1000 Watt Gaming Computer - Which APC to get? (BR1500 or SUA1500?)

[Anonymous user]

Hello everyone,

I just bought a Dell powerhouse gaming computer. It is an XPS 710 Quad-core beast. Anyhow, the power supply in the computer is a 1000-watt supply.

After setting up the computer I plugged it into my old APC 400 and, to say the least, the APC was not happy about it (it would just keep beeping when I would try to turn the computer on as if the power was out). Anyhow, I am assuming that the problem is that I am trying to plug in a very power hungry computer into an old APC.

So, which new APC should I buy? I was looking at the BR1500 (which I see sometimes written as BX1500 - why is that? Anyone know?) combined with the BR24BP battery back combination. It is sold at CompUsa for $300. However, the BR1500 is only rated at 865 watts.

My question: I am trying to figure out if my 1000-watt computer (combined with my two 24-inch flat-screen monitors) will even be able to be turned on, while plugged into the 865-watt rated BR1500. I realize that during normal operation of my computer I will not be using all of the 1000-watt capability of my power supply. However, will I be cutting it close with the BR1500 or the BR1500LCD? Am I overthinking this?

If I am cutting it too close will I be forced to buy the SUA1500 because it can handle 960-watts, and the extra 130 extra watts will make a huge impact?

As you can see, I really would prefer to buy the BR1500 with the battery pack over the SUA1500 because of the extra battery life when compared to the SUA 1500 (plus the SUA1500 is way too expensive).

What do you guys think?

Also - what is better: the BR1500 or the BR1500LCD? They each are a bit different from each other.

[Anonymous user]

Great, thanks for all of your help.

Unfortunately, when I just called APC, he said that the SUA1500 might not even be enough! He stated that because my computer has a 1000-watt power source the SUA1500 won't cut it. He told me that I may need the SUA2200 (with it's 1980 watts!). Is this accurate? His reasoning was based on the fact that the computer will use its maximum wattage (1000 watts) at powerup and I may overload the SUA1500 at that time. I can't afford the $900 SUA2200!

What to do?

[Anonymous user]

You can either invest $25 in a Kill-A-Watt meter to precisely determine your power need, or contact Dell and ask for UPS sizing advise. Your computer uses about the same power with the 1000W optional PSU as the standard 750W.

Plug the computer and monitor into Kill-A-Watt and figure out the total wattage with the computer at maximum stress (running 3DMark and such). Add 25% for safety margin.

Now, measure the idle state power.

You should get a UPS with watt rating of about 1.25x more than the maximum measured power.
This ensures your UPS can sustain your computer even if the power goes out in the middle of a power intensive game. Once the power goes out, you have the option to immediately stop gaming to reduce the load or keep playing.

If you are going to stop immediately, you can calculate the runtime using the idle power
If you want to keep playing, size UPS based on runtime at maximum measured power.

BK400 is only rated for 250W, so I'm not surprised it didn't like your computer. Neither APC or I recommend loading UPS past 80% the rated capacity. Battery degrades with use and if you have the UPS loaded to 100%, the acceptable amount of battery degradation before the UPS operation becomes unacceptable is very small.

If I was to name some models, I recommend a refurbished SUVS1400 BP1400 if you want a lot of runtime
SUVS1000 BP1000 SU1000NET or BK1250 if you want something enough to support your PC. These are all discontinued models, but you'll pay much less compared to a similar capacity, similar runtime UPS.

I can name a few more good models if you can get the wattage measurements.

[Anonymous user]

Hi apcguy,
To address your question about the differences between the BR and BX model UPSs - check out this post.

http://forums.isxusergroups.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1092

[Anonymous user]

Thank you for your help.

I noticed that none of the models you listed were the BR1500 or the SUA1500. Will those work as well? If so, which one would you prefer?

[Anonymous user]

Hello,

Better production and protection will come from the SUA1500, which will output a pure sine wave at all times, unlike the BR1500, which will produce a step-approximated wave while on battery. Both these models should work for your configuration, but the SUA1500 is a much stronger unit. You pay for the strength, but the results will make it worth the extra bucks.

