Backup-UPS RS 900 Load Measures Accurate?

[Anonymous user]

I've 2 pc's plugged into my Backup-UPS RS 900

[1] Workstation - A Dell E520, 1.80 gigahertz Intel Core 2 Duo, 4gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce 8400 GS on board graphics adapter, 2 sata hard drives, a sata cd/dvd RW, 22" lcd monitor, standard Dell E520 305 watt power supply.

[2] File Server - ECS-USA GeForce6100PM-M2 2.0, 1.90 gigahertz AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core, 4gb ram, NVIDIA GeForce 6150SE on board graphics adapter, 1 EIDE hard drive, 2 sata II hard drives, 1 EIDE cd/dvd R/W, 12" lcd monitor, Seasonic SS-350SFE Power Supply SFX 12v 350 Watt.

With both machines running at idle PowerChute reports a load of 86 watts.
If I run the ECS-USA GeForce6100PM-M2 2.0 by itself at idle PowerChute reports a load of 5-10 watts.
If I start playing music files from the file server with winamp on the work station PowerChute goes up from 89 to 91 watts.

Can these numbers possibly be correct? It seems improbable.

[TheNotoriousKMP_apc]

Wow....There's absolutely no way that's correct...at all.

One PC alone should be drawing at the minimal, 100W even in idle. Do you have some super secret power supplies that only run at less than 50W?

Do you have another machine to which you can hook up the UPS and install PCPE to see if it does the same thing? Have you performed a pull plug test to see exactly how much runtime you receive on battery and whether or not the UPS increases the load draw once on battery?

[Anonymous user]

No I haven't done what you suggest. But I will. Thanks for the direction. I'm rather new at this and appreciate your response.

[Anonymous user]

Well, I tried the testing procedure suggested and now when I fire up the File Server PowerChute shows 85 watts at idle. Powering up the Work Station with the File Server already running bumps the PowerChute load indicator up to 194 watts - both units idle. That certainly seems more reasonable than my original readings. But given the configurations of the 2 machines I had really expected it to be higher than that. Guess that's the advantage of new lower power components. That still leaves me with 330 watts to play with, so I've got some room for error :>)

Thanks again for the suggestions.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Yes, those values seem to make a lot more sense now.