Just tried BR1500GI on both Enermax and Corsair efficient PSUs, terrible.

[BillP]

As title,
I have two PCs, one for home use and one for work.

Both PC has quite the same configuration (except for the storage, psus) one uses an efficient Enermax MODU87+ Gold (700W)
and another one uses an efficient Corsair AX750 Gold (750W), both using an I7 960 with a GTX480 gpu.

I paired both computer (not in the same time) with one APC PowerSaving BR1500GI (865W), in Europe we work at 230V, at 230V PSUs suffers a lot more
when running on simulated sinewave when paired with APFC PSUs for obvious reason.

I don't know how your PSUs eats the simulated sinewave in amercia (120V) but in europe PSUs starts crying.

I have tried three different workloads:
1) rendering one of my scenes using Blender
2) compiling my sources using netbeans + latest jdk
3) running Furmark.

With the first two workloads both PSUs produced terrible noise, its like if they are exploding, with the third workloads (furmark)
PC is powered off immediately when switched on battery.

Enermax Modu87+ and Corsair AX series (AX its just a seasonic X rebrand) are two of the most efficient, silent, expensive and good psus on the market.

APC sells a product that doesn't work well with the best PSUs of the market also if they says that is suitable for PC use,
they sold it at 300€ == $410.

I have returned my APC unit and I'm considering suggestions.
I could also buy a SmartUPS for the office pc, but I can't buy a smart ups for home pc since I sleep in the same room of the PC
and I don't want to hear a fan continuosly also if it is silent.

Probably you tested your UPS too much on 120V and you forgot the european market.
Can't belive that APC hasn't got a solution for european people.

Kind Regards,
Davide.

[BillP]

As title,
I have two PCs, one for home use and one for work.

Both PC has quite the same configuration (except for the storage, psus) one uses an efficient Enermax MODU87+ Gold (700W)
and another one uses an efficient Corsair AX750 Gold (750W), both using an I7 960 with a GTX480 gpu.

I paired both computer (not in the same time) with one APC PowerSaving BR1500GI (865W), in Europe we work at 230V, at 230V PSUs suffers a lot more
when running on simulated sinewave when paired with APFC PSUs for obvious reason.

I don't know how your PSUs eats the simulated sinewave in amercia (120V) but in europe PSUs starts crying.

I have tried three different workloads:
1) rendering one of my scenes using Blender
2) compiling my sources using netbeans + latest jdk
3) running Furmark.

With the first two workloads both PSUs produced terrible noise, its like if they are exploding, with the third workloads (furmark)
PC is powered off immediately when switched on battery.

Enermax Modu87+ and Corsair AX series (AX its just a seasonic X rebrand) are two of the most efficient, silent, expensive and good psus on the market.

APC sells a product that doesn't work well with the best PSUs of the market also if they says that is suitable for PC use,
they sold it at 300€ == $410.

I have returned my APC unit and I'm considering suggestions.
I could also buy a SmartUPS for the office pc, but I can't buy a smart ups for home pc since I sleep in the same room of the PC
and I don't want to hear a fan continuosly also if it is silent.

Probably you tested your UPS too much on 120V and you forgot the european market.
Can't belive that APC hasn't got a solution for european people.

Kind Regards,
Davide.

[BillP]

Hi Clarkson,
thanks for your patience.

I don't want to be uneducated by insisting on this point but is it possible that the suggested UPS for PC & Workstation
from the most famous UPS brand doesn't work with the most famous PSU brands?

In 2010/2011, is this possible? What do you have tested (I mean APC engineers) ?

[Anonymous user]

There's a known issue between APFC power supplies and the simulated sinwave, not all of the PSUs, but some in fact don't run well with this kind of wave and the only option you have is buying a true sinewave UPS.

All my PSUs make a buzzing noise when running on battery mode, but they all run fine.

