If you have a power outage, the last thing I'd be worried about is finishing my game up. I'd be more interesed in file integrity, and this has plenty of power to let a computer shut down safely without data corruptio/loss.
600+W means you're running a 2080 Ti overclocked and pegged to the tits (338W). then you've got your CPU that's either a dinosaur chugging 250W on its platform, or a game that somehow pegs both your CPU and GPU, and even then, 500W is a stretch unless you have more than one video card. Factor no more than 500W for most single GPU setups, so about 12 minutes. That easily gives you 5 minutes to finish & save your game, or log out and shut down.
Don't forget that the UPS also needs to power the display. Although I have a new 28" 4K LCD computer monitor, I also have several excellent high resolution CRT monitors, as I expect at least some others have retained as well. Any one of those will add to the required power budget for the UPS.
Depends on size of displays 32in 4k, 34in ultrawides(75/60hz) and 27in 144hz add around 50W of power while non gaming monitors especially 27in dont add more than 20 W to total power.
Dont expect much and hope you dont mind damaging your PC.
This is a "stand by" UPS, so no power filtration or voltage correction, if you lose power, it has to switch over to battery which takes time. If you have a bad PSU in your PC with little to no hold-up time, its shutting down!
Also, output of this UPS is "simulated" sine-wave, aka square wave. You ever hear of "dirty power", well it doesnt come any dirtier than this and has the potential to ruin sensitive electronics! .All those VRM phases on your motherboard and going to mean JACK!
A PC should be on a line-interactive, or online (dual-conversion) UPS with a "pure" or "true" sine-wave output at a bare minimum.
I used to live at a place that had a power outage about once a month which made the UPS I got the best computer hardware purchase I've ever made. This is one of those things I recommend everyone gets regardless of the size of system.
As for RGB, I'm generally meh about it but it is one of those things that can serve a higher purpose is the system is programmable enough. Do things like turn amber during a brown out or red + audible alarm during an outage. That has value if you are one to stuff the unit in a place you could see it but not hear it.
One deal breaker for me though is the lack of network management options. At work I'm loving the ability to remotely access small UPS units in various small racks to check up on things and get email alerts when something happens. Combine that with some environmental sensors (temp, humidity), even the most basic units have paid themselves off helping monitor remote areas in this pandemic where a person may not have gone for months. I've also seen units with integrated data logging so if it was just the network going down, data can be re-synched with monitoring tools when the connection comes back online. That is overkill for the target market but basic remote monitoring would be very, very welcome.
The other feature I'd want for something like this would power on sequencing which does make sense for the targeted market: gaming rigs are high current devices and staggering when they boot vs. other equipment helps prevent overloading. Timers and current monitoring would be icing on the cake as bonus features.
For consumer usage, leveraging Bluetooth to pass alerts to your phone and configuration would be handy as that is something that doesn't make sense for the environments other high end features are aimed at. This would be super nice for things like alerting on the UPS needing battery service as this is something consumers tend to forget about.
- Waveform (this UPS can't possibly be truesine) - peak voltage (relevant for 230V land, must not exceed rating of capacitors in PSU) - total harmonic distortion - runtime - does the included crapwa.. excuse me, software actually shut down the machine before UPS runs out of juice?
And test wishlist:
Full load test with simulated (if the anandtech heatsink bench is available) and real-life load, using both low efficiency PSU without 80+ rating (or lowest possible rating), and some 80+ platinum PSU..
There used to be PSUs and UPS that didn't get along, in particular APFC vs modified sine.
Cold start test (start from dead mains with PSU that has been without power at least 5 minutes).
Light load test with "wallwart" type loads such as WiFi router.
Examination of physical design, will the batteries still be extractable without special tools after they swell up into balloons, or will you have to cut through the chassis?
Superbonus if someone knowledgeable could look at the circuitry, is the battery charger temperature compensated, is the inverter section undersized or oversized in components and heatsinking, etc...
The UPS is one of those market areas where the market doesn't really clear and products don't improve over time.
After a weekend-long power outage I researched UPSes in depth and wasn't happy with what I saw. In the end I bought a medium-sized APC UPS and use it just to power a DSL modem and a cordless phone basestation. The server and the internal network go down, but I have OK comms with cordless phones as well as laptops and tablets with the WiFi on the DSL modem that would otherwise be disabled as a source of QRM.
The UPS is great at what it does, but it costs more than the hardware that it protects.
My server is a moderate sized tower computer with a 1050 graphics card. The cost of a UPS system that could keep it running for more than a few minutes is eye-popping and if I really wanted to battery back-up the server I'd seriously consider building a minimum-power server which would probably means an off brand microprocessor, no RAID array, no GFX card, if Plex gets bogged down playing 720p video that is the price of having battery back-up. For that machine to be useful I'd have to also add at least one network switch and who knows what else. I'd spend a lot of time switching out components to get a system that is reliable on a good day with the expectation that the whole kit'n'kaboodle might burn up on the day that the power goes out.
