I am looking to purchase my first UPS for my office desktop PCs. I am a complete newbie to this and would like to get some recommendations. I know that Wendel has reviewed one of the Tripp Lite UPS systems.
First of all, do I understand correctly that I should size the UPS to run at about 50% watt usage? So if all of my PCs draw 600 watts, then I should get a UPS sized for 1200 watts of peak usage?
Also, I have seen that UPS systems are very expensive and that you have to change the battery every 2-4 years. So I am wondering why I should not get a large battery from Anker that also advertises UPS functionality and is designed to last for 10 years. Plus, I could use such a battery when I am not in the office but on a camping trip. So what makes a server UPS better than just buying an Anker battery? The price seems pretty similar to me, and I can think of far more uses for the Anker battery than anything I screw into my server rack.
I know that UPS systems like Tripp Lite’s can be integrated with NUT server for automatic PC shutdown. But since I’m looking for a UPS solution for my office equipment, where systems only run when I’m in the office, I don’t really need NUT to schedule PC shutdowns.
Most commercial UPSs come with a warranty that garuantees no damage to connected equipment up to a certain value. They also will use automatic voltage correction when the input sags or surges.
I’m not sure if any portable battery bank manufactuers actually cover equipment loss.
You also have to consider that many of the portable power packs on the market may not hold up too well to 24/7 operation. Quite a few of them are designed to be used a few days at a time, and then put back into storage.
Recently, I’ve noticed a trend of people adapting solar equipment into their home labs. I personally have been looking into building a DIY battery pack with an inverter and charger from Victron.
The total cost may be higher than an all-in-one power station, but they’re normally fire rated for indoor use, and tend to be rated for continuous operation.
Also, if you use a good combined inverter & charger, it can be programmed to act either as a line-interactive UPS, or a double-conversion system. Most UPSs avaiable are only line-interactive, and the ones that are double-conversion are quite pricey IIRC.
Here’s an older discussion from a couple years ago about this:
Another thing to consider spec wise on them is the switching time when AC input is lost. I have Anker F3800s setup in my house as essentially a house UPS for critical circuits, but I still have my computers on dedicated UPSes even though my office is one of those “critical circuits”.
The advertised switching time of the F3800s is “<20ms”, whereas the switching time of my line-interactive UPSes are advertised as “<4ms”. Depending on your particular systems, that difference in switching time could be the difference of it not caring, or whatever you were doing failing. Though, I suspect for most home use cases the difference likely wouldn’t matter.
If you do have sensitive systems you need to keep running uninterrupted that can’t handle even a 4ms switch time, then you’d probably need to invest in a double-conversion UPS, as with those there is no switching delay to backup power in the event of AC power loss.
An additional thing to look at is cost and overall runtime, the 1.5kw UPS I bought cost me ~$600, but will only keep the load running for 5-10 minutes. Wheras one F3800 can run most of my normal house load in Spring for about 5 hours w/o any expansion batteries, but is $4000 MSRP list price (though currently on sale for $2600, I got mine from their Kickstarter presale).
Thanks for your reply! Your post is very interesting since you have both systems. If you could get the Anker system for 600 USD (same price as the UPS), would you choose it over your USP if 20ms switching time is sufficient? How does it perform for normal office work days (12h on/off for 365 days a year)?
What UPS can you recommend and how should I size it? I have seen the recommendation to size the UPS at half the required wattage. So if I have two PCs that require 400 watts combined, I should use a 800 watt UPS. I don’t really understand this recommendation. Can you please give me your thoughts on this and tips on which UPS would be the right one for me?
Also, since I do not live in the western countries, I do not have as many options for a UPS (I can always import, but would prefer to choose locally available products first). I have seen that many Tripp Lite systems are available. Do you have any options for those?
Cyberpower is also available. Same question here, any thoughts?
Thank you for your reply. I have posted other questions here in the same chat. Please check them out as I have the same questions for you. So your point is that 24/7 use with a battery pack is just not right?