I'm in Brazil and we have both 120V (officially is 127V) and 220V power grids and most APC UPSes sold here has a 115 to 120V output, even those made for our 220V market steps the voltage down to 115-120V and this is something commonly done by other brazilian brands. It happens with all the UPSes and voltage regulators manufactured in Brazil, they only sell a couple of models that are 220V in and 220V out. There's got to be a good reason for this practice, but their excuse is that in Brazil we import a lot of computer goods that are made for the USA market and instead of buying a stand alone stepdown transformer, it comes built-in the UPS and voltage regulators. Some of the brands sell this almost as if it is a feature that will bring you benefits, they use it as a marketing tool.

[Anonymous user]

I'm very curious on what causes these few PSUs not to work with the "cheaper" kinds of UPSes since there are others PSUs, many others, that make use of the same technology and works fine.

My opinion is the same, while 95% of products runs fine with any kind of UPS, no UPS manufacturer will make changes for the other 5% that do not and If I'm not mistaken, APC is the only one that I know of that in fact has made small changes on the newer models of the Back-UPS line to avoid most problems with APFC PSUs and has documents with instructions on how to correctly choose the UPS when APFC PSUs are used, although nothing is written on the user manual, which I think it should be done.

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[voidstar_apc]

>
I'm very curious on what causes these few PSUs not to work with the "cheaper" kinds of UPSes since there are others PSUs, many others, that make use of the same technology and works fine.
>

I'm curious too. From what I've been told by UPS engineers, some differences include:
- Holdup time: PSUs with undersized bus capacitors may not be able to handle the transfer time
- Inrush current: during the transfer to battery, the PSU bus voltage drops. In some PSUs, the PFC control reacts by drawing excessive (for the UPS) amounts of current to charge the bus back up.
- Control logic: the PSU may be sensitive to the shape of the incoming waveform and decide to shut down.

[Anonymous user]

Holdup time: PSUs with undersized bus capacitors may not be able to handle the transfer time

I think this is not true because the PSUs that are having issues are usually the most expensive ones and in the ATX Developer Guide "book", they require a hold-up time of at least 17ms running @ full load and most of the time the PSU is running far from full load which means the hold up time can go much higher than 17ms. Even the worst UPS can switch to battery in less than 12ms.

Inrush current: during the transfer to battery, the PSU bus voltage drops. In some PSUs, the PFC control reacts by drawing excessive (for the UPS) amounts of current to charge the bus back up.

This could be one plausible explanation, but oversizing the UPS should solve the problem and this is not the case for some PSUs or is it?

Control logic: the PSU may be sensitive to the shape of the incoming waveform and decide to shut down.

Maybe this is the cause of the problems, but the PSU manufactures should come out of the closet and try to fix it. I don't know of any PSU manufacturer trying to help on this issue, they don't even answer our e-mails.

[voidstar_apc]

>
I think this is not true because the PSUs that are having issues are usually the most expensive ones...
>

I would hope the PSUs with a lower hold-up time are not the most expensive ones.

>
... and in the ATX Developer Guide "book", they require a hold-up time of at least 17ms running @ full load
>

They're supposed to. [This UPS article on Tom's Hardware|http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/apc-smt1500-cyberpower-cp1500pfclcd-tripp-lite-smart1500slt,2785...] quotes Dan Farnsworth of APC on the subject.

>
\[regarding inrush current...\] This could be one plausible explanation, but oversizing the UPS should solve the problem and this is not the case for some PSUs or is it?
>

It should solve the problem for PSUs that have no other issue.

Earlier in this thread, sbplantipodi tested two PSUs. They functioned on his BackUPS until he used Furmark which I'm guessing fully loaded the system causing the PSU's bus voltage to drop too far during the transfer. At that point, either the PSU dropped the load or the inrush overloaded the UPS.

