Power Management

[Haywood]

So, the old UPS I've been powering my HT with for eons is finally dying. The form factor has always been a hassle and I no longer need a battery backup, as I no longer have any hard drives in my system. I decided to go for a line conditioner in more of a home theater form factor and nothing provides cleaner power than the Monster Super XY9900 for $12,000. I know it seems silly to spend more on a surge protector than on your entire system, but the guy at Best Buy assured me that it will make my Ultra HD more Ultra.

Yeah, no. I grabbed a nice looking 8 outlet unit made by Monoprice off of Amazon for $110. It got decent reviews. I'll let you guys know what I think when I get it.

 

[Towen7]

You had me going for a minute there.

 

[Barney]

Not a tripplite isobar ?

 

[Haywood]

Not a tripplite isobar ?

I really wanted the component form factor to try and neaten up my wire management. 8 is not enough outlets, but I have a separate strip I put four of my wall warts on. If I like the unit, I may buy a second one later and stack them. I just didn't have the money for that right now and I'm not sure I have the space either. I want to get everything all set and rewired before I pick up my Samsung UHD Blu-Ray player at the end of the month.

 

[Deleted member 133]

So, the old UPS I've been powering my HT with for eons is finally dying. The form factor has always been a hassle and I no longer need a battery backup, as I no longer have any hard drives in my system. I decided to go for a line conditioner in more of a home theater form factor and nothing provides cleaner power than the Monster Super XY9900 for $12,000. I know it seems silly to spend more on a surge protector than on your entire system, but the guy at Best Buy assured me that it will make my Ultra HD more Ultra.

Yeah, no. I grabbed a nice looking 8 outlet unit made by Monoprice off of Amazon for $110. It got decent reviews. I'll let you guys know what I think when I get it.

As I discovered a year ago, replacing worn-out batteries in a UPS is cheap, quick and easy. But if all you need is surge protection (power filtering sounds like nice marketing words - but probably of no practical use in any real-world sense since I assume that any component worth its salt will have a power supply that can handle "dirt") that Monoprice unit looks good!

 

[Haywood]

As I discovered a year ago, replacing worn-out batteries in a UPS is cheap, quick and easy. But if all you need is surge protection (power filtering sounds like nice marketing words - but probably of no practical use in any real-world sense since I assume that any component worth its salt will have a power supply that can handle "dirt") that Monoprice unit looks good!

The problem is that surge protectors do wear out with time and that UPS is at least 8 years old. It is also developing some "personality" that has nothing to do with the battery and I have little doubt that it is at the end of its service life. I don't put a huge amount of stock in power filtering. A little voltage regulation is nice, but mainly I'm looking for a very solid surge protector and I have no interest in spending hundreds of dollars on snake oil. The Monoprice unit is reputedly well made and is not a bad deal relative to other similar units, most of which cost a lot more. I did not want to buy another UPS, because it is honestly overkill and would certainly cost more.

 

[Huey]

So, the old UPS I've been powering my HT with for eons is finally dying. The form factor has always been a hassle and I no longer need a battery backup, as I no longer have any hard drives in my system. I decided to go for a line conditioner in more of a home theater form factor and nothing provides cleaner power than the Monster Super XY9900 for $12,000. I know it seems silly to spend more on a surge protector than on your entire system, but the guy at Best Buy assured me that it will make my Ultra HD more Ultra.

Yeah, no. I grabbed a nice looking 8 outlet unit made by Monoprice off of Amazon for $110. It got decent reviews. I'll let you guys know what I think when I get it.

As I discovered a year ago, replacing worn-out batteries in a UPS is cheap, quick and easy. But if all you need is surge protection (power filtering sounds like nice marketing words - but probably of no practical use in any real-world sense since I assume that any component worth its salt will have a power supply that can handle "dirt") that Monoprice unit looks good!

I got a monster power conditioner when they were on clearance many years ago, and it made a big difference on my first Toshiba HD tv. This was when we lived in the old farm house, so the wiring was not optimal, but the colors seemed to pop more after I added it into my system, as well as other "artifacts" it seemed to clean up. Can't say I've noticed any differences with any of the other tv's I've had, but in certain circumstances, it can make a difference.

 

[Haywood]

You guys do realize that I used the term line conditioner instead of surge protector as part of my troll, right?

 

[Huey]

You guys do realize that I used the term line conditioner instead of surge protector as part of my troll, right?

I guess I didn't realize we were being trolled. Ok.

 

[malsackj]

I had an older APC unit and when changing the batteries I had to do a set off steps to re-calibrate the unit to the new batteries. That might help with the personality problems unless you want to send it to a shrink ?

