I am looking at buying a UPS (this will be the first ups I have ever owned) and I need some help choosing one. It doesn't need too many fancy features, I mostly just want lightning protection for the devices connected to it, the battery doesnt matter so much.
I am planning to power:
A server with a 250w PSU, a single HDD, FX-6300, and 8GB of DDR3
A PFsense router with a 1.9GHz Pentium 4 and 1GB of RAM and one HDD
some network switches and a couple of access points
maybe my laptop and possibly some future PC builds
Could you guys make any suggestions? I looked at several of CyberPower's UPS's but I don't know which wattage to choose...
No UPS will protect you from lightening, the only thing you can do in a lightening storm to protect your stuff is to unplug everything.
I have a cyberpower 1300VA UPS, it has 2 computers, a monitor a 24 port switch and 3 wireless routers connected to it which draw somewhere between 250 and 300 watts of power and it can keep running for about 10 - 15 minutes with the power out. I'd recommend getting a UPS with a pure sine wave output as this works better with modern computers that have active PFC power supplies. But I've used a UPS with a simulated sine wave before with no problems so if you can't afford that then you should still be okay, but I've heard there can be issues.
What you want to do it work out what you think the maximum wattage your setup will draw is and then pick a UPS which can handle that. This is you minimum point, if you use a UPS with a lower wattage than this then it will be overloaded by your devices. Once you know your minimum wattage any UPS with a higher wattage will give you more battery time.