Enthusiast Power Protection: Four-Way 900 W UPS Roundup

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MasterCATZ

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I still do not see why they have not made an UPS PSU the computer mainly uses 12volts and the darn batteries are 12v .. hell the LCD's are 12v ... why on earth make it 110 / 240 volt ,,,

surely something could be made to fit into an PSU
 

g00ey

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MasterCATZ: The reason why higher voltage is used is because it enables safe transfer of power with thinner wiring than with lower voltages. A low voltage application that delivers power of the order 500W is quite impractical as it would require wiring that consists of several pounds of copper compared to a high voltage application of this size that only require a few ounces of copper wiring.

The problem with lower voltages is that they will require more Amperes to deliver the same wattage as high voltages. If you remember the formula P = U x I; to deliver say 550W power at 110V will require 5 Ampere. To deliver the same power at 12V will require about ten times as much (~50 A). If you look at the AWG specifications you will see that the wiring classifications are based on how much Ampere the cable can deliver. To deliver 50A you will need a a much rougher AWG4 cable compared to 5A that will only require AWG14. If you look at for example power cords you will see that it usually says max 16 A on them. What happens is that as the voltage gets lower it will be more prone to friction losses in the conduction material which is why it must be thicker to compensate for the resistance that is inherent in the material. Look at starter cables or cables for high-wattage/PA speakers (that don't have a built-in amplifier) for examples of this. If you go the other way a high enough voltage will not even require a cable and give rise to arc-overs. The thunder is an example of that and this is why power lines use high voltages and the cables of Xenon HID lights are thin as hair.
 

nahu

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Why are there no BELKIN UPC on this list? /s. I had a 500 VA Belkin UPC with too many things plugged into it, and not surprisingly it didn't work when my power went out. Not only did it not work, but it also broke. Two caps in it exploded. Is it my fault that the device failed? I don't think so. Good engineering design would have required the device to be short circuit fault tolerant. What do you think?
 

mattoneous

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APC low end UPS's are crap. I manage tons of these across a network and it's a 50/50 chance you can hotswap a battery that the unit will shutdown or not. Nice on a live network with multiple switches with hundreds of users connected. Only do it now with dual power supplies and 1 going to the wall. this goes for smart-ups from 1000's to 3000's.
 

Crashman

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[citation][nom]buckinbottoms[/nom]Just bought a 1500VA APC for 219. Who the hell picked these models anyway????[/citation]These are the models that are guaranteed to survive an 850W continuous load until the battery dies, without blowing the UPS or the Active PFC PSU. Go ahead and buy something cheaper, you'll never need this much power anyway.
 

irqthecat

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I recently bought a Smart1050SLT. )ne of the main reasons was that the management software could control more than one PC connected to the UPS. So far Poweralert will not run on my PC. Its Win7 Ultimate 64-bit with SP1. I installed Poweralert 12.049 after I installed SP1. Also installed is the required JRE6 Update 24. Other software is Norton Internet Security and IE8.

Tripplite support is just giving me a runaround, just asking the standard level one questions.

Being a full-time desktop tech, I've been doing troubleshooting on my own. Any results have been given to Tripplite.

The Poweralert Agent Service (pal.exe) crashes everytime I try to start it. I ran Process Monitor and captured several errors associated with pal.exe. "Fast IO disallowed" a couple times and one "Buffer overflow". After doing some research on Fast IO, I used Dependency Walker on pal.exe and found that it could not find IESHIM.DLL. I located the DLL in the IE8 folder and copied it to the program directory. No help. Dependency Walker as gave errors about the DLL.

I'm in the process of building another home system with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit and will be testing Poweralert before I add any MS updates or other software to see if there is a point where Poweralert fails.

Lesson learned: Make sure the management software works on your system before committing to buying a specific UPS.
 