I wargamed out a next-generation system that takes advantage of Lithium batteries, state-of-the-art-power supplies, DC-DC power conversion, etc. When I did so I found there are multiple reasons why the current state of the art is the state of the art. For instance with 12V power transmission you don't need to go far at all before you pay for the inverter.
Li-Ion comes at a premium. if you have space or weight constraints it's worth paying the premium. Another "bonus" is that mistreated Li-Ion reacts rather violently, which incentives some bean-counters to not cheap out too much on battery management.
But most of the time for stationary applications lead-acid batteries makes the most sense.
At some point in time allegedly Google had motherboards built that accepted wide range of input voltage, so they could feed power directly from a 12V battery, and each server had its own battery built-in.
If your goal was to make a "higher performance" UPS than what is on the market, say, have enough power to ride through a 2-day outage, then I think you'd think differently about the space constraint.
The UPS that can power two gadgets for 2 days is similar to the server in size and weight. That UPS might be able to power that server for a few minutes. A scaled-up UPS based on lead-acid batteries capable of "working through an outage" as opposed to "enjoy a few minutes of terror in which to save your work" would be an order of magnitude bigger and heavier than the server itself.
If you "aim low" there is no space constraint here, but if you "aim high" the space constraint is notable.
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FreckledTrout - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
I personally like the design. Calling it gaming and adding RGB is kind of stupid.deil - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
At least its not glowing like Chernobyl. it seems that RGB is an power left indication, so it makes sense in a wayFreckledTrout - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
True.Samus - Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - link
I really like the design too...really makes one wonder why the screens were never upward facing since these inevitably end up on the floor anyway.drexnx - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
At $220, this thing better be at least line-interactive topology, but of course the press release doesn't even say...Mr Perfect - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
If this does turn out to be a rebadged BR1500MS, then it is. https://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/Back-UPS-P...APC needs to be specific though.
Flunk - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Good luck finishing the match with your 600+ watt gaming PC. 1500VA is enough for finishing up a task quickly in an office, not for full-blast gaming.firewrath9 - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
If you have a power outage, the last thing I'd be worried about is finishing my game up. I'd be more interesed in file integrity, and this has plenty of power to let a computer shut down safely without data corruptio/loss.eek2121 - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
I am sorry you bought Intel. My machine uses 480W under load, tops. Most of that is the 1080ti.Drkrieger01 - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
600+W means you're running a 2080 Ti overclocked and pegged to the tits (338W). then you've got your CPU that's either a dinosaur chugging 250W on its platform, or a game that somehow pegs both your CPU and GPU, and even then, 500W is a stretch unless you have more than one video card.Factor no more than 500W for most single GPU setups, so about 12 minutes. That easily gives you 5 minutes to finish & save your game, or log out and shut down.
dwbogardus - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Don't forget that the UPS also needs to power the display. Although I have a new 28" 4K LCD computer monitor, I also have several excellent high resolution CRT monitors, as I expect at least some others have retained as well. Any one of those will add to the required power budget for the UPS.Chaitanya - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Depends on size of displays 32in 4k, 34in ultrawides(75/60hz) and 27in 144hz add around 50W of power while non gaming monitors especially 27in dont add more than 20 W to total power.FreckledTrout - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Well I think its meant for consoles.yetanotherhuman - Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - link
VA doesn't tell you shit about how large the battery is, only the load it can deal with.DejayC - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
It actually looks nice and not over the top.jvl - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Combine it with stadia and a small screen and you dominate when the world endswillis936 - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
How about a competently built consumer UPS that doesn’t shit itself within two years. APC hasn’t delivered that in over a decade.DigitalFreak - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
APC UPSes are garbage. I've had over a 90% failure rate between the ones at work and at home. That doesn't include batteries.dwbogardus - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
You claim it has over a 90% failure rate, and yet it is what you choose to use in your own home? Why?Dantte - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Dont expect much and hope you dont mind damaging your PC.This is a "stand by" UPS, so no power filtration or voltage correction, if you lose power, it has to switch over to battery which takes time. If you have a bad PSU in your PC with little to no hold-up time, its shutting down!
Also, output of this UPS is "simulated" sine-wave, aka square wave. You ever hear of "dirty power", well it doesnt come any dirtier than this and has the potential to ruin sensitive electronics! .All those VRM phases on your motherboard and going to mean JACK!
A PC should be on a line-interactive, or online (dual-conversion) UPS with a "pure" or "true" sine-wave output at a bare minimum.
drexnx - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
none of the SOHO options are double conversion onlineeastcoast_pete - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Did I overlook it, or was there anything about these also functioning as line conditioners?Kevin G - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
I used to live at a place that had a power outage about once a month which made the UPS I got the best computer hardware purchase I've ever made. This is one of those things I recommend everyone gets regardless of the size of system.As for RGB, I'm generally meh about it but it is one of those things that can serve a higher purpose is the system is programmable enough. Do things like turn amber during a brown out or red + audible alarm during an outage. That has value if you are one to stuff the unit in a place you could see it but not hear it.
