Pure Sine Wave UPS or No?

Tachyon

Tachyon

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Complete amateur here. Recently got my old desktop pc back from a local shop and looks like the motherboard has blown (quite possibly from consistent abrupt shutdowns). To the gigabrains in here, can anyone recommend a good UPS that would clean up the signal and temporarily keep my desktop going so I can shut it down normally?

For some context, my uncle kindly gave us a Power Star inverter charger and 2 batteries which have been a godsend during Eksdom's loadshedding. We've noticed that when it pulls in 230V from the mains the inverter is completely quiet and stable. Then there are periods when the voltage drops to between 200 and 210 and a fan kicks in, presumably working overtime to recharge the batteries.

I imagine these unstable numbers and the shutdowns are not healthy for electrical equipment?

I now have an extension cable running across a passage to connect to the inverter during outages. It's not ideal but now that I think about it maybe hooking my machine to the inverter with a better cable setup would be a better solution than getting a separate UPS. Thoughts?
 

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Do online ups actually regulate voltage or handle spikes/drops etc?
 
online is the best .maybe costs slightly more to run daily but work better than a normal ups .Meissner makes brilliant units i use a 500w x 2 unit its flawless .
 
if your supply drops the ups should kick in seamlessly and boost it .zero delay or beep .but a few percent on a modern psu wont affect the psu output much ,to say the pc .on medical equipment it may notice a slight drop ,there the ups is critical .
 
kolaval said:
Meaning then you don't need an AVS?
Click to expand...
on an online system you are running off the ups constantly .hence the higher running costs so if your supply dips the output shouldnt be affected at all unless maybe the batteries arent 100%
 
pure sine wave is allways better .modified sine wave is artificially boosted to make you happy .some computer systems wont run on a half sine wave system they dont like it .most generators run a modified sinewave output .it trashes electronics
 
kolaval said:
Do online ups actually regulate voltage or handle spikes/drops etc?
Click to expand...
Online is a double conversion ups. It converts the power to dc then inverts it back again to ac, unlike a line interactive ups this will always be going through the inverter.
 
Why won't a cheap bog standard UPS be good enough to protect the PC from power issues? When I had one, the thing used to click all the time (switching to battery and back again) when the grid was doing funny things.

IMHO, it's better (and probably cheaper) to go full proper inverter and batteries (like the trolleys) and still be able to use the PC throughout the rolling blackout, than to get an expensive online UPS just so you can shut your PC down.
 
Yeah, from what I could gather, modern psu's are not that seriously affected by simulated sine waves. Spoke with my uncle today (electrical engineer) and he reckons as wingnut suggested that a bog standard UPS should do the trick.

My only concern is the unstable voltage coming from the mains. APC have some reasonably priced UPS with AVR. Will keep looking into it, lots to learn. Thanks all for the input!!
 
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