What are the difference between these APC UPS?

[zeeshanhaider87]

Hi can someone tell me the differences between APC 1500VA Back-UPS Pro Sinewave UPS Battery Backup & Surge Protector (BR1500MS) and Back-ups Pro 1500VA 230V Power Saving?

Why one is twice the price of other when they both appears to be same pretty much and both are listed on Amazon US.

Which one is overall better?
Which one is pure sine wave and support active PFC?
Do they both have dry batteries?
I mainly want to protect my gaming PC, will it protect my PC with 1000-1200W internal power supply because I don't think the actual load will be too much? I'm running Nvidia Geforece 970, 16GB RAM, i7 4770 not k though in future I'll like to upgrade to Volta line of GPUs and also use a LG 65"OLED.
What would be your recommendation even though only APC Power-Saving Back-UPS Pro 1500 BR1500GI is available in my country, which I believe is Amazon's second one. Will it be good?

Thanks in advance

 

[Aeacus]

First off, specs,
APC BR1500MS: http://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/Back-UPS-PRO-BR-1500VA-SineWave-10-Outlets-2-USB-Charging-Ports-AVR-LCD-interface/P-BR1500MS?isCurrentSite=true#techspecs
APC BR1500GI: http://www.apc.com/shop/au/en/products/APC-Power-Saving-Back-UPS-Pro-1500-230V/P-BR1500GI

Main diff is that BR1500MS is for NA market since it has 120V input and output voltage while BR1500GI is for EU market since it has 230V input and output voltage. There are other differences as well but no need to list them here since you can only use one of them.
What's the voltage level you get off from mains? 120V or 230V? So i can continue explaining UPSes and suggesting some to go for.

 

[zeeshanhaider87]

First off, specs,
APC BR1500MS: http://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/Back-UPS-PRO-BR-1500VA-SineWave-10-Outlets-2-USB-Charging-Ports-AVR-LCD-interface/P-BR1500MS?isCurrentSite=true#techspecs
APC BR1500GI: http://www.apc.com/shop/au/en/products/APC-Power-Saving-Back-UPS-Pro-1500-230V/P-BR1500GI

Main diff is that BR1500MS is for NA market since it has 120V input and output voltage while BR1500GI is for EU market since it has 230V input and output voltage. There are other differences as well but no need to list them here since you can only use one of them.
What's the voltage level you get off from mains? 120V or 230V? So i can continue explaining UPSes and suggesting some to go for.

Voltage in my country is 230V 50Hz, so that means 220-240V range. Also I found the following APC models available in my country from one of the distributors:

APC BX650LI Line Interactive 650VA
APC BK650EI APC Back-UPS 650, 230V
APC BX1100LI Line Interactive 1.1KVA
APC SMT1000I Smart-UPS 1000VA LCD 230V
APC SMT2200I Smart-UPS 2200VA LCD 230V
APC SMC1000I Line Interactive Smart-UPS C 1000VA LCD 230V 1 KVA
APC SMC1500I Line Interactive Smart-UPS C 1000VA LCD 230V 1.5 KVA
APC SMC2000I Line Interactive Smart-UPS C 2000VA LCD 230V 2 KVA
APC SRC1000I On Line UPS 1KVA
APC SRC1KI On Line UPS 1KVA
APC SRC2KI On Line UPS 2KVA
APC SRC3000XLI On Line UPS 3KVA
APC SRC6000XLI On Line UPS 6KVA
APC SRC10000XLI On Line UPS 10KVA
APC SRT2200XLI Smart-UPS SRT 2200VA 230V
APC SRT3000XLI Smart-UPS SRT 3000VA 230V
APC SRT5KXLI Smart-UPS SRT 5000VA 230V
APC SRT6KXLI Smart-UPS SRT 6000VA 230V
APC SRT10KXLI Smart-UPS SRT 10000VA 230V
APC SRC96XLBP Additonal bank for 3 KVA
APC SRC192XLBP2 Additonal bank for 6 KVA
APC SRC240XLBP3 Additonal bank for 10 KVA
APC SRT192V Additonal bank for 5/6 KVA
APC SRT192BP2 Additonal bank for 10 KVA

Of course, some of them are very expensive on top of the fact that comparable UPS in my country are usually twice the price in US.

 

[Aeacus]

To know which UPS to go for, we need to calculate the total power consumption of components you plan to plug behind UPS.

