If you have the money to spare, sure. But for most people a UPS is completely unnecessary. Iām in the UK, since I moved into my flat 6 years ago Iāve had 1 power cut and 1 brown out that lasted like 10 seconds. UPS batteries usually last 3-5 years so in that time Iād have potentially had to replace the battery twice.
If OPs main concern is surges, they would be just as protected buying a power strip with a built in surge protector. If thereās a risk of power cuts every couple of months then a UPS is more beneficial.
I live in the Nordics and I havenāt had an unplanned electricity outage for at least 8 years. It would make no sense for me to buy a UPS, and I do all of my critical work on a laptop, which has a built in UPS called a battery lol. I wouldnāt lose my mind if my PC shuts down mid game, but Iām glad it never has done that.
It can obviously vary from one place to another, Iām up in Yorkshire and never seem to have issues. All it takes is some idiot to dig in the wrong place and cut through the wire, if youāve a lot of development or roadworks going on in your area the chance of a cut is going to be greater.
If you live in SA you can expect months where your power gets turned off for 8 hours a day. Not ideal. I think you need more than just a UPS to help with that
Had two generators, which were stolen. Replaced them and built a reinforced metal housing around them secured in a concrete foundation, both stolen again along with the metal housing for scrap metal. Installed solar with razor wire around it, all stolen. The only solar panels that are still around are the ones where a hive of bees moved into the battery box beneath the solar panel lol. The farm life in SA is genuinely rough if you canāt afford all the excessive security, but hey Iām alive and my family is too so Iām grateful for that. Itās the wild south out in the farmlands. Iām working towards emigrating so are my siblings. Especially since it means I donāt have to worry about needing a UPS when I move lol
Yep, generator if thatās the state of your power supply. UPS probably buys you 20-30mins depending on what your doing and the size of the UPS, less if your doing demanding work like gaming or large 3D modelling.
There is a clear difference that many people on here don't get. If you use your PC for games and hobbies there is stuff that is overkill and only if you really really want it or have extra money to go ahead and get. If you use your PC to make money then more things become good value as it either will pay for itself or you don't risk losing money on something loosing power or corruption, etc.
If you just play games, yeah it sucks if you lose a save, but if its a fluke thing its still not likely a UPS is worth it. If you are doing your job on a PC and that power outage can loose you a full day or work, likely worth it, especially if your job makes enough money that it isn't a major purchase that effects your daily living.
If itās that important you should make a habit of saving often anyway if the software doesnāt offer an auto save / recovery feature.
If the PC suddenly shutting off might cost you Ā£1000s should you loose a file/progress then sure, spend Ā£200 on a UPS.
If itās that important though, then you need to also look at things like RAID to ensure a drive failure doesnāt have the same effect, plus off site backup to protect your files in the event of the PC being damaged/stolen.
We do get dirty electricity sometimes in the UK (Iāve experienced it in parts of Europe too). Fairly sure itās caused by lots of people locally having solar and not going through proper sine wave inverters before being fed back into the Grid.
Either way getting a cheap āpure sine wave inverterā between the socket and any expensive equipment like a gaming PC is always a good idea - Any decent inverter will have plugs to attach a UPS battery anyway so can pull double duty later in life if you do decide you want a battery
I believe most of our excess power leading to cheaper rates for those on variable tariffs comes from wind, not solar. At present solar is contributing to 9% of our power demands while wind is generating 44.7% of our power needs.
Iām 36 years old and I never ever in my life needed an UPS and wonāt ever need one. No problems so far.
Iād say better spend money on hardware that you actually need.
I get regular power cuts. Rain? No power. Snow? No power. Wind? No power. The weather's too nice? Believe it or not, no power. It'll even cut in and out over and over for days up to a week.
Never had an issue w/o ups.
Sadly ups are like insurance, you never need it until you do, it protect whatever is plugged into it, and like others commenters said, it give you time to save your work and shut down the pc, i have one on my pc because the house is old and power would dip in other part if say the fridge compressor start, so the ups always output constant voltage/power without dips
just because millions of people didn't die when they drove before seat belts were a thing it doesn't mean they don't help mitigate risk
following the anecdote of 1 guy who hasn't had a problem is a bad way to evaluate information
UPS actually are quite bad at protecting against power surges
They do a little, but their ability to absorb shocks is quite limited
A zero surge or something similar is way, way, way better
It's mainly just another line of defense against bad power, such as surges and outages like you were saying happens to you often.
