APC, Power Saving or Smart UPS?

[BillP]

Hi,
does it have any sense to buy a SmartUPS instead of a PowerSaving UPS to use with a PC + monitor?

What will be the improvement in a home environment (only PC+monitor) using a SmartUPS?

Thanks.

[BillP]

excellent, thanks, I appreciate your help.

[BillP]

Hi,
does it have any sense to buy a SmartUPS instead of a PowerSaving UPS to use with a PC + monitor?

What will be the improvement in a home environment (only PC+monitor) using a SmartUPS?

Thanks.

[Anonymous user]

It does make sense when your power supply is "picky" about the pseudo-sinewave the cheaper kinds of UPSes produce while working on battery mode, it is actually a rectangular shaped kind of wave, nothing anywhere near a true sinewave, which is the kind of wave you "see" coming out of a typical wall outlet. Producing a rectangular shaped wave is much simpler and cheaper than producing a true sinewave, which is very complex and uses far more components inside a UPS.

Specialized devices like medical equipment can sometimes not work very well with a pseudo-sinewave and a few APFC power supplies as well.

For a Home PC the extra cost is not very justfiable.

[BillP]

It makes any sense to buy a Smart UPS instead of a Power Savings RS with a good PSU like Enerma/Corsair-Seasonic ecc. ecc?

Do you think that monitors will suffer with a power savings RS?

[Anonymous user]

Many Enermax and Corsair PSUs that I know of works fine with this kind of UPS, so it doesn't make sense buying a Smart UPS unless you don't mind spending a lot of money just to rest assured your PSUs will always be fed by a clean sinewave and will never have any (hypothetical) problem caused by a pseudo sinewave. Some people say if you plan to run your PSU for hours from a pseudo sinewave UPS you'd better go for a true sinewave UPS since running PSUs for hours on a pseudo sinewave is not a very healthy thing to do, hypothetically speaking, since there is no hard evidence proving it.

Since the SMART-UPS units were initially made for running servers and high end workstations, they're are indeed better engineered, the components put inside these units are of a much better quality so for people that need trustworthy power for their equipmet, the SMART-UPS is a good choice and if this is not enough and one really really need to be sure of a 100% good power being fed to their equipment one can go with a online double or delta conversion kind of UPS that is yet more expansive.

I've never heard of monitors suffering from using any kind of UPS.

[BillP]

Ok, thanks for the reply.

[BillP]

sincerely I feel the need to ask again something...

I buy an UPS because I need to be sure that my system especially my data need to be secure.
If I buy a Power Saving UPS my system and consequently my data, isn't secure enough?

How can I be sure that my system will be secure with a power saving ups?
I don't want to save money buying a pseudo sinewave UPS instead of a SmartUPS and than have problem with PSU or other peripheral.

Message was edited by: sblantipodi

[Anonymous user]

I also have to say, sincerely,

If you want the best power for your computer you should consider buying a SMART-UPS. I mean, the really best power is the power provided by an online double conversion UPS but then you'd have to spend even more money and for a home computer, even many high-end workstations, I think the cost is not justifiable unless you run mission critical applications, so a "conventional" smart-ups is good enough.

I would say a true sinewave is what PSUs want for running indefinitely and pseudo or approximation to a sinewave is just emergency power, for running your equipment for just enough time and then shut everything down safetly, that's why most of these UPSes don't come with battery expansion outlets.

I never had problems loosing data with the cheaper kind of UPSes, so I trust them for what I do, but backing-up all you data is still the best practice, since hard drives can fail even if your PC is plugged to an UPS.

One thing you can also consider for the safety of all equipment inside your home is installing whole house surge protection at the main and/or sub panel and having a good electrical grounding system.

I also recommend you reading this:

http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/JSII-5YQSBR_R1_EN.pdf

and this:

http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/SADE-5TNM3Y_R7_EN.pdf

[BillP]

thanks for the reply, I really appreciate it.

I noticed that the BR1500GI supports expansion pack, if I bought one of them and I use it for an hours or so when on battery,
may I damage my PC?