Also, I never really liked the idea of only getting 5 minutes (maybe a little more) of battery power by choosing one of those 2U UPS systems. Is there a way to add a second power source to a typical UPS? Like I use it normally, but when the power goes out, I just add the battery bank at that moment to continue supplying power? All without interruption? Would this be possible?
I’ve always tried to get a UPS that can cover at least the maximum combined power draw of the system. So for a desktop that would include: the PSU’s rated output, the monitors attached to it, and any other loads like audio amplifiers and such.
Without this, it’s possible that the inverter in the UPS can actually fail to start a cold system. I actually had a Bluetti battery bank sag so much that it couldn’t start my desktop. And I’ve also had UPSs with old/weak batteries fail to start a computer as well.
As far as brands go, I’ve had fairly good luck with CyberPower, and AFAIK Tripp Lite is also a good brand that’s now owned by Eaton.
It really depends on what the warranty coverage looks like from the manufacturer. I’m not sure I would trust any of these units to fully protect an expensive system.
In one of the videos by Dave’s Garage, he still uses a traditional UPS after his larger EcoFlow battery pack.
It’s a pretty comprehensive guide to everything about UPSs.
There’s also a nice review of the newer Tripp Lite units from Wendell, that youtube forgot to recommend to me. EDIT: I glossed over that you already watched his review, oops!
Oh, also, never ever buy replacement Sealed Lead-Acid (SLA) batteries from china. I’ve bought two sets of cheap batteries that only lasted a year each.
If the UPS can be unplugged from the wall and still run your system, you can plug it into a battery bank’s inverter without any issues.
But I’m not sure about DC input. Some rackmount UPSs have support for additional battery packs, but they tend to be quite picky about what you plug in to them.
I have thought about wiring up two 12V 20A LFP batteries in series to my 1500VA UPS with a suitable DC circuit breaker. That would more than triple the runtime of my PC during a power outage. The only issue would be that the UPS is not designed to charge LFP batteries, nor would it be able to balance them either.
Maybe the best solution would be a UPS that had its charging circuitry removed, and replaced with a LFP battery pack and charger. Then you would get all of the advantages of a line-interactive UPS, with the added runtime and lifespan of LFP batteries.
Both of these hypothetical solutions void the warranty though.
I live in a country that is not as stable as most western countries. I want to keep my stuff in a way that I can pack up and change homes/countries in a matter of hours. So for me personally, I do not want to wire anything. Do you think a UPS could just be powered by the Anker battery for the moments I need to extend the UPS battery time?
Oh, that changes things a bit. When you lose power from the grid, just unplug the UPS from the wall and plug it into the AC outlet of the Anker battery bank.
Or, you can leave the Anker battery pack plugged into the wall as the main backup, and have the PCs plugged into the UPS as a secondary backup. Just make sure to discharge the Anker’s battery to around 50% every month or two.
That should allow the battery pack to perform a “top-balance” when it charges up again. It’s also a good test to make sure that it’s functioning properly.
I don’t know what kind of warranty Anker has for their products where you live, but even if it does fail, you would at least still have your old UPS to protect your devices.
You can also extend the runtime on batteries by turning off or lowering the brightness of monitors. This doesn’t impact power usage as much as on laptops or phones, but it may allow for a few more minutes of critical work.
I dont know if this is going to help, but I’m looking to do something similar. Computer → ups → home battery → main panel. The important thing I’m looking for is that the home battery can charge from the main and discharge to the ups at the same time. Further I’m looking to use my current line interactive computer ups. Its works now so why change. Thus, I’m looking to get a ecoflow delta because according to some of the youtube reviews they appear to allow you to use the battery back up while the unit is charging from the grid. Please let us know how this turns out. I would like to hear from others who actually tried this before I dump a whole lot of money into it. If you try to hook up the battery to home assistant please let us know how it went. Thanks
In one review (preview?) of the Ecoflow setup I watched, it involved a full replacement of the house’s main panel and moving all the circuits over to the new panel. The advantage of Ecoflow’s whole house setup from what I remember is that the inverter had inputs for both high voltage and low voltage solar, along with the battery inputs, so it was a wholly self-contained system that didn’t result in a complex system of monitoring (see EEVBlog’s recent videos on his solar setup to see what he’s dealing with).