Crashman

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[citation][nom]irqthecat[/nom]I recently bought a Smart1050SLT. )ne of the main reasons was that the management software could control more than one PC connected to the UPS. So far Poweralert will not run on my PC. Its Win7 Ultimate 64-bit with SP1. I installed Poweralert 12.049 after I installed SP1. Also installed is the required JRE6 Update 24. Other software is Norton Internet Security and IE8.Tripplite support is just giving me a runaround, just asking the standard level one questions.Being a full-time desktop tech, I've been doing troubleshooting on my own. Any results have been given to Tripplite.The Poweralert Agent Service (pal.exe) crashes everytime I try to start it. I ran Process Monitor and captured several errors associated with pal.exe. "Fast IO disallowed" a couple times and one "Buffer overflow". After doing some research on Fast IO, I used Dependency Walker on pal.exe and found that it could not find IESHIM.DLL. I located the DLL in the IE8 folder and copied it to the program directory. No help. Dependency Walker as gave errors about the DLL.I'm in the process of building another home system with Win7 Ultimate 64-bit and will be testing Poweralert before I add any MS updates or other software to see if there is a point where Poweralert fails.Lesson learned: Make sure the management software works on your system before committing to buying a specific UPS.[/citation]That's useful information for anyone who's powering multiple PC's, but it's not pertinent to anyone using a single PC. For those, the built-in Windows controls will usually suffice. This article targets owners of high-end systems, where one system requires the majority of power each UPS is able to provide.
 
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Love TH articles and the majority of posts are food for thought. I understand that there could be more in the article for the engineers and top level techs, but for amateur enthusiasts (speaking for myself and my friends) it was very helpful. I am building a new machine with an APFC PSU (Enermax Rev85+ 1020W... it was free to me on a friend's upgrade to a 1200W). The older APC XS1200 I have (1200VA/750W) MIGHT be enough, but I have no doubt it is not "pure sine wave" (I am still confused as to PR claims of, and actual, but that's my limitation and not the article's or the companies' fault). Still, my VA coverage calculations had me in the $900 range of the APC enterprise devices. I nearly gave up and figured I would have to go back to board games. The article gave me a shot at coverage of essentials (or more if I choose) with the CyberPower 1500, or APC if I want to stay with the brand I have used. Whether the article was enough for everyone, or could've been better, I wanted to say thanks for putting the effort in, putting it together and putting it up. I fricking
 

superkillrobot

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If you're spending $2k+ on system I wouldn't get anything less than an online, or double-conversion UPS. Line interactive UPS' will not protect you from Electrical Line Noise, Frequency Variation, Switching Transient or Harmonic Distortion. All of which can damage sensitive components, generate extra heat, and even corrupt data.

Even the millisecond break in power from a line interactive UPS can, and will over time hurt your system, with a double conversion UPS there is no break in power, and its the only real way to have true, clean power for your computer.

As a side note, personally, run time should be the least important factor in this review, a UPS is made to give you either enough time to save and shut down your computer properly, or turn on a generator. If run time during an outage is important, get a generator. Most UPS' come with software that will automatically shut down your computer for you in the event of an outage.
 
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Crashman, you can get a guitar tuner software available from Ubuntu repositories, then convert the power down with a resistor as g00ey mentioned. I used it to tune guitars and it works well with either line-in or mic port. GUI outputs the same sine wave as the university oscilloscopes do. You can use any PC to do that:)
 

Crashman

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Former Staff
[citation][nom]inverse_sine_wave[/nom]Crashman, you can get a guitar tuner software available from Ubuntu repositories, then convert the power down with a resistor as g00ey mentioned. I used it to tune guitars and it works well with either line-in or mic port. GUI outputs the same sine wave as the university oscilloscopes do. You can use any PC to do that[/citation]Thank you. Since I don't remember my engineering stuff, do you have a reference value that I can test with my meter before connecting it to something more valuable?
 

alvinyang

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Hey Toms.. Just wondering if you could do a UPS review from units coming from FSP or FSP Group. Their unites are a lot cheaper than APC ones, but the company is well know for producing great power supplies.
 
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If it's not a Pure Sinewave then it is depending on the computers power supply to smooth out the wave. If you've got motors other equipement that doesn't have built in power conditioning I would check warranties before using it.
 
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I bought the CyberPowerCP1500PFCLCD based on the recommendation in this article, and it's very disappointing. How did it get past Toms hardware testing to begin with?