[Anonymous user]

This is one of the few models that offer this feature, but I wouldn't say it is gonna damage your equipment, it is just a precaution since this kind of wave is not what the power supply designers projected it to run off of and since a psudo-sinewave is full of harmonic distortion, no one really know what it would cause if you let your PSU running off of it all day long. In my opnion it probably wouldn't cause any trouble, but let's say everyday for a month, two months, a year! In the real world this would never happen and there is no research that I know of showing how much lifetime is sucked from a PSU being fed by a pseudo sinewave. The only thing you can find is some texts saying that harmonic distortion can reduce power supplies lifetime, but they don't show any hard evidence and we have to consider there are many levels of harmonic distortion and different kinds of equipments and susceptibilit, so some levels of harmonic could do more harm than others and more harm to one kind of equipment than others. I don't know the level of harmonic distortion of a typical UPS and the susceptibility of computer PSUs, but i think computer PSU have low susceptibility to it, if I'm not mistaken there's an APC white paper saying something about it. What I know is I had to make ADSL modems and Wireless routers run for many hours, for quite a few times off a cheap UPS running on battery mode and all of them are still alive. My PCs usually run for 10 to 15 minutes off the UPS when the power goes out, sometimes I let it run for 5 mins and then I turn everything off. In the summer there's quite a lot power cuts here where I live and we're in the spring now in this part of the world so the new season of power outages is coming. 🙂 Today the power went out for 1 minute...

[BillP]

I will buy a good PSU like an Enermax Modu 87+, it should be good enough to "survive" I hope 🙂

I read all the paper you gived me and sincerely I'm preferring the line interactive for the cheaper initial cost and operating cost.
Here outage are very rare, so I think that my enermax will survive 🙂

thanks for the good link you provided.

[Anonymous user]

Remember that the SMAR-UPS comes in two "flavors", Line Interactive and Online. The Smart-UPS RT line I think are all online models. The other ones are line interactive, like most BACK-UPS, the main difference is the SMART-UPS is a true sinewave UPS whe operating on battery mode.

[BillP]

this confused me a lot...
so there is also line-interactive with true sinewave?

oops... and now all that I read at what kind of line-interactive has been referred?
I'm confused.

[Anonymous user]

Think of this, this way:

All Line Interactive UPSes has voltage regulation inside of them and are a stand-by UPS at the same time. The UPS receive power from the wall outlet, filters it and conditions it by means of a voltage regulation transformer. When the power goes out or there is any power glitch, it switches to battery mode. This kind of UPS can be one that produces a pseudo sinewave when operating off battery and can also be a true sinewave which is the case of the Smart-UPS line.

Double Conversion Online UPSes are those that receive power from the wall outlet, converts it to DC, to charge a battery bank and from this battery bank it converts the power back again to AC, delivering 100% clean power to your equipment. There is no voltage regulation because the power is completly reconstructed before being delivered to your equipment. That's why it is called "Double Conversion".

The Line interactive kind is just one kind, the basic difference from the Back-UPS line and the Smart-UPS line is just the kind of wave it produces whilst on battery mode.

Message was edited by: rau

[Anonymous user]

The only two ways to know is asking someone who has already used this power supply with pseudo-sinewave UPSes or testing it yourself. It won't cause any to damage your equipment, this doesn't happen, the worst thing that can happen is the PSU shutting itself off or the UPS dropping the load, but no damage.

Message was edited by: rau

[Anonymous user]

You can be 100% sure that the UPS won't cause any damage to your PSU even if you allow it to run for 1 hour off the UPS batteries.

It's been now 6 years that I use this kind of UPS without a sign of problem.

[BillP]

probably APC should consider to include some pure sinewave UPS in the Power Saving category
since Smart UPS is really too expensive and every modern PSU uses Active PFC that isn't so friend with simulated sinewave.

What do you think about that?

Why APC continue to suggest Power Saving UPS for PC use when PC use APFC now?

Message was edited by: sblantipodi

[BillP]

so I can be sure that it will not damage my hardware also if I'll use it on battery for 30 minutes or so?

[BillP]

Really annoying problem and doubt for a not cheap UPS,
since the Power Saving 1500VA is shipped at 300€ here in Italy, and the 1200VA at about 270€...

[BillP · Accepted solution]

can't understand if they are thinking on this why they released the power saving series at such a high price
with no solution for home PC using pure sinewave.