UPS APC ES-550 Not Working

[THRobinson]

Had a UPS ES550 given to me with a dead battery which I replaced last week. In my area, very small town, during storms or days where everyone has A/C running, we occasionally get a power flicker where the power goes out for maybe 1-2 seconds and that's all, which is why I decided to put a new battery in the UPS because I just need something to keep the power on a few seconds to avoid shut downs.

This morning I get up, had my PC running all night encoding video files, turned the monitor on and nothing. Computer was powered on but nothing running, rebooted and got the 'start windows normally screen' which is typical after a power flicker.

Checked my router (also plugged into the UPS) and said it's been up/active for 3 hours. So... stuff was shut down.

New battery, light is green, PC and modem plugged into the top row that says power/surge protection. Computer load is around 388W.

Any ideas?

 

[kanewolf]

388W is probably more than a tiny UPS like that can handle. Especially if you are video encoding, your usage will be high. That UPS is only good for maybe 300W. You need a bigger UPS. Here is the runtime graph from APC website -- http://www.apc.com/products/runtimegraph/runtime_graph.cfm?base_sku=BE550G&chartSize=large Notice that it stops at about 325W ...

 

[THRobinson]

Yup... just checked and well, I guess the 550 in the model number isn't watts, rather the VA rating.

Found out later that the power was out more than 5min so hoping that's the issue. I don't expect it to keep the PC on a long time, just need it to keep it on for the 2 second power flickers we usually get.

Annoyingly, I grabbed a USB cable to connect it to the PC and seems that APC has a proprietary cable. Says RJ45-USB, and almost grabbed one off eBay, then decided to go DIY instead, and when looking up how to make one myself, discovered it's not an RJ45 but rather a 10-pin RJ50 which I didn't have, that APC charges about $35 for. Grabbed one off eBay for $7 from China instead, but, be probably 2 months before I can use it to run any tests with. :S

I absolutely hate when a company does that... should be no reason why a standard USB cable couldn't have been used.

 

[THRobinson]

Cable came about 2 weeks ago... thought lost in the mail, got a refund and months later it appears.

Power went out yesterday for 4 hours, always fun, but, UPS worked fine. Had it set to shut down after 5min and sure enough, kept the PC powered just fine for 5min and shut down (well hibernation mode).