The tightest voltage settings you can get in the software are WAY out of spec for the power supply(90V minimum, 130V max), Voltage can swing all day long between 88V and 136V and it will happily pass main power straight through without intervening. You can set the interventions looser (yes really) but not tighter. It gets worse though, as it will not activate in it's supposed out of tolerance regions, either. The voltage can sit there and swing around 70V and 80V and it will happily pass bad power straight through, all day long. I wrote to the engineers at Cyberpower last year about it about modifying the software or firmware, but they were no help, and the latest software seems unchanged. Since then, after multiple city-wide power events, and dataloging (with my own means separate from power panel software) I had One intervention at 178V (reflected in the UPS software as well) but spent a total of 18 minuets at 50V without UPS intervention (not reflected in the Power Panel Software, because the power supply itself cut out while the ups was still feeding it that voltage with no attempt to intervene) and I have determined otherwise that it's only use are true blackouts, or Zero/near zero voltage events. (it will intervene then, but only then, and it will be in the software log.) It get's even worse though, as wild frequency swings also seem to have no effect and go straight through (and I am using the "high sensitivity settings" whatever those are) and I have never seen it do anything about frequencies that were so far out as to be complete garbage. (With fun power supply noises!) In other words, This box is fairly useless, and not suitable for the purposes of a UPS. In other news, the Seasonic X 80plus 560 is one tough power supply, Thanks to Oklahoma Wolf for the recommendation! It can really take the beating that the Cyberpower is intended to capture, but doesn't. Seems happy with the non-pure sine wave/msw/whatever they call it when this unit decides to function, too. I am in the market for a new UPS now, obviously.
 
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I want to comment on the article's discussion of Cyberpower's "Adaptive Sine Wave". The article suggests the output wave form is a "modified triangle wave".

I did a search on Cyberpower's Site for "Adaptive Sine Wave" and got zeo hits. Nor did I get a hit on "triangular". The PDF user manual does mention "Adaptive Sine Wave" in the specs but does provide any further details as to the nature of the output wave form.

I bought a CP1500PFCLCD a few days ago and as part of my break in check I scoped the output while running on battery with a Fluke 97 scopemeter. The output appears to me to be a proper sine wave and looked better than the hashed up sine waves (with flattish tops and bottoms) delivered by my utility at the time. I did note some higher order harmonics but did not try to estimate the frequency or amplitude.

I mention this because it appears to me that the text in this now two year old article may be out of date or there may have been some confusion. And as mentioned in the comments here, the author(s) did not actually scope the outputs of these devices. I think they should have, and apparently could have acquired a visual only scope and least photographed the displayed output for illustrations.

I'll also point out that Cyberpower does make a slightly under $500 1500VA/900W pure sine wave UPS (model OR1500PFCRT2U) with specified runtimes that very closely approach the APC unit. Jus to say that Cyberpower's are not always as relatively underpowered. The runtimes listed here are simply based on the lower end consumer model that Cybnerpower apparently supplied. I do think it was a good model to add to the mix of reviewed devices. I just want to clarify the options available.

I'll add that my own run time tests were very consistent with the results indicated in the benchmarks. I did get confusing results on the first round of tests. I suspect that, as delivered, the unit may have been improperly indicating 100% charge while the battery was only partially charged. That might have corrected itself on its own if I had let the unit operate overnight before running any tests, and subsequent tests suggested reasonably accurate monitoring and results consistent with the benchmarks here.

I'm happy with the device so far. I bought it to keep a server, plus external drives, cable modem, router and switches alive during outages and allow for an immediate controlled shut down. With my expected 135W power draw I expect to get 40+ minutes of runtime, far more than I need. I saved anywhere from $75 to almost $300 relative to the APC options in the SMC/SMT lines. I could have gotten away with a lower powered unit, perhaps even the 850VA model, but the pricing of the 1500VA model was just too attractivbe to pass up.

Regarding the Active PFC issue, here is APC's published take on the matter:

http://www.apcmedia.com/salestools/RMUZ-7DTKRC_R1_EN.pdf

In reading it, it is not clear to me at all what the shape of the sine wave has to do with the problem of some Active PFC supplies shutting down when stepped wave UPS's kick in. They attribute it to in-rush approaching the rated capacity of the supply, even if the supply is lightly loaded.

But if that is the case then it is not clear to me why a pure sine wave UPS would do anything different. Personally I find that the APC article creates more questions than it answers but it is one of the few comprehensive discussions I've found that was written by either an UPS maker or a PSU maker.
 

Mr1000lb

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Hi, i Own cyberpower 1500pfclcd and i d like to Know if Anyone have it. It works perfect but its Wont regulate the high end output. For me it shows 121-123V is it safe? thank you
 

Crashman

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Yes, anything between 110 and 130 should be safe for a 120V device.

 

Rizwan Chohdary

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Assalam To All
I want to know about APC SMT1500i ups
i want to configure a new cable plz someone tell me about this
serial to RJ50 (10 Pin) how i can
 
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