My BX750MI-GR has saved my precious data on two occasions. Earlier this year, my seven year old, well used waffle iron shorted, popping loudly and sparking quite brightly in the process, probably because of all the gunk that had accumulated inside its less cleanable interior over the years. That not only made my breaker trip, but also blew the 16 amp main fuse. The UPS kicked in immediately, making a klick and a beep, which felt amazing. That was my first time ever.
As for the second time, see this post.
Lightning hit the transformer outside my old wartime era apartment complex.
The sound my ups made was like a thousand angry bees.
All of my lights and fuses were blown and the ups battery melted.
But all my equipment plugged into it was fine.
Recently bit the bullet and finally bought one. Mostly to ensure my PC’s components don’t get slowly damaged by power fluctuations now that my RAM sticks are worth a significant chunk of what I bought my fucking car for, but the trigger was my cat stepping on the PC’s power strip switch a few days after my house randomly lost power (which both happened while I was using the computer, of course)
my lab has oscillating power at some locations, UPS gives stable voltage and we have not had a power supply blow since.
The main thing I’m worried about is a power surge anymore frying my electronics, having good surge protectors are imperative. I tried a UPS for a time and saw no real benefit to it save once the power went out, it allowed me to stare at the computer for a few minutes before remembering the local networking equipment also needs power.
Windows isn’t like what it was back in the XP days. It prioritizes any system writes immediately instead of holding them in memory with an edit flag on them until it gets its step in queue. This is what would lead to your OS dying after a power failure because it was holding a system file for modification. As well as fewer and better HDDs there’s less issues with concerns of head crashes on sudden power loss that it cannot reset to home.
Low power is as bad as a surge. Most UPS also act as power conditioners.
I’ve had stormy weather set mine off at least a dozen times. Each time I’ve had a feeling of attaboy towards it.
I have UPSs between the wall and every expensive electronic in my house.
I think I have seven or eight now.
You must be surrounded by some real sweet transformer hum 💗
Mine are basically silent.
Sure silent in the audio spectrum but what about RFI? I put ferrite chokes on all the things.
Sic. What brand?
Cyberpower
I have an old one. The battery is dead, I could replace it, but I didn’t really see the value. Power going out isn’t a terrible thing in my view, it happens so rarely for me. It’s a time to reflect and choose simpler activities.
The habit of saving early and saving often is so ingrained, I’d not lose more than a few minutes of effort on whatever I might be doing at the time that’s mildly important to me.
It’s a time to reflect and choose simpler activities.
Mad respect.
I have two APC550s that are powering my computers only and not the displays or peripherals.
Voltage spikes and brownouts are a constant thing where I live, the variation is enough to play holy hell with the modem and wifi so to save my sanity, every electronic device is attached to something that backs up or cleans up the power.
For the laptops, I have them attached to straight power conditioners (isotel 4s) so at least the adapter blocks won’t get messed up.
Given my main computer is a 2008 MacPro, running an unsupported modern macOS install and the thing’s been running constantly for at least a year now (it’s asleep ATM) I’m not complaining. Same for my gaming PC…
The hardware I have owes me nothing.
Mad respect to you for respecting your hardware.
powering my computers only and not the displays or peripherals.
Same here. :)
Me too! Mostly because mine only has IEC outlets and came with a single female to male IEC cable though, and I still haven’t gotten around to getting an extra one for my main monitor.
I have a ups mostly so my wireless will stay active for as long as the laptops in a power outage.
I am usually using a laptop, so I don’t really need UPS
Yeah I have 3, 2 at my desk for my switch and computer, and then one across the room with my router and home server.
So far they haven’t really saved anything but I invested in them after a power outage killed my whole PC.
RIP your old PC. 🙏
How awesome that you care for you networking equipment too!!!
And just to clarify: by switch you mean network switch, right? Not a Nintendo Switch? 🤣
You wouldn’t ask that question if you lived in an area with shitty power network. With daily brownouts, momentary power losses and voltage spikes your equipment will survive much less than it could. I had a router die because of that.