[Anonymous user]

Has APC done or is going to do anything close to what Cyberpower is doing with its "Adaptive Sinewave" technology? If not I think APC should start thinking about something similar very quickly or will start loosing its clients for Cyberpower. It seems an interesting thing and the prices of their Adaptive Sinewave UPSes are good too. I myself would change to cyberpower if it were available in my country. Look:

http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/about-us/news/adaptive-sinewave-ups.html

What Cyberpower has done is something close to what I asked APC in this very forum a while ago, if it was possible to make a cheaper, kind of a stripped down version of their sinewave UPSes, for the SOHO market. The answer I reiceived was that this wasn't justifiable since so few people are having problems with it and that there was a few workarounds like sizing the UPS correctly and firmware changes made in the newer back-ups models that would resolve this issue, but it is clear this is not working for everyone. Well, it seems Cyberpower is ahead on this matter and now offerers a much more elegant solution for a fair price.

Update:

Reading the Toms's Hardware UPS review I found out that there is nothing out of this world in the Cyberpower PFCLCD, but the solution seems to be good! Instead of a stepped sinewave circuit Cyberpower "created" a circuit that produces a triangular shaped wave that flattens the pointy top of the wave, this could be technically called a modified triangular wave. The wave looks pretty close to a tru sinewave with a flat top, just the tip of the wave. I wish I could see scope shots of the Cyberpower UPS because on the paper it seems to be a clever solution, but I don't know if it really is on the real world. If this is in fact a good thing, I hope APC do something similar and don't forget the models sold in other countries, like Brazil!

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[BillP]

APC isn't able to compete with Cyberpower this times,
they offer a better products for less. It is more efficient, more silent and it costs a fraction.

BR1500GI is really the worst UPS I have seen since since it is incredibly expensive for what it offer,
they say that is a green UPS, but how can be green an UPS that it make you lost 15% of power when on half load?

[Anonymous user]

One of my UPSes, a 600VA one, wastes about 6W with a load of 100W in its output. With no load attached, it wastes 25W. All of this figures were made with a true RMS ampmeter and one 20" LCD monitor + basic PC. It means an efficiency of 94% which is pretty good for a UPS that is constantly triming down the voltage from 220 to 115V.

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[BillP]

clarkson wrote:

it make you lost 15% of power when on half load?

What do you mean by this?

I mean that BR1500G or GI is 85% efficient when on half load and even worse when the load decrease (think to a PC when in idle).
I don't think that such a UPS is so green, the efficiency is not good enough, I can't find only one reason
on why BR1500G should cost what it cost.
Really bad sinewave incompatible with the best PSUs on the market, its not really silent, its not really efficient,
and it costs from two to three times more than what it cost a similar or better produts made by another brand.

I'm not here to troll, so I will stop my discussion here and I'm sorry if I seem uneducated,
but I lost really a lot of time trying to buy one of yours UPS and it neither worked ok.
You don't even offer a good alternative since the Smart series also if it is dam good for servers, isn't good and smart enough
to manage the fan in a reasonable way for PC/Workstation use.

When you think about something there are two, three, four, five brands that is famous to bee good in that products you thought.
When thinking about PSUs for example there is seasonic/corsair, enermax, antec ecc. ecc.
When thinking about software there is oracle, microsoft, redhat, autodesk ecc. ecc.

Many good brands known to be good for some products.

When thinking about UPS, there is ONLY one brand, the best one and this brand is APC,
everywhere, when you think about a good UPS you read APC, no other brands.

Sincerely, at least now, from my point of view, you don't worth this.

Just my unuseful two cent.

Kind Regards,
Davide.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

I buy tons of hardware yearly and my reseller told me that I must try with another unit.

He gived me a new BR1500GI for a free to try purpose.+_
Now all problems are vanished.+_

In every loads, my computers has no problem with both power supply.
Probably it was a defective unit.

I'm sorry if I pushed so much in a bad way by bashing stepped sinewave but there are many bad readings on this topic on the net.

Now my BR1500GI works like a charm, I'm sorry again!