However, with my Anker setup, it has an automatic transfer panel that will switch a smaller sub-panel over to running off of batteries when the mains input is lost. As a result, you do have to pick and choose what circuits are important to your house to put on that sub-panel for emergency power. In the event of a longer power outage, I can plug portable solar panels directly into the batteries to charge them, and they’ll keep supplying backup power with the solar input. Whether it charges or not depends on the load you have on them vs what you’re able to get via the panels you have available.
I do have a manual transfer switch for a traditional gas (petrol) generator on my house as well, and the Anker power panel will charge the batteries off the generator. However, as it’s coming in via the normal mains, it charges them at their max rate which for the F3800s is 2kW (so 4kW total for my 2 unit setup). IIRC, the Ecoflow panel did have a generator input on it, but I have no experience with it, so I don’t know how well it’d balance things if you had solar and emergency generator, but it might work a little bit better than the Anker Home power panel, but also costs a lot more from what I remember when I looked at it.
Even with modern lithium-ion batteries, you really do not want to run a constant load 24/7 off the battery.
Since you want to keep the pc UPS in the mix, you could use one of these:
to feed the UPS, and feed the ATS PDU with the main feed from the mains, and the backup feed from the home battery.
This way the battery would be used only in the event of grid failure and it will last way more years … and in the event of grid failure it will kick in and feed the UPS, switch time /power rectification at that point will not be an issue since it will be on the pc UPS …
I haven’t watched the videos in question, but I want to throw out there that ecoflow is one of those companies who likes to do “viral” marketing and HEAVILY sponsor youtubers and whatnot to showcase their products. I see them pop up ALL the time, and it’s usually not disclosed as sponsored or provided talking points. And never pay full price, they run “flash” sales damn near constantly.
I have an ecoflow delta 2 for my apartment emergency backup along with an expansion battery and some solar panels. There’s nothing wrong with any of it as far as I know (I’m not qualified to give an in-depth review), but just overall the company rubs me wrong and I will be looking elsewhere if I decide to expand in the future.
edit: my PC UPS is cyberpower. The biggest one they have (at least consumer level) which is 1000w, about $200 at the time. I would not use backup batteries as a UPS, they really aren’t designed for that even if the advertising material suggests they can be used for it. Mine has held up my equipment through power blinks, but not actual outages so I can’t comment on how long it lasts. Long-term I would have to do what others already suggested - plug the UPS into the backup power bank.
If you don’t have any critical need to run your computer for a long time in an outage, something like this is what I would get. Doesn’t even necessarily need to be the biggest, highest draw I’ve put on mine is 500w with monitor, PC, 2 routers, and NAS while gaming.
Zak of JerryRigEverything is generally pretty good at disclosing that a particular video is sponsored, like the one I linked. His video that I found out about the Anker F3800s was sponsored by Anker, so he’s taken money from what are essentially competing products.
I don’t watch any other YT’ers that have had sponsored spots by EcoFlow, so don’t have anything else to go on.
Can you explain that a bit more? With this UPS you can connect two power sources and automatically switch over if one fails? Like using the regular grid but having a battery (like the Anker one that started the whole idea for me) at the same time?
Thank you for confirming! Unfortunately there is no full load 24/7 battery test. But for that reason I think you are right. I think the only fair assumption (most tech companies are crazy and full of crap these days, so I don’t know if we can assume anything) is that all batteries can take a full discharge at once. Otherwise it makes no sense to me to have such batteries.
So batteries like Anker’s are only as good as the power they hold. That is more or less all I am looking for in the event of a power cut. Well, there is the idea of solar backup, which Anker also supports, but that is really for 24/7 and not what I am looking for. In other words, if I have a power cut for several days, I have other solutions such as generators or simply not using my usual high power consumption.
