Browse Forums Home Theatre & Automation 1 Sep 21, 2008 6:30 pm I thought it'd be interesting to see how people protect their expensive gear. I recently had a "brown out' (basically the opposite to a power surge) and it fried one of my machines. I now have two heavy-duty UPS systems... Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 2Sep 21, 2008 6:37 pm Cabinfever I thought it'd be interesting to see how people protect their expensive gear. I recently had a "brown out' (basically the opposite to a power surge) and it fried one of my machines. I now have two heavy-duty UPS systems... How much did they cost, what can they power and for how long? Demolition August 2009, Construction Started September 2009, Completed December 2010 Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 3Sep 21, 2008 7:24 pm 2 of the 4 computers that are here have 'active power fluctuating" type psu's.
My DH has one of the same models as I had last time. These are fantastic. I bought a different one last time and it's not as good. i find this tends to stop problems with many of the smaller brownouts' and power surges. We have a couple of cheapie power surge boards in the house and I was considering buying new ones from zazz last week. As for a UPS I thought all it did was supply power not stop surges or brownouts. I guess it would keep the flow even, in a brownout but if you had a surge would the UPS die instead? Something to consider depending on what you are protecting and how much it is worth I guess. Dh's computer cost me about 600 to build but it's now 4 years old.. Some parts of mine are a year or so older that that. I suspect if i had new expensive electrical items or a new computer I might be more concerned.. I'd love to have a few for pure convenience sake. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 5Sep 21, 2008 7:59 pm I had to ask my son and he said "oh Mum of course I use it"
I plug the laptop into the power board, and much to my families horror I have a Mac as well and it is plugged into the power board. We now have a blog. http://allaboutthebuild.blogspot.com/ Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 6Sep 21, 2008 11:28 pm An excellent and amusing article on UPS:
http://www.dansdata.com/gz039.htm I bought two of these ($400 each). They power two PCs, three screens and a couple of small devices in case of problems. Should keep them going about four minutes so I can shut everything down. They came with power management software that will do an auto-shutdown of computers, but I haven't installed that yet. They're very heavy with a big sealed lead-acid battery inside: http://www.apcc.com/products/family/index.cfm?id=17 From my research I believe the following to be accurate, but of course I'm no expert ! - Cheap "surge buster" 4-ways offer minimal protection from surges and degrade with time and with every power "event". Any cheap surge buster more than two years old is likely to be utterly useless. - Expensive surge busters give no protection against "brown outs". They are drops in power that are particularly damaging to things like computers. (This is how I got caught!) - No power supply or powerboard or device will give any meaningful protection against brownouts unless it contains a hefty battery because there will simply not be stored power available in capacitators to cover the shortfall of anything more than a few milliseconds When one of my beautiful quadcore machines was fried by the brownout, two of my IT friends just laughed. "No UPS ?! You dumbf***" Lesson learned. Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 7Sep 22, 2008 12:15 am Well there you go cabin fever. When I build my next machine it will be worth considering having one. Not until then. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 8Sep 22, 2008 11:26 am we have 4x pc's in our house.
1x gaming pc 1x home theatre pc 1x laptop for my missus 1x laptop i use for youtube/ forum spaming/ work the 2x desktops have surge power boards and Zalman psu's and have survived at least 3 brownouts at lan's partys to much of my friends amazement my screen went off but the pc keeps on running! and i use my laptop to do most of my computing and downloading/uploading at home because it uses less power to run (90w max) and if the power did go out ive got the battery backup, to do a proper shutdown. its important to buy a good quality psu, not some generic random one that came with the case, UPS arent always going to be your saving grace they are often expensive dont last forever and drain alot of power to keep them running. at the end of the day the easiest option is to keep a remote backup say on a portable hard drive in a safe or offsite to your house from burglary/fire/flood. -Nathan 2nd-Fix | Blog Building with Desyn Homes previously with the insolvent [url=https://www.facebook.com/7NewsAdelaide/videos/1162546323776021/]Endeavour Homes[/url] Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 9Sep 22, 2008 3:56 pm I agree that a good power supply is important. But it won't do anything at all to protect you against any sort of mains-based power 'event'. In fact the one (out of four) computers that died during the brownout was the one with the high-end $300+ power supply.
