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UPS APC, CyberPower, Tripp-lite, Eeaton or other
Who makes the best UPS, quiet, longevity and cost?
Research online seems to point to CyberPower.
“It's unwise to pay too much, but it's worse to pay too little. When you pay too much, you lose a little money - that's all. When you pay too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a lot - it can't be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will have enough to pay for something better.”
--John Ruskin
--John Ruskin
Best Answer
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Quizzical LegendaryPosts: 25,348
It depends on what you need. Any standby or line-interactive UPS should be silent except when you lose power. A double-conversion one will be noisy, but I'd question why you need that.
A lot of companies will offer a variety of products, and their higher end ones are better than their lower end ones. Which is the best at a given price point could vary from day to day as prices bounce around with various sales or discounts.
CyberPower's high end consumer line offers a true sine wave output, while everyone else (including nearly all of CyberPower's line) offers a "simulated" sine wave output, which is really a step function. It does matter just how many steps are in that step function, but that usually isn't documented. In the worst cases, it can be a square wave, which is just plain bad. How clean the waveform needs to be depends some on what your power supply can handle, and that's something that power supply reviews generally don't consider.
I've used a CyberPower UPS for about the last decade. The batteries wore out after about six years, and were a major pain to replace because the mechanism to replace them was assembled wrongly on my particular unit. The replacement batteries from some other brand lasted about three years before wearing out.
For what it's worth, CyberPower Systems, the maker of UPSes, is a totally different company from CyberPower PC, the maker of gaming desktops.
Answers
--John Ruskin
--John Ruskin
If you have the knowledge of IT field you can just replace the relays in them when they fail because that is likely what happens first and get it for more years of use.
Though if just the average consumer with no knowledge $150 every 5 years gets an APC b attery that usually lasts for 5 - 8 years minimum, battery replacement every 3-5 years or rather usually just buy a new unit unless using www.refurbups.com
Think of it is kind of like the difference between a really great power supply and one that is merely pretty good, but with exactly the same energy efficiency. Everyone agrees that 10 mV of ripple on a +12 V rail is better than 30 mV of ripple, but it's unlikely to ever make a real-world difference, and the specification allows up to 120 mV. The problem with power supplies isn't the ones that are pretty good. It's the ones that are bad.
CyberPower's UPSes with a pure sine wave likely aren't any better than some others in their lineup in any way other than the output waveform.
APC was the brand to go to up until recently. They were acquired by Schneider Electric a few years back, and their quality isn't as good as it once was... or maybe it's just they've stayed stagnant while everyone else caught up.
Cyberpower is a consumer brand - nothing wrong with them for consumer use. I'd put them on par with APC consumer gear.
Lots of UPS companies offer pure sine wave output. What you really want to look for is voltage correction. Not all UPSes offer it, and some call it trade names (Auto Voltage Regulation, Brownout protection, Auto-Transformer. etc). Any UPS will kick on when the power goes out. What you really want is a UPS that will protect you when the voltage droops but doesn't drop entirely - that's what really kills electronics. I think that's much more important to look for than pure sine wave output.
Also make sure the unit has a user-replaceable battery. They are almost always just standard sealed lead acid, but some of the lower end units don't give you access to swap it out. They only last for 3-5 years on average, and it's almost always much cheaper to swap out the battery than to buy a new UPS, especially if you are getting a sizable UPS that can power more than just a router.
There is also double-conversion, which will always feed power from the battery, and uses the input power from the wall to recharge the battery. That's good for really critical situations where someone could die if a system reboots due to a power blip, as it avoids some milliseconds of badness while a standby or line-interactive UPS recognizes that power has gone out and switches from wall power to battery. For example, some medical equipment is critical to keep running when it is needed.
A double-conversion UPS is ridiculous for a gaming desktop, though. It's not just that they cost a lot more. That double-conversion can easily burn about 50 W and make a lot of noise, too. If your gaming desktop has an unwanted reboot once every few years because the UPS batteries were dead and you didn't realize it, oh well. If you want a high quality UPS for a gaming rig, a line-interactive topology is the thing to look for.
Larger UPSes commonly offer longer runtime on battery, too. This doesn't actually matter that much. When you lose power, you probably want to wait a few seconds to see if it's going to come right back. If not, then you just want to save your work and shut down cleanly, which shouldn't take very long. Once during a lengthy power outage, Windows decided it was a good time to install updates as part of the shutdown process when I wanted it to just turn off immediately.
VA and Watts are related. VA is the hard and fast limit, which is why it's used. Watts is a calculation and you could see two units with identical VA ratings, but publish different Watt ratings. The manufacturer is making an educated guess on wattage. VA rating should be higher than wattage rating (another reason they put that on the box, it's the bigger number).
In general, if you know the wattage you want, you can look for a VA rating of between 1.25-1.5x the wattage and that's a good number to look for. For a typical gaming computer, plugging in the computer, a single monitor, and maybe a few light peripherals, a rating of around 800VA should be sufficient.
For their units more appropriate to a gaming desktop, they're a lot more expensive than other brands for a given wattage as listed on New Egg. If you say that the reason is that they're higher quality, then I believe you; I haven't looked into it myself.
https://smile.amazon.com/Eaton-Electrical-5P750-External-UPS/dp/B00CF1P4JO
Yeah, it's about twice the price of a similar Cyberpower
https://smile.amazon.com/CyberPower-AVRG750U-System-Outlets-Compact/dp/B0122YQDMK/
Depends on what reliability is worth to you. The Eaton would be something I would expect to buy once, and just replace batteries for the next 15-20 years (that's what I have got from older APC units, but newer ones aren't holding up nearly as well). I don't know if Cyberpower is the same or not.
--John Ruskin
They all failed within a months time, to no one's surprise. Fortunately, WD warranty support took care of them.
I don't buy much from them any more if I can help it. I do still use their web site to search, but usually I can find a competitive price somewhere else.
Amazon isn't always the lowest price, but it's a fairly common vendor that usually has decent customer service and support. More than anything, I was just linking to the example product and a place it ~could~ be bought (assuming you aren't a qualified Eaton reseller or bulk purchaser). Not necessarily recommending you buy it via Amazon.
I went to the MadePC web site, they list a New Jersey address. Cool
I popped their street address into Google Maps.
The building there matches up with the picture they have on the MadePC website. Cool
There's no signage on the side of the building though, like there is on the web site picture.... and a few pricey cars in the parking lot. Also, Google lists a different company located at that address.
Doesn't prove or disprove anything, not every company pays to promote via Google and have it listed. Just some interesting findings.
--John Ruskin
--John Ruskin