Recomend an UPS

That's just the peak power the PSU can supply, most of the time it'll draw much less than that.

What are the specs of your computer and what other things (monitor, modem, router, switch etc.) will you want to run on the battery backup?
 
2.6 Ghz Core i7, 6 GB of ram, 2 HDDs (Samsung spinpoint and a maxtor of some sort), 768 MB GTX8800 (Probably going to be replaced with a newer card around August, but not sure what yet).

Other devices will be a linksys modem/router, a single HDD NAS and one monitor.
 
...most of the time it'll draw much less than that
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Yes, this is the case, but when the system shuts down it draws almost the full power that the PSU is rated at and if your UPS cannot supply it, your comp. will simply reboot making your under-powered UPS useless, so make sure you buy something which is spec'ed close to what your PSU is rated at...
 
An overclocked i7 @ 4Ghz (I know your chip isn't OC'd but it'll give us a bit leeway) and a high end gfx card will draw about 375W at load, add about 90W for a 22-24" monitor and about 30W for all your other bits, lets round that up to 500W. As VA can be approximated by dividing Watts by 0.6 that's 500/0.6= 833VA.

As we overestimated the OC and rounded up a 800VA UPS should be fine, of course a higher VA rating won't hurt. This would be fine at the cheaper end of the scale http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=UP-012-AP&groupid=702&catid=55&subcat=
if you want you can spend a bit more and get one of the Smart-UPS units that'll give you a much longer runtime and a few extra bells and whistles :)

jbloggs said:
Yes, this is the case, but when the system shuts down it draws almost the full power that the PSU is rated at and if your UPS cannot supply it, your comp. will simply reboot making your under-powered UPS useless, so make sure you buy something which is spec'ed close to what your PSU is rated at...
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But that's the maximum load that the PSU can safely supply not the load that the PSU itself draws. My computer has a 520W power supply but I only have a UPS rated at 500VA (approx. 300W) and it works fine :) (well apart from the fact that my battery is well past the recommended replacement date :p)
 
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I'm a fan of APC UPS's. Their Smart range are very good although a bit more expensive than their 'Back-UPS' range. Looking at the site, it seems OcUK only do the 1500VA Smart though.
 
I only have a UPS rated at 500VA (approx. 300W) and it works fine
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I had This used it with a OCZ GameXstream 600W PSU, my system didn't draw over 300w at full load, but when I got a powercut and the UPS/software should have simply closed the programs, shutdown OS and turned comp. off then the UPS, when it came to shutdown the OS and turn off comp., it simply rebooted and failed to shutdown and the cause was simply because the PSU drew considerably more than 300w...

So from this experience this is why I recommended that the OP got a UPS rated not for off his PSU...

Generally the OP wants to look at something from APC...
 
Of course, the higher-rated the UPS is, the longer it will last for in a power cut.

My old UPS died about a month ago and I haven't got round to replacing it yet. However, it has had its mid-life crisis and is starting a new life.. I've used the battery to jump start my car once already :p
(The circuitry started being unreliable, battery is fine)
 
Thanks for the advice folks. That was the one I was looking at, but will probably get a slightly heftier one. (Getting one mainly because I'm moving to somewhere with PAYG electricity, and whilst I intend to buy big lumps at a time, sods law says it still goes out when I'd rather not lose what I'm working on.)
 
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