 

[Haywood]

You guys do realize that I used the term line conditioner instead of surge protector as part of my troll, right?

I guess I didn't realize we were being trolled. Ok.

The $12000 Monster wasn't a hint? I did buy the Monoprice unit. Everything above that was a troll.

 

[Haywood]

This seems to be power management week. The matching UPS I had on my NAS croaked too, so I snagged a 1350va Cyber Power unit. I've had good luck with them. The two that just quit were at least 8 years old and I've got another one in the basement that I've had for three or four. The old unit was 875va, so the new one is substantially bigger. It provides some interesting diagnostics. Apparently, my 8-Bay NAS, i5 Intel NUC PC, Tablo DVR, Ooma VOIP appliance, printer, MOCA bridge, router and Ethernet switch only consume a whopping 162 watts with everything turned on. I'm sure that would go up if I printed something, but I am very impressed with how energy efficient the new gear is these days. I've got enough battery to keep the entire stack running for 30 minutes.

 

[Deleted member 133]

This seems to be power management week. The matching UPS I had on my NAS croaked too, so I snagged a 1350va Cyber Power unit. I've had good luck with them. The two that just quit were at least 8 years old and I've got another one in the basement that I've had for three or four. The old unit was 875va, so the new one is substantially bigger. It provides some interesting diagnostics. Apparently, my 8-Bay NAS, i5 Intel NUC PC, Tablo DVR, Ooma VOIP appliance, printer, MOCA bridge, router and Ethernet switch only consume a whopping 162 watts with everything turned on. I'm sure that would go up if I printed something, but I am very impressed with how energy efficient the new gear is these days. I've got enough battery to keep the entire stack running for 30 minutes.

Is there any equipment that needs to be put through a controlled shutdown during that 30 minute period and does the new unit come with software to make it so?

My UPS units in my main HT serve two general functions: give me time to turn off my projector properly in case of a power failure in order to avoid bulb damage (the assumption that I'm obviously nearby when the power fails if the projector is on); and avoid much less critically, to ensure that my recorders etc. keep working during an outage if they are in the process of recording / dubbing / burning a disc at the time (which doesn't matter if I'm there or not since most of the time I'm not when that's happening.)

Now that I've gone from using a portable as my home office mainstay (with it's imperviousness to power failure, and ability to put itself to sleep when the battery gets low) to a desktop (with it's proclivity to react immediately to a loss of power) I think I need to procure a UPS (with auto-shutdown software) for the home office, just in case I'm partway through composing a Nobel-wining oeuvre when the lightning strikes.

Jeff

 

[PaulyT]

Haywood, which model exactly did you get? I'm actually looking for a new UPS as well, for my main desktop system. Reading over CyberPower's tech specs, it seems the CP1350PFCLCD ($167 on amazon) has pure sine wave battery power, vs. the BRG1350AVRLCD ($140) which is pcm (stepped). According to them, the pure sine wave is necessary to support Active Power Factor Correction (PFC) power supplies, which mine in fact is (CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX650M). Granted, this is only applicable during outages when the system's running on battery power alone. But I'm wondering how important this is, really? Anyone know? Trying to decide if it's worth the extra $$.

 

[heeman]

Look here!

http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/US/en/home/device

 

[PaulyT]

Most of theirs, at least the consumer models, are also "Stepped approximation to a sinewave" (their words).

 

[Huey]

You guys do realize that I used the term line conditioner instead of surge protector as part of my troll, right?

I guess I didn't realize we were being trolled. Ok.

The $12000 Monster wasn't a hint? I did buy the Monoprice unit. Everything above that was a troll.

I got that part, but people were giving recs based on the rest of it.

 

[heeman]

Yup, Back-Ups is their consumer type product, except I think for the Back-Ups Pro, that model may have a pure sine wave.

Smart-Ups is a true sine wave UPS. I think that I have seen some of them in Sam's for a reasonable price.

The Back-Ups was designed to provide power to Input Rectifier topology power supplies that still exist today. The topology only draws current at the peaks of the voltage to maintain voltage in the input filtering (storage) capacitors. New typologies, that have power factor correction can not run off of this type of UPS.

Call the APC Help line, the are very knowledgeable and willing to help.

 

[PaulyT]

Yeah. From what I can see, the sine wave UPS models from APC and TrippLite are quite a bit more expensive than the CyberPower... Leading me to wonder why. Is the CyberPower not as good?

Well I'm probably over-thinking this, just doing my homework.

 

[PaulyT]

Well I've gone ahead and ordered the CyberPower CP1350PFCLCD. This amount of power is probably overkill for my needs, but hopefully this unit will last at least through my next major desktop pc upgrade (in a couple of years probably).