Selecting a good battery backup / surge protector?

TimTim Southwest PA Icrontian
edited October 2008 in Hardware
I was planing to get a new surge protector, this time with a battery backup in it. I had gone down to the local Best Buy and loked at what they had. They had APC Cyberpower units.

But they had a rating system I wasn't sure about. They had their VA ratings, and a watt rating. The watt ratings were something like 200, 240, 330, 390, 540, etc for different size units.

I'm planning to build a new PC sometime in the next few months, so I wanted to find a battery backup that would be big enough, and I wasn't sure how their wattage ratings would go with that. The Best Buy employees weren't much help with questions. 390 watt units were about $66, I was thinking of one of those.

The system I have in mind to build is : Gigabyte P35 chipset MB, E7200 Duo core, 4 GB RAM, 2 Seagate hard drives, 1 CD - DVD burner, a few case fans, 20-24" LCD monitor, a single 4850-4870 video card, a power supply of around 600 watts.

Also, this surge protector will be powering 1 other monitor and 1 other desktop PC now and then when I'm working on one, and I'll have my laptop's AC adapter plugged into it most of the time too.

So what does this wattage rating mean? No one socket on the surge protector should have something drawing more watts plugged into it? Or maybe the battery backup will only perform for as long as advertised at a 200 - 240 - 330 - 390 watt total power draw?

Comments

  • HawkHawk Fla Icrontian
    edited September 2008
    I have used APC backup/surge protectors (multiple) in our house for many yrs now.
    Here's a nice one at OfficeMax that won't break the bank and is a good combination of power backup/plugs & surge protection.
    10 Outlets (5 Battery Back-Up and Surge/ 5 Surge Only)
    It handles 2 full pc's with no problem and will give you 5+ mins on both pc's to shutdown if there's a power loss.
    It has auto shutdown software to set up on the pc's to shut down when your not there too.
    Best of all it's only $99.
    We actually found one for $89 at BJ's wholesale outlet.
  • muddocktormuddocktor
    edited October 2008
    Tim, over the years of running multiple computers (folding and seti) off of UPS's I have found that the 700-800 va models work ok at first but just don't have enough backup ability when they get some age on the battery. I am running 2 Belkin 800VA UPS on crunching rigs and with both of them running the software shows the UPS under about an 80-85% load and now that they have some age on them it doesn't give me more than a minute or so of runtime if the power goes out. If you are planning to run 2 computers off the UPS, don't get one smaller than 1000va rating. BTW, the va rating is not the wattage rating. The actual wattage rating is generally much less than the va rating they list. The other 2 UPS's I have are a 1250va APC unit which I have powering my main rig and a 1500va APC unit that is powering 2 other machines and they are both a much better choice for powering more than 1 computer along with a monitor. I bought both of those at Sam's Club a few years ago and they don't offer them any more (or any other choice in that power range at a reasonable price) but looking at Walmart's site I saw this Belkin 1000VA UPS for around $145 that would do you ok I think. :) It is actually rated for 615 watts power, so should easily be able to handle 2 computers, an LCD monitor plus powering your laptop for a reasonable amount of time.
  • edcentricedcentric near Milwaukee, Wisconsin Icrontian
    edited October 2008
    You lappy AC only need the surge protection, not battery back up.
    I have two APC units, one 800VA and one 1100VA.
    I run two computers and one monnitor, so this works fine for me.
    I haven't checked run times lately, but the computers are folding 24/7 and I know that we have lost power. When I come home both machines are still folding away.
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