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Ask HN: What small home office UPS do you use?

5 points by kleer001 ↗ HN
I'm a little paranoid, have some disposable income, and feel the need to have a more secure power pathway for my home office (running a single power hungry tower and 4K monitor).

I run some 280+ watts continuously. Fan noise would likely be an issue. I'd love if it could talk to my linux box and start a smooth-shutdown script. Rack mount is not an option, sadly.

From what I understand I'll need a line-interactive setup, I think.

Any advice, ideas, or recommendations?

5 comments

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LinuxBender
My current setup is a Liebert GXT4 double conversion UPS. I needed it to clean up the sloppy utility power. The transformer on the pole is about to blow and the neighbors septic pump causes brown-outs and massive spikes 70-150V. The Liebert deals with it really well. It has noisy fans though so probably a deal breaker for you. It's also not cheap, but worth every penny. The cheaper UPS units blow up / smoke with my sloppy input power. I've roasted several tower APC variable power UPS units.

When I finally get around to moving and have more land I plan to set up some inverters, charge controllers, LifePo4 battery banks, solar panels and maybe wind. That should be less noise than my current setup.

kleer001
oh whoa, yea, that's a bit beefy for my use case

but if you like the brand I'll check 'em out

simonblack
Two types of UPSs: Think carefully about which one you want.

One type normally just sits there idle, passing mains current through directly to the equipment. When the mains stops, the UPS starts up and supplies current from the battery system. So the fan runs more or less only when producing power from the batteries.These ones generally produce 'not-so clean' and 'squarer-wave' power which is normally just as useful as sine-wave power. These are generally cheaper systems.

The other type is always on, running continuously, with its fan always on. The advantage of this type is that the equipment always receives its current via the UPS, no matter how much the supply voltage goes up or down. So very useful if you get 'brownouts'.

The UPS gets its power supplied either directly from the mains or from its battery subsystem. These units generally produce 'cleaner' sine-wave power. These units tend to be bulkier and heavier than the pass-through units.

I bought a CyberPower OLS1000E. This machine continuously produces sine-wave current and supplies all the computer stuff on my desk, as well as the WIFI/router and VOIP phone. I didn't have the router and VOIP phone included initially, but I discovered I was cut off from the Internet when just our apartment was without power although the rest of the building and external infrastructure remained powered.

The only drawback I have found in the 18 months or so I have used it is the constant fan noise. When I bought my CyberPower UPS, I probably 'over-engineered' my requirements (I calculated a need for about 250 watts, but the UPS indicates about 50-odd watts in everyday use). Consequently it indicated that it could power my system for up to 24 hours when I actually had an outage. (Though I take that '24 hours' with a grain of salt.)

kleer001
good things to keep in mind, thank you!