCAddict]

Yeah, having sinewave output is pretty awesome. Should make things run a lot more efficiently. Let me know how it works out when yours arrives

 

[Grall]

Re-arranged some power plugs yesterday, so now my router, ADSL modem, Macbook and its Thunderbolt display, plus a LED light source are all running on UPS.

I still haven't managed to buy that Cyberpower unit though (not enough money, and they're REALLY hard to get hold of; must order from Germany, bahhh), so what I'm using is a half-decade plus old APC 500VA unit, and it didn't have all that much capacity in the first place, and surely not more now either. I test-ran it with just the Macbook and its display last night and got maybe less than ten minutes out of the battery before I relented and plugged the power cord back in (the on-screen readout said 0% battery and the buzzer was beeping like crazy).

I suspect there was some juice left in the battery, but why abuse the poor thing more than neccessary...? Macos doesn't seem to care that the UPS was about to die by the way. It didn't even try to shut down, but then again the laptop does have an internal battery too. Of course, the external screen would go black, but Macos doesn't care about that (no way of knowing, I suppose).