Hardware what i should know when buying an UPS

[migles]

i live in an area where electricity goes off every once in a while and the constant cuts of electricity is bad for the computers like everyone knows...
owning and a fan of desktop computers, this is something i should fix..

so i had been shopping on retail looking at UPS and from my early days i remember people saying "you must buy one that outputs power enough for the watts your pc+monitor uses"

 

[MichiS97]

Sorry that I don't have anything constructive to add but what does UPS stand for?

 

[Futurdreamz]

you need to add together the wattage required from everything that needs to be on the UPS and ideally get one that is greater than that number. It may be possible to get by with one that handles standard use, but it won't like it when that gets exceeded during peak usage. I'm pretty sure that UPSs convert AC to DC then back to AC again so that the switch to the power supply is uninterrupted, so they don't work when turned "off" can cannot handle exceeding peak wattage well if at all.

Ususally they will have half the ports backed up by the battery, and half just being a standard surge protector. Devices such as laser printers need to be on the surge protect side because of their power spikes, and it is prudent to pout all devices you can get by in a power outage on the surge protector side.

Sorry that I don't have anything constructive to add but what does UPS stand for?

According to google it means United Postal Service.

 

[migles]

Sorry that I don't have anything constructive to add but what does UPS stand for?

uninterrupted power unit

it is a "battery" for desktop pc's basically...
if you have a desktop pc and the electricity goes down, this battery keeps the computer alive so you can safetly turn it off, or keep working for a while while the power gets pack

not to be confused with UPS, the shipping company

 

[DinohScene]

Get one that allows you to have like 30 minutes of power.
That's enough time to save your work and power down the hardware.

They are bulky but worth it.
I don't experience power outages but I wouldn't mind having one for me server.

 

[migles]

you need to add together the wattage required from everything that needs to be on the UPS and ideally get one that is greater than that number. It may be possible to get by with one that handles standard use, but it won't like it when that gets exceeded during peak usage. I'm pretty sure that UPSs convert AC to DC then back to AC again so that the switch to the power supply is uninterrupted, so they don't work when turned "off" can cannot handle exceeding peak wattage well if at all.

Ususally they will have half the ports backed up by the battery, and half just being a standard surge protector. Devices such as laser printers need to be on the surge protect side because of their power spikes, and it is prudent to pout all devices you can get by in a power outage on the surge protector side.



According to google it means United Postal Service.

the pc i want the power unit, have a 450 watts PSU and the lcd tv serving as display
the pc has a i3 i think generation 4. ddr3. 1 hdd, and a very cheap nvidea gpu

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Get one that allows you to have like 30 minutes of power.
That's enough time to save your work and power down the hardware.

They are bulky but worth it.
I don't experience power outages but I wouldn't mind having one for me server.

my problem was when shopping i saw several choices with different VA or wattage (kinda don't remember) but there was several at the same price from the same brand..
i just don't understand what is the one right for the pc

 

[DinohScene]

Hmm, seeing you just said your PC pulls 500 watts (including the TV) say 550 max, you'd want to have one that can power a kW for ~30 minutes.

 

[Grim Ripper]

PC watt + tv/monitort watt + (whatever else you want, like speakers) + 30% (of everything you'll connect).

That's it pretty much.

Use the 2nd link to find your load or the 1st link if you know it already.
www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/US/en/home/load
http://www.apc.com/tt/en/tools/ups_selector/home/device

There are 3 kinds of UPS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply#Technologies
Offline
Line-interactive
Online.

You probably need options 1 or 2 since it's cheaper compared to Online UPS ( most of the time companies use them).

 

[FAST6191]

For consumer stuff then yeah make sure it can put out power enough to cover max usage for your devices. I would also encourage you to see what replacement batteries you can find -- if you thought printer ink, laptop batteries and tool batteries were a rip off then you have not seen anything yet.

Half hour is nice but if you want then a lot of supplies will allow the PC to talk to them so you can in turn use the UPS service on your PC to say when UPS is being used then perform graceful shutdown if power less than 10% or whatever.

For server grade stuff or more commercial we get to talk about the different types of power they supply.
http://www.apc.com/us/en/faqs/FA157448/

Oh and do consider what you are doing to do for your modem/router/whatever -- it is all fine and dandy having a machine powered but if you have no internet because the router is the other side of the house...

Also because why not

 

[gudenau]

I have the perfect UPS for you.

 

[migles]

Oh and do consider what you are doing to do for your modem/router/whatever -- it is all fine and dandy having a machine powered but if you have no internet because the router is the other side of the house...

router is not actually needed, it's just to don't risk corruption and enough time to save documents and safetly shutdown

For consumer stuff then yeah make sure it can put out power enough to cover max usage for your devices. I would also encourage you to see what replacement batteries you can find -- if you thought printer ink, laptop batteries and tool batteries were a rip off then you have not seen anything yet.

in retail the ups that i saw advertise at vA or something like that (wattage, or volt ampere thing)
the ones i saw got a sticker 9000 vA or something like that
can this be translated to watts easily?
tv+pc use 300 watts at maximum (tv has a sticker of 110 watts in the back, i made my calculations pc spents about 175 max)

 

[FAST6191]

Technically there is a difference but recall physics or something where you were taught P=IV or if you prefer VoltsAmps. The difference comes when you have the power factor to consider, however for the average PC then the power factor is probably pretty good and so it does not matter so much, it is more when people want to run large inductive loads like motors and air conditioners that people come unstuck./
http://www.rapidtables.com/convert/electric/va-to-watt.htm

If you reckon you don't need to account for the router then great, sort of wish I could go back to the 95 and older days when internet was something special and I could amuse myself trying to figure out dos commands or whatever it was that I did.