Thanks.

[Anonymous user]

If your load really draws 1000 watts then the SUA1500 would be too small of a UPS, but I am guessing that your computer does not use the full capacity of your power supply. If you are unable to get a hold of some sort of power measuring device to get an actual reading your your system's wattage demands (as mentioned in an earlier post), you may have to start looking at each component of your computer and guestimating their wattage demands individually.

I've never used this before, but the kill-a-watt meter mentioned earlier looks like it should give you a good idea of your actual power draw. Seems pretty inexpensive too according to pricegrabber. I may get one myself.
http://appliances.pricegrabber.com/home-safety-security/m/8968629/

Message was edited by: dirtfoot

[Anonymous user]

APCGUY12 wrote:
Great, thanks for all of your help.

Unfortunately, when I just called APC, he said that the SUA1500 might not even be enough! He stated that because my computer has a 1000-watt power source the SUA1500 won't cut it. He told me that I may need the SUA2200 (with it's 1980 watts!). Is this accurate? His reasoning was based on the fact that the computer will use its maximum wattage (1000 watts) at powerup and I may overload the SUA1500 at that time. I can't afford the $900 SUA2200!

What to do?

Consider yourself in the market for furniture. Are you going to start buying based on guesstimates or are you going to invest a few bucks in a tape measure? Spend the $25 on Kill-A-Watt. It's not an instrument with certificate of calibration, but it can actually read just about everything a basic AC power analyzer that cost hundreds of dollars can with a limitation that you can only use it for 120v AC outlet stuff and the accuracy, despite the claim of 0.2%, is actually closer to 5%. Before Kill-A-Watt became available there was not anything like this that can do something like this for anywhere near $25.
I have a bench power analyzer and a few Kill-A-Watts. Kill-A-Watts is a very effective tool and a lot easier to connect and disconnect than a big power analyzer.

Dell provides some power consumption data on the XPS 710, but it's outdated and it doesn't accurately reflect yours.
http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/corporate/environ/dimension_xps710.pdf What it does tell you is that the input power at the plug is about 280W under full load on that model despite the fact it's equipped with a 700W output rated power supply. With 700W output and assuming 80% typ. eff. the input power can be expected to be around 875W. With 280W input, you can estimate the power supply output being used as being about 224W.

The customer service rep you spoke to really do not know what he's talking about. It has become a marketing trend to include a large power supply, so they can put 750 or 1000 on the box to draw attention. A fully loaded 1000W power supply requires about 1300W of power from the wall and the UPS would need to support the entire load, but this just almost never happen with a consumer PC.

Consumer PCs are hard to estimate since video cards significantly affect the power draw and different configuration means different video card(s).

[Anonymous user]

APCGUY12 wrote:
Great, thanks for all of your help.

Unfortunately, when I just called APC, he said that the SUA1500 might not even be enough! He stated that because my computer has a 1000-watt power source the SUA1500 won't cut it. He told me that I may need the SUA2200 (with it's 1980 watts!). Is this accurate? His reasoning was based on the fact that the computer will use its maximum wattage (1000 watts) at powerup and I may overload the SUA1500 at that time. I can't afford the $900 SUA2200!

What to do?

Aye KVAr has it here. Most computers can be quite deceiving also. My 650w rig only draws 240w when it starts up (inrush) 140-155w during full load (gaming/testing) and 110-115w idle. Its really worth finding out exactly how much its using so you can get a good read on what you need, and make the informed buyers decision on what to purchase.

You should find that it isnt using nearly all of that 1000w PSU, however this is just from experience and in no way a true measure of what its doing as I cant see it, or test it myself. 🙂

Hope that kind of clears up why you would want to find that out, and then purchase accordingly.

-Syn

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

For a user who's intended purpose is to support the computer for the few minutes of outage, the UPS need not to support the demand asked during start, such as the drive-spin up and CRT degauss coil.