And as I mentioned above, NO power supply will protect you against a brownout unless it has a hefty battery to make up the difference. About a year ago a power surge blew the capacitors on an (unprotected) old PC. I think that was the event that also 'killed' my main surgebusting board, saving my other machines, but rendering the surgebuster useless for anything thereafter (unbeknown to me). In the end I think it's all just a case of the usual risk-assessment process. What gear do you have; how suseptible is it to power 'events'; does your contents insurance policy cover against power surges & brownouts (usually not); and are such power events rare in your area ? Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 10Sep 23, 2008 10:30 pm mmm i guess its all relevant; and how susceptible you are in your house or area; and condition of wiring.
ive seen power boards melt, 48port network switches catch fire, and cpu;s pop off the mobo all fun stuff with ridiculously expensive gear - what can i say lan parties are fun it is however strange that your quad core pc blew, but theres lots of reasons and i hope that your UPS systems you bought prevent that in the future. i still and the end of the day wouldn't buy one, simply too expensive to run. Equipment is cheap and some data is unrecoverable. 2nd-Fix | Blog Building with Desyn Homes previously with the insolvent [url=https://www.facebook.com/7NewsAdelaide/videos/1162546323776021/]Endeavour Homes[/url] Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 11Sep 25, 2008 12:22 pm As Dan pointed out, Australia's power is pretty good and stable. On top of that, generally PC's are more capable of handling power disruptions in comparison to other electrical appliances, and if you have a laptop, then your battery pretty much serves as a backup battery anyway.
I'll probably be looking to put a whole house surge protector in after my house it complete. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 13Sep 25, 2008 12:33 pm donuts I nhave read through this entire thread and my vote is STILL for 'what on earth is UPS' Uninterruptible power supply http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterrup ... wer_supply Basically it's a battery backup. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 15Sep 26, 2008 12:28 am The gist of it is this:
If there's a surge or spike in the power supply from, say, lightning, the UPS unit will protect connected gear. Likewise, if there's a blackout, or (worse) a momentary 'sag' in the power supply, the battery in the UPS unit kicks in and maintains the proper power level. It's one of those things - like a fire extinguisher - that you only need once in a blue moon, then you're damn glad you've got one. Do the hard jobs first. The easy jobs will take care of themselves. - Dale Carnegie Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 16Sep 26, 2008 7:48 am Cabinfever I thought it'd be interesting to see how people protect their expensive gear. I recently had a "brown out' (basically the opposite to a power surge) and it fried one of my machines. I now have two heavy-duty UPS systems... hmm I've been thinking more about this my comment now is Huh! What expensive equipment???? duh! When I get some expensive equipment it will be worth it. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 18Sep 26, 2008 12:38 pm As I need a power-board anyway for all of my gear (unless I have multiple power points installed in the one spot) I just make sure it's a decent surge protecting power-board.
Running a UPS is a bit of overkill in my single humble opinion, depending on how unsightly or perhaps noisy they are... but I wouldn't actually go as far as suggesting people shouldn't have them. It's up to the individual. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 19Sep 26, 2008 12:41 pm UPS's can be a false sense of security some times. I've had power surges kill machines that are on a UPS, either because they were basic units, or because the surge came through other devices. Phone lines, tv arials, network cables, power spikes can come in from anywhere. It's Murphy's law.
Firstly - your electricity provider will compensate you if a surge comes through the powerlines (see http://www.powercor.com.au/Search_Results/Voltage_Variation_Claims/). Home insurance will often cover the other bits that they wont. There are other types of power fluctuations that can damage equipment as well - some heavy duty power tools cause problems that a cheap UPS wont handle. You really need to consider how much the equipment you're protecting is worth, and what it would cost to replace. So my rule is: take backups of the stuff you can't afford to lose, get insurance, buy a basic UPS but never rely on it alone. Re: Who uses UPS power ? (poll) 20Sep 26, 2008 1:26 pm There are three distinct UPS types :
off-line : remains idle until a power failure occurs, and then switches from utility power to its own power source, almost instantaneously. line-interactive. on-line : continuously powers the protected load from its energy reserves stored in a lead-acid battery or flywheel, while simultaneously replenishing the reserves from the AC power. It also provides protection against all common power problems, and for this reason it is also known as a power conditioner and a line conditioner. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply On-line UPS protect the best I believe. I recently went through a similar renovation and move scenario when updating our family home. We also swapped some rooms around and tackled a major… 2 9877 Would also like an opinion from anyone that has used xcem over hebel for floors. Thanks 1 13279 2 15459 |