LG 65"OLED TV consumes 350W but let's put it at 400W to give UPS some headroom. While your PC has 1.2kW PSU, most what it currently consumes is about 350W.
Here, i don't know why you have 1.2kW PSU in there since PSU's efficiency at so low load is terrible. You'd be much better off with 550W PSU. 1.2kW PSU would make sense if you'd run quad-SLI setup (4x GPUs).
Since you're planning to upgrade your GPU to GTX 2000 series and provided that you still run one GPU setup (which is best for gaming), most what your PC would consume is about 500W, even if you go with 250W GPU (e.g Titan V). With upgraded GPU, your PC would do fine with 650W PSU. But to give UPS some headroom and when taking into consideration your GPU upgrade, let's put PC's max power draw at 700W.

This would make the total at 1100W or 1.1kW. Of course, your PC and TV won't consume 1.1kW at any given time but the headroom created will give UPS longer runtime which is helpful. Downside of that is that the more powerful UPS costs more than the less powerful one.
Though, if there are any other hardware other than PC and TV that you plan to plug to the UPS, let me know since it can change the power rating of the UPS.

I take that you already know the differences between UPSes output waveform (square wave, simulated sine wave and true/pure sine wave) and design (stand-by, line-interactive and online) and i don't need to explain those to you. But if you don't know, let me know.

Out of those APC UPSes you listed, there are two that you can consider:
APC SMC1500I (1500V/ 900W), specs: http://www.apc.com/shop/mk/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-C-1500VA-LCD-230V/P-SMC1500I
APC SMC2000I (2000V/ 1300W), specs: http://www.apc.com/shop/il/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-C-2000VA-LCD-230V/P-SMC2000I

Provided that the max load on your PC and TV combined is 600W, then you'll get 9.4mins of runtime out of APC SMC1500I and 22.1mins of runtime out of APC SMC2000I. Both UPSes are line-interactive and (true/pure) sine wave. Battery type for both UPSes is: "Maintenance-free sealed Lead-Acid battery with suspended electrolyte : leakproof".

Of course, APC isn't the only good UPS OEM to go for, other two are CyberPower and TrippLite. If you have those two also available at your country, you can widen your UPS selection further and possibly, get a better deal.
For example, my Skylake and Haswell PCs (full specs with pics in my sig) are backed up by CyberPower CP1300EPFCLCD UPSes (one UPS per PC),
CyberPower CP1300EPFCLCD, specs: https://www.cyberpower.com/hk/en/product/sku/CP1300EPFCLCD

 

[zeeshanhaider87]

Thanks for the detailed analysis and answer. I actually have 1kW power supply, I had 600W previously but it wasn't sufficient for my PC, sometimes the HDDs don't even recognized so I installed a 1KW supply and besides after searching on the net I found that you should always have bigger power supply than your expected load.

Another thing is let's say I go nuts with the specs for my next PC and put in latest CPU, 1x Titan V, 32 gigs of RAM, gaming motherboard, 2 HDDs (1 SSD and 1 mechanical), 1 DVD drive and the best cooling solution (either AIO liquid cooling or best fans) since the temperature in my country can go upto 40-45 Celsius. What would be your recommendation for this setup and 65" OLED TV?

Unfortunately Cyberpower UPS is not available in my country, APC is the only known brand available along with Aurora, Crown Micro, Emerson, Intex and Voltronic. I don't think these are good brands or at least I haven't heard of them.

I know that Pure Sinewave is the best and is preferred since current power supply are all active PFC, so I should opt for pure sine wave over stepped or approximated.

I don't know about the difference between line-interactive and online. I do believe line interactive won't let my PC/equipment shutdown while stand by will when switching to battery.

Now what will you recommend, the SMC1500I/2000i or the original BR1500GI given that I would want 10 mins of runtime on battery power to properly save/shutdown the PC.

 

[Aeacus]

Since you don't know the differences between UPSes design, here are those explanations,
stand-by: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/ext/ups/typesStandby-c.html
line-interactive: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/ext/ups/typesLineInt-c.html
online: http://www.pcguide.com/ref/power/ext/ups/typesOnLine-c.html

Because all PSU's that have 80+ certification also have Active PFC, best performance to price ratio UPS for PCs would be line-interactive and (true/pure) sine wave UPS, just like the ones i suggested to go for and the ones i'm using.