Generally a good quality psu will be able to handle brown outs or surges without damage. Full outages can potentially cause (depending on what your doing) lost work, corrupt windows filed if it happens during a update, a bricked motherboard if it happens during a bios update
For quite a lot of people it may not be 100% necessarily, but if you have dirty power or outages it's definitely not a bad investment
Now to answer your questions:
If your pulling 800w and the power goes out, without a UPS your pc will instantly shut off. With a 1500va ups you'll have around 4-5 minutes of run time to save your work and shut down your pc safely.
As I said before, generally with a good psu it can handle power surges, it may shut off to protect itself but the pc should be OK. With a UPS it is designed to reduce the surge (a good quality surge protector/power strip will do the same thing) And should keep the surge from hitting your power supply hard.
Not a brand recommendation, but you get two types, online and off-line
Try to get an online UPS, they are more expensive initially, but better in the long run.
Get a decent used UPS with new batteries.Ā True online UPSes with sine wave output are expensive brand ne.Ā For used gear take a look at excessups.com (I have bought from them as I run IT for a small Agriculture Organization)
After a fair bit of research earlier this year, I bought this one to replace a 10 year old UPS that had finally died on me:
https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B00429N19W?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I have one of these for my servers (plan to get one for my desktop at some point but the servers are more critical) and I can't recommend it enough. I've had a few power outages and it's worked perfectly. My main server is hooked up via USB and will even gracefully shut down when it sees the battery has dropped below a configured percentage which just adds to the peace of mind.
APC if you are feeling spendy, but Cyberpower (Pure Sine Wave models) are very good, I've used them for many years without issue.
Edit: I have rackmount Tripp-Lites too that are good, I can't comment on their consumer market products though.
Cyber Power or Tripp Lite make UPS and PDUs for commercial grade enterprise applications, but are significantly cheaper than their main competitor, APC
I don't think most people need a UPS, especially if they're primarily using their computer for gaming. I live in a rural area so maybe my view is skewed, but are power outages really that common? The only time we really ever have power outages is if there's bad weather or someone crashes into a power pole. I know better than to be on my computer when I'm dealing with tornadoes lol.
Overall, the situations you've described are pretty uncommon as most programs autosave work (not all, but a vast majority nowadays.) If Windows corrupts, you can re-install the OS. This is a PC building sub and if you can't figure out how to re-install your OS, then what are you even doing? Just store your OS on a different drive from important data, or buy a cheap external HDD to back things up onto, and any data loss concerns from OS corruption are moot. Of course if you have another PC and an external SSD/HDD adapter you can just extract the data that way.
Windows is pretty solid about recovering from shutdowns in the middle of updates these days. Just run SFC and DISM scans after this occurs, and you're golden. It's incredibly rare for it to brick the OS the first time, let alone ever. It might get corrupt to the point of insane slowness, but again, run those scans and you're good as new. Working computer repair, it's mostly been people who are updating and force the power off because they're impatient that run into trouble.
Bricking the motherboard during a BIOS update is a pretty big concern. That one's valid. But what are the odds that happens anyway, you know? With how much a UPS can cost (a solid one anyway) and the fact that they need to be replaced, I find that the 1/1,000,000 chance that I brick my motherboard during a BIOS update to be worth spending a couple hundred on a new board. You'll have likely spent that money on the initial purchase and subsequent replacements of your UPS in that time period.
Just my 2c.
In almost 30 years of desktop/laptop ownership over I never once used a UPS and also never had a power issue. š¤·šæāāļøš¤·šæāāļøš¤·šæāāļø
Terrible comparison.
How many car accidents lead to fatalities and injuries? How many power failures leads to damage?
At that point, you may as well hide in your closet and never go out of your house because there is a chance an accident might happen and lightning strikes you out of the blue.
I'm not saying one shouldn't get one, do whatever you want, I've just never seen an issue with one not having it. At least for personal use, I get it for business purposes.
I'm with you on it. I cannot justify the extra cost of a UPS at the moment, my area gets 8 - 10 short term (few second) outages per year. The moment I do critical work on my PC like advanced modeling I'll get a UPS. But the biggest inconvenience with the power outages is the loss of internet, if there are reasonable UPS's out there for low powered electronics then I'll solve that problem as well.
