UPS : Line-interactive or On-line Network?

[Necuno]

UPS : Line-interactive or On-line Network?

Which is the best for PCs?

Thanks

 

[furpile]

On-line is supposed to be the best, but I think they are more expensive. Maybe only worth it if you have really sensitive/expensive equipment you need to protect. On-line basically runs off the battery the whole time, so your load will never see if the mains go off. With line-interactive there is a switch-over period between mains and battery power, but this is 4ms or something so it shouldn't affect anything.

Here is a very nice and detailed white paper from APC.

 

[Alacrity]

In theory the online is better but if you buy cheap you might have problems since online ups works much harder.

With line-interactive the inverter only works when the power fails but with online the inverter is always on.

A PC's power supply is also a very good filter so a high quality line interactive should be fine if budget is a problem. But don't buy a cheap online!

 

[Necuno]

I'm looking to run at least 2x monitors and 1x pc from it and perhaps 1x router. Should I be looking at 1000va and R1k range?

 

[henry1103]

I'm looking to run at least 2x monitors and 1x pc from it and perhaps 1x router. Should I be looking at 1000va and R1k range?

Depends on your setup and what you're looking for. How much power does all of these consume and how long do you intend to keep it running?

 

[furpile]

I'm looking to run at least 2x monitors and 1x pc from it and perhaps 1x router. Should I be looking at 1000va and R1k range?

A 1000 VA will only give you a few minutes to safely shut down.

Assuming the 2 monitor's and PC use 200W (not gaming, just browsing or normal working).

A 1000VA UPS will typically have 2 7Ah batteries. 200W @ 12V is 16.7 Amp, with the losses in the inverter that could be up to 20 Amp from the batteries. Drawing 20 Amp from the 14 Ah batteries (in parallel) gives you 0,7 hours runtime. In reality it will be even less, as the battery efficiency drops as you pull more current.

The easiest way to check is with APC's calculator or on the product page. For the Back-UPS Pro even a 1500 VA will only give 31 minutes for 200W.

 

[DrJohnZoidberg]

A normal line interactive UPS will be fine for you.

You should also indicate how long you want to run this set up for, that will make all the difference. If you just want time to shutdown then you can get away cheap, if you want to run it off the UPS for extended periods well then that's going to cost you and it would make more sense to build your own battery/inverter set up (there are many threads on this already).

 

[Necuno]

Only looking for these things:

1. Time to shutdown
2. Surge and spike protection
3. Line conditioning (?)

For extended usage I think I just need to implement some proper inverter setup, but this I can hook up later and into my electricity or into the pc's, monitors and router?