Even if you go with the latest CPU (e.g i7-8700K) and Titan V with 32GB of 3200 Mhz DDR4 RAM and "gaming" MoBo (e.g MSI Z370 Gaming M5) with 2x storage drives and 1x ODD with decent cooling (e.g 5x 120/140mm fans), most what your PC ever would consume still isn't more from the value i calculated earlier for PC.
Titan V is 250W GPU, add the rest of the system to it at 200W and total would be 450W. With CPU and GPU OC, you're looking towards 600W or so. Having 650W PSU in this over-the-top system is still more than enough.

Though, PSU's efficiency plays a big role here. For example: if you have 650W 80+ Bronze unit who's efficiency at 500W load is 86.5%, then your PSU draws 567.5W from UPS. But if you'd have 650W 80+ Titanium unit who's efficiency at 500W load is 95%, then your PSU draws 525W from UPS. Since the load on UPS with higher efficiency PSU is lower, you'll get more runtime out of the UPS.

I'll take my Skylake build as an example to give you an idea of high-end PC's wattage draw. In my Skylake build, i have:
i5-6600K CPU @ 3.9Ghz
GTX 1060 3GB GPU (120W)
4x 4GB (16GB) 3000 Mhz DDR4 RAM
"gaming" MoBo: MSI Z170A Gaming M5
1x M.2 SSD
2x 3.5" HDDs
1x ODD
1x card reader
1x external fan controller
6x high-end 140mm fans (Corsair ML Pro and NZXT AER RGB)
3x high-end 120mm fans (Corsair ML Pro)
2x addressable LED strips
5x gaming RGB peripherals (KB, mouse, mouse pad, headset, headset stand)
3x USB 2.0 devices

You might think that my PC's power draw would be through the roof? Wrong. Since my PC is powered by the most efficient PSU there is: Seasonic PRIME 650 80+ Titanium, most what my PC did consume during Unigine Superposition benchmark (ultra settings @ 1080p) with all fans at 100%, according to my watt-meter: was 225W from the mains (excluding 35W monitor). But to give my UPS plenty of headroom, i took my PSU's max wattage as a baseline and added my monitor with a safe margin to it and went with 1300V /780W UPS. Since i have that much of a buffer zone on UPS, i can get 32mins (on idle) and 19mins (on full load) of runtime out of my UPS.

But since your TV consumes far more than my monitor and if you're looking to get around 10mins of runtime out of your UPS, go with SMC1500I.
Note: since BR1500GI is simulated sine wave UPS and not (true/pure) sine wave UPS, i won't suggest going with it.

 

[zeeshanhaider87]

Thanks Aeacus, looks like I'll be going with SM1500I, just one thing I would like to confirm my current PSU is 80+ Gold Certified 1000W, do you think it will be a problem or it's okay and I shouldn't switch to 650-670W PSU. From okay I mean it won't put much load on the UPS right? The load will depend on my actual power draw rather than what's the max of my PSU is.

Thanks again for the detailed explanation, you're a life savor. You don't know how much head scratching I was doing before coming to the forum to select the UPS. Really appreciated.

 

[Aeacus]

You're welcome.

Since UPSes aren't commonly used on consumer level, choosing one to go for can be a difficult task. Especially since there are three different output waveforms and also three different UPS designs to choose from, not to mention the proper power level of an UPS.
In my honest opinion, every PC should be backed up by an UPS.

Yes, the load on your UPS doesn't depend on max power output of your PSU but on the actual consumed wattage by PC's components.

Without knowing the exact make and model of your PSU (or part number), i can't say how good of an efficiency it has on various levels.
Though, that much i can say that 80+ Gold certified unit must have 92% efficiency at 20% load, 94% efficiency at 50% load and 90% efficiency at 100% load. For comparison, 80+ Titanium unit must have 94% efficiency at 20% load, 96% efficiency at 50% load and 94% efficiency at 100% load.

 

[zeeshanhaider87]

Thanks, even I don't remember the actual model of my PSU but I do remember it's EVGA 1000W 80+ Gold full modular.

Anyway, how can I mark this question as answered?

 

[Aeacus]

Not many 1kW 80+ Gold EVGA Supernova units out there, only: 1000 G, 1000 G3 and 1000 GQ. Where all three are great quality units.

As far as selecting Best Answer goes, you can't do that since you started your topic as a discussion rather than a question (e.g request a solution). Though, mod can change that and i'll see what i can do.

Edit: Since topic is now a question, you can select a Best Answer.

 

[ScrewySqrl]

indeed. mod changed it

 

[zeeshanhaider87]

Got it, thanks!