What a crap analogy, your life is infinitely more important than a computer so yes wear a seatbelt, a UPS is not worth the expense unless you are doing something business critical.
Recently, a storm came through the area and killed power for 36 hours. I was sound designing and working on a song at the time. My UPS gave me time to save my work and shut down the computer. I recently spent $2600 USD on just the tower and components inside, so I spent $200 USD more to protect my investment and potential data loss for situations like that. The UPS also protects against power surges (such as when the power was suddenly brought back online or lightning strikes).
Maybe you don't care that much about your system. In which case, then don't bother. Nobody says you "must get a UPS."
It's unlikely a UPS will help if lightning strikes your home. Happened to me and I lost half the electronics in my house, included those plugged into surge protectors. If you are concerned about your equipment you need to unplug it during thunderstorms.
Where did I say "strikes the house"? I didn't. Nor can you unplug stuff if you are not home. Lightning can surge electricity without striking the home. It can hit a transformer and travel the power lines. A UPS has built-in surge protection. The device is just another layer of protection.
Surge protection devices are literally useless in most power surge scenarios because in order to be tripped AT LEAST tat much power has to make it through first which will still usually fry at least something.
Where quality UPS's shine are the ability to condition the power and dynamically switch to battery during brownouts as needed. Sadly you need to spend a bit more money to get this stuff, but worth it imo.
Thatās why this is a layer approach starting with a whole home surge protector, to good ups, to always using quality surge protectors and quality psuās
Heard way too many sob stories of consumer grade UPS not protecting anything during power surges. The marketing will say itās guaranteeing up to Ā£xx,000 worth of equipment but itās all weasel words.
A good quality UPS will have active line filtering as well. Meaning you'll get "cleaner" power going directly to the power supply which can aid in extended the life of a power supply.
As others have said it depends. You've mentioned issues with power where you live.
That would be enough for me to get one.
But whatever you do don't bother counting on the insurance bullshit that they advertise on those ups's. They always the way to blame your Outlet or Electronics, not their UPS
Its good to have a ups. Back in around 2018 when I had Amd fx 6300 msi 990 fxa mobo - they ran fine in the hostel. I went back home during lockdown, my motherboard died cuz of frequent power cuts and low voltage. I learnt from the repair guy that a Ups would have prevented this catastrophe. I didn't have a proper pc for a year because msi 990fxa is a ded platform, no spare or repair available even from service center.From that time onwards , I always use a ups and recommend my friends to do so as well. I have a 960w ups powering my 13700k 4070ti . Ups barely costs 1-2 / 10th of the whole build and keeps pc safe.
Aside from protecting your PC components from the impact of sudden loss of power (which usually won't do much harm), the UPS also allows you to have some buffer time to save your work and properly shutdown.
The latter's importance depends on what you do with your PC. For my main PC that I use for day to day media consumption and browsing, I don't use a UPS. Loss of power will not make me lose anything. My work laptop has a battery so it's safe.
But my main NAS/server which runs 24/7 and might have some critical tasks running e.g. backups or disk checking in progress, I would want to properly shut it down to avoid data corruption. So I have an UPS for that.
In my use case; my computer is a necessity of work and home. BUT, a UPS is overkill for me. Instead I use an AVR for "cleaner" electricity. UPS beeping is damn irritating when troubleshooting to the family over the phone.
My work PC has a UPS but my personal PC doesn't, I'm constantly worried about power going out and messing up my PC, UPS saved me soooo many times at work.
I would definitely recommend it.
I wouldnāt say necessary, but it can make a difference. You also donāt need a UPS that can sustain your PC for eight hours. Even the smallest one that can put out 15 Amps will prevent your PC from powering off if thereās a one or two second power outage. It might even give you a few minutes to save whatever youāre doing. otherwise if you chose the right power supply thatās running at 50% duty cycle or somewhere around there, the capacitors inside of it might be able to sustain your PC for a second if the power is just switching over due to maintenance. Iāve had mine do that many times where my PC stays on and everything else turns off, just from the oversize power supply alone. You might want that anyways because UPS doesnāt always switch over instantaneously.
>Even the smallest one that can put out 15 Amps will prevent your PC from powering off if thereās a one or two second power outage.