It’s impossible to measure this impact at home, but it’s there even on much more stable networks.
You wouldn’t ask that question if you lived in an area with shitty power network.
I don’t know what that has to do with having or not having a UPS.
With daily brownouts, momentary power losses and voltage spikes your equipment will survive much less than it could. I had a router die because of that.
My condolences.
It’s impossible to measure this impact at home, but it’s there even on much more stable networks.
That’s exactly why I’m using a UPS even though there hasn’t been a blackout in my town since maybe a decade or so.
I don’t know what that has to do with having or not having a UPS.
Most if not all of them come with an automatic voltage stabilizer
Put an extra line break between your quote and your reply to separate them, like this:
> Quoted text ReplyThat’s either a bug or a problem over at your instance:
Just because it looks okay for you, it doesn’t mean you’ve used commonly accepted markdown. When I view your comment as original text, I can see a single line break after the end of the quoted parts, and if you go to edit your comment, I think you will, too. Many markdown renderers interpret this as a continuation of the quote so one doesn’t have to keep inserting greater than symbols when manually quoting. Putting an extra break in disambiguates the end of the quote, so will display correctly in virtually every renderer.
Also, not how instances work, they federate the exact text. The difference is in the many clients available to use.
Also, not how instances work, they federate the exact text. The difference is in the many clients available to use.
I see. Thanks for informing me!
😉
I have three UPSs.
Two at my desk: The smallest for my daily driver NUC, Eaton S3 850VA (510 W max) and enough for that purpose. The second is an Eaton Ellipse Pro 850 (510 W max) for my gaming PC. I want to replace both with a single device that has enough Oomph for both., but yet have to find a suitable model without fan noise at a reasonable price.
The largest is a APC SMT1000 that I got used without batteries, that I use in my rack for networking devices, some additional small devices, a Lenovo m920x and a custom build server (NAS, proxmox etc.). Usually the draw from the wall for that is 200 W. I added LiFePo packs instead of the Pb ones, as they are much more durable: 10 years instead of 2 to 3 years. As LiFePo packs have around 50 % continues load vs the Pb, the UPS ist purposefully oversized.
Where I live, we barely have outages, but they occasionally happen. Around once in two years. So it’s more a peace of mind. Hard to say, how often they in fact ‘saved’ anything.
Edit: Edited battery chemistry to LiFePo. Did an oopsie there. Corrected typo.
As LiOn packs have around 50 % continues load vs the Pb, the UPS ist purposefully oversized.
Sweet! I’m going to check to see whether it’s possible to do the same with my little APC.
I do recommend it, if the circumstances allow it. LiFePo are such a step up in battery technology.
Just a tip for anyone considering it: Make sure to only use packs with an integrated BMS, as most of the shelves UPS models are designed for a different chemistry.
Addendum regarding the desk UPS: I’m thinking about one of the power stations with a < 10 ms switch time. Have yet to find one that plays well with NUT.
I am considering getting one but power outages are pretty much unheard of, so it’s not really a priority. So far it would have saved me 0 times.
I was thinking the same thing and would’ve done the same, i.e. not getting one, but then I started to seed torrents and I finally had an excuse to waste more money… I’m so fucking privileged it’s not even funny.
I’m considering it again … at least UPS’ aren’t exploding in price like all the other hardware. And while I didn’t have a power outage in 2 decades, I do have 11 very expensive HDDs spinning.
I do have 11 very expensive HDDs spinning.
I assume they were “grandfathered” into this era of murderous storage prices?
9 of them, yes but I was running low so I had to bite the bullet for the other 2.
And yeah, I paid almost double the price for the exact same model compared to a few years earlier. And the original ones were new … I settled for factory re-certified for the recent ones.
Pretty much same here. There was one time where street construction accidentally hit a cable, but considering how rare that is and how error resiliant most filesystems are nowadays, it’s just not worth it getting a UPS.
would have been 8 times this year but I dont have one
Sheet. What’s going on over there? 🥺
Damn … do you live in Ukraine?