One deal breaker for me though is the lack of network management options. At work I'm loving the ability to remotely access small UPS units in various small racks to check up on things and get email alerts when something happens. Combine that with some environmental sensors (temp, humidity), even the most basic units have paid themselves off helping monitor remote areas in this pandemic where a person may not have gone for months. I've also seen units with integrated data logging so if it was just the network going down, data can be re-synched with monitoring tools when the connection comes back online. That is overkill for the target market but basic remote monitoring would be very, very welcome.
The other feature I'd want for something like this would power on sequencing which does make sense for the targeted market: gaming rigs are high current devices and staggering when they boot vs. other equipment helps prevent overloading. Timers and current monitoring would be icing on the cake as bonus features.
For consumer usage, leveraging Bluetooth to pass alerts to your phone and configuration would be handy as that is something that doesn't make sense for the environments other high end features are aimed at. This would be super nice for things like alerting on the UPS needing battery service as this is something consumers tend to forget about.
stancilmor - Monday, September 28, 2020 - link
Test it on a system pulling 400 watts, 650 watts, and 850 watts.Or spend the money and buy a chromausa electronic load and test using that.
shadowjk - Tuesday, September 29, 2020 - link
As for tests metric wishlist:- Waveform (this UPS can't possibly be truesine)
- peak voltage (relevant for 230V land, must not exceed rating of capacitors in PSU)
- total harmonic distortion
- runtime
- does the included crapwa.. excuse me, software actually shut down the machine before UPS runs out of juice?
And test wishlist:
Full load test with simulated (if the anandtech heatsink bench is available) and real-life load, using both low efficiency PSU without 80+ rating (or lowest possible rating), and some 80+
platinum PSU..
There used to be PSUs and UPS that didn't get along, in particular APFC vs modified sine.
Cold start test (start from dead mains with PSU that has been without power at least 5 minutes).
Light load test with "wallwart" type loads such as WiFi router.
Examination of physical design, will the batteries still be extractable without special tools after they swell up into balloons, or will you have to cut through the chassis?
Superbonus if someone knowledgeable could look at the circuitry, is the battery charger temperature compensated, is the inverter section undersized or oversized in components and heatsinking, etc...
PaulHoule - Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - link
The UPS is one of those market areas where the market doesn't really clear and products don't improve over time.After a weekend-long power outage I researched UPSes in depth and wasn't happy with what I saw. In the end I bought a medium-sized APC UPS and use it just to power a DSL modem and a cordless phone basestation. The server and the internal network go down, but I have OK comms with cordless phones as well as laptops and tablets with the WiFi on the DSL modem that would otherwise be disabled as a source of QRM.
The UPS is great at what it does, but it costs more than the hardware that it protects.
My server is a moderate sized tower computer with a 1050 graphics card. The cost of a UPS system that could keep it running for more than a few minutes is eye-popping and if I really wanted to battery back-up the server I'd seriously consider building a minimum-power server which would probably means an off brand microprocessor, no RAID array, no GFX card, if Plex gets bogged down playing 720p video that is the price of having battery back-up. For that machine to be useful I'd have to also add at least one network switch and who knows what else. I'd spend a lot of time switching out components to get a system that is reliable on a good day with the expectation that the whole kit'n'kaboodle might burn up on the day that the power goes out.
I wargamed out a next-generation system that takes advantage of Lithium batteries, state-of-the-art-power supplies, DC-DC power conversion, etc. When I did so I found there are multiple reasons why the current state of the art is the state of the art. For instance with 12V power transmission you don't need to go far at all before you pay for the inverter.
shadowjk - Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - link
Li-Ion comes at a premium. if you have space or weight constraints it's worth paying the premium. Another "bonus" is that mistreated Li-Ion reacts rather violently, which incentives some bean-counters to not cheap out too much on battery management.But most of the time for stationary applications lead-acid batteries makes the most sense.
At some point in time allegedly Google had motherboards built that accepted wide range of input voltage, so they could feed power directly from a 12V battery, and each server had its own battery built-in.
PaulHoule - Wednesday, September 30, 2020 - link
If your goal was to make a "higher performance" UPS than what is on the market, say, have enough power to ride through a 2-day outage, then I think you'd think differently about the space constraint.The UPS that can power two gadgets for 2 days is similar to the server in size and weight. That UPS might be able to power that server for a few minutes. A scaled-up UPS based on lead-acid batteries capable of "working through an outage" as opposed to "enjoy a few minutes of terror in which to save your work" would be an order of magnitude bigger and heavier than the server itself.
If you "aim low" there is no space constraint here, but if you "aim high" the space constraint is notable.
shadowjk - Thursday, October 1, 2020 - link
Ah you're thinking on the scale of Tesla powerwall :)