Is it worth buying a UPS??

DavyBoy

DavyBoy

DavyBoy

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I was wondering if anyone uses these UPS's that are on sale here?

And if so, are they worth the money?

Do they protect your hardware from things like lightening storms and the likes?

I've read stuff on various forums where guys have lost their mobos, PSU's and CPU's from storms and stuff, and I would hate for something like this to happen to my hardware.

Anyway, I would be interested to see what others here thing about this.

Thanks
 
Yes they are definately worth it especially if you live in a rural area. Just don't buy cheap. I bought a Belkin one that was pretty useless, I now run a 1400VA APC Smart UPS which is quite happily running my home server and two desktops.
 
UPS is more aimed at giving you a few moments to save what you are doing in the event of a power cut really! Surge protection is a cheaper solution and might be more what you are after.
 
In my opinion, UPS's are usefull if you are running a server etc, but just for general use it wouldnt really be worth the large chunk of money you would need to spend.
 
5abr3 said:
UPS is more aimed at giving you a few moments to save what you are doing in the event of a power cut really! Surge protection is a cheaper solution and might be more what you are after.
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It more than that though. Its their voltage regulation, brown out protection and the ability to automatically shut down the computer/s if there is a power failure that makes them worthwhile.

Best will in the world your average surge protector is barely better than plugging straight into the wall.

The other thing of course is that my UPS may have cost me between £200-300 (which is for a much bigger unit than most would need), but I've had it for over 6 years now and apart from needing a fresh battery set last year which cost me £80 its still going strong. So compare the fact I've had piece of mind, have never lost any work due to power outage and the fact it protects the many thousand of pounds worth of hardware I've bought over the last 6 years or so, its a small price to pay.
 
Thanks for the replies guys, I am going to seriously consider getting one of these.

They do cost a lot of money, but like Evil I said, it gives you that piece of mind, knowing that your expensive hardware is going to be safe..
 
Surge protectors are the way to go IMHO. It's OK having the UPS parachute you down when the juice runs out but is this that much of an issue?
Personally, I don't sit on the PC during a power cut.

BTW, I'm a telecomm's engineer by trade and most companies that spend £20,000 on a new telephone system don't have UPS. Now sit and ask why...

The only ones that ever bother are the ones (like call centres) that need to work through a power cut. They are never used as protection. If they worked as protection we would insist on them having UPS before we priced up their maintenance contract.
 
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The only reason I am thinking about getting one is simply because I don't want my hardware getting damaged because of power outages.

If a surge protector would give me the protection I need then I wouldn't bother buying a UPS.

But some people have said that surge protectors are pretty much useless and are no better than plugging directly into a socket..

I don't know anything about this type of thing, hence the reason I made the thread.....
 
A UPS won't protect against a lightning strike, there's too much power. I would definately reccomend one though, power outages can cause data corruption because of write caching and data loss if what your working on hasn't been saved for some reason.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=UP-017-AP&tool=3

Something like that should be enough for an average pc.
 
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Evil-I said:
Best will in the world your average surge protector is barely better than plugging straight into the wall.
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UPSes sold in Europe have lot lower surge energy rating than good surge protectors so for protection against voltage spikes they're worser.
Also components absorbting surges wear out when doing that (and if energy exceeds rating single surge destroys them) and surge protector is cheaper to replace than UPS so it's better to let it do what it's supposed to do, provide power over short blackouts and/or for controlled shut down and use surge protector as primary protection against overvoltage spikes.

But just don't think that those can protect PC surely from lightning strike so for home PC primary protection against thunderstorm should be always shutting it down and unplugging cables from wall.

And important thing to remember when dealing with UPSes it that VAs don't mean anything. Apparent power can't produce anything surely (except transfer losses in cables) and it's real power which matters because only little power needing devices lack PFC.
As rule 0.6 is good coefficient for getting watt rating quickly and manufacturer's product page should always tell watt rating. (if not, better to avoid that UPS)
 
EsaT said:
But just don't think that those can protect PC surely from lightning strike so for home PC primary protection against thunderstorm should be always shutting it down and unplugging cables from wall.

And important thing to remember when dealing with UPSes it that VAs don't mean anything. Apparent power can't produce anything surely (except transfer losses in cables) and it's real power which matters because only little power needing devices lack PFC.
As rule 0.6 is good coefficient for getting watt rating quickly and manufacturer's product page should always tell watt rating. (if not, better to avoid that UPS)
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Of course the best way to protect is to never allow the situation to happen. Surge protectors in a multi-way or a UPS still have to disipate power and need to do it in a similar manner due to the way this works. Of course you can always over load a protection circuit and I don't know of many curcuits that can survive a close surge from a lightning strike.

Also the apparent power comment is VERY relevant. Induced current can mean the power you are actually drawing is much higher than you think. by using the stated 0.6 you should never get caught short!
 
Evil-I said:
In work I've had several systems corrupted and data lost due to power outages, write caching is a great thing until the power goes out.
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I think talking about data loss at work is very different to potential data loss at home. Data loss at work is potentially disastrous for a company with 300 people losing data. At home you have to work out if potentially losing that half page of microsoft word is worth spending lots of money on.
Turn your PC off at the PSU now. Go on and do it, see how much you lose and how it won't recover (Aaaaaagh, were all gonna die!).
Surge wise, I think the UPS is no better than a surge protector (hence the name).
 
SlugForAButt said:
I think talking about data loss at work is very different to potential data loss at home. Data loss at work is potentially disastrous for a company with 300 people losing data. At home you have to work out if potentially losing that half page of microsoft word is worth spending lots of money on.
Turn your PC off at the PSU now. Go on and do it, see how much you lose and how it won't recover (We're all gonna DIE !).
Surge wise, I think the UPS is no better than a surge protector (hence the name).
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We're talking about £70 not £7000, losing a page on ms word is not as bad as messing up an online transaction which could potentially happen, if the drive is encrypted even a small loss of data could mean losing the entire volume.
 
I think it's about balancing your wallet against something that could potentially happen, and even if the power cut does happen, will you lose data.
Personally, I'll stick with surge protection like most companies spending between 20 and 40 thousand pounds on a system, the hardware isn't any more at risk.
Each to their own.
 
For me it's more about convenience than data loss, £70 is a price I'm willing to pay to never have my activities interrupted again by a power cut. Though having an encrypted drive necessitates the use of a UPS.
 
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