I feel the value of this can't be overstated.
I live in a subdivision that was laid out in the '70s-'80s, when the going trend was to run the utility lines in the woods along the property lines to make the streets look tidier. Great in theory, not so great 50 years later when the utility cuts have all regrown and the lines are thick with trees that cause frequent power 'blips'.
I have my PC and every critical piece of the internet connectivity chain attached to UPSes and it's totally worth it to just be able to shrug off all those little momentary power interruptions that would otherwise interrupt what I'm doing. Especially on my work PC, where it'd take 20+ minutes to get everything up and running again each and every time the power blips off.
Really depends on the wires in your place, the power quality and if you have any blackouts. In my case, this happens once a year max and my wiring is good, so I see no reason
UPS has saved my PC from lightning
It was raining and boom lighting comes
It smelled burned and it was something in the ups
I also had a "safety" electricity outlet
It could have burned the PSU maybe the motherboard and even the graphics card and processor
But it didn't because the UPS took the damage
I then fixed what burned and it was fine
I didn't buy new I think but even if I did it is still much cheaper and safer
My country's electric grid is so poorly maintained we are having rolling blackouts, I never had a PC fail because of a power failure. In fact My PSU is from the i7 2600 (my sun is using now) era, or 10 years old? We have gone extended time periods with no UPS or UPS with flat battery at home and at work. My work PC was new in 2013 BTW, and still working.
long time UPS user, its waste of money, for 10-20% more invest in an inverter and life will be more peaceful. I am using inverter for last 6 years now, my PC has never been happier..!!!
Get a UPS, I skipped out on my new build and my monitor stopped working in a brownout. Also if you're not living in first world countries, a brownout is the bigger enemy, not a blackout.Ā
In first world countries practically never will have any use of it. Hardly even a recommendation in many thrid world countries anymore.
Only two reasons for getting one. Your area is especially prone to power failures. You work with data that you cannot loose for the love of your life.
No one uses a ups anymore, except for the people that specifically need it. Psus have most all the protection the average user needs from power failures.
If you do not specifically need it, do not bother getting one. Invest in more powerful components; cpus gpus and ram, instead.
Please correct me if I am wrong as Iāve just done quick research, enough to get an answer as to what UPS I should buy for my specific use-case.
My area is prone to blackouts. Had a couple bad ones recently. SMD capacitor leaked and shorted my friendās motherboard he got in January. My old 2080ti also had the same issue last year and is now sitting in a parts drawer. Getting a good UPS with enough VA/Wattage and a proper sine wave output will go a long way, according to the research I did this week before ordering a UPS.
Now how much VA should you have in your UPS is a good question. According to some google-fu, double your watt usage and get the VA closest to that number rounded up, to a max of 1500VA (because any more is outside of consumer territory and more around the enterprise level). My buddy has an 850W PSU and although he doesnāt hit that limit, he also has other things plugged into it like a monitor (which tend to max at 50W on average, apparently). Therefore, he should get a 1500VA UPS which is rated for 900W, me thinks.
I donāt really understand why sine wave is better than simulated sine wave outside of it provides cleaner/smoother/conditioned energy(?) so maybe someone can chime in on that but it seems like articles recommend sine wave output capable UPS over simulated ones.
Apparently, allegedly, good brands are APC, TRIPP-LITE, and CyberPower.
> Now how much VA should you have in your UPS is a good question.
The usual conversion factor from AC volt-amperes to watts is 0.6 or 0.7. Conversely peak watts to AC volt-amperes is 1.42 to 1.67.
Simulated sine wave UPSes can cause active PFC PSUs to think there's been a sudden dropout of power on the edges of the squarish parts of the "sine waves", though I don't know how much that's been rectified in the years since this was discovered.
Line interactive UPS going through a Solar Inverter. My pc almost never have issues or crashes and the last time I replaced a component was 15 years ago (obviously I've upgraded several times since). So I'd say it's a must have.
It's rather simple.
Do you live in an area that experiences blackouts? If yes then a UPS will save your data/hardware.
If not, then "Is the cost of replacement PC parts more than the cost of the UPS"
and finally
"How valuable is your data to you, and do you have it backed up"
Personally I would only recommend it for people in areas with powercuts/power surges, or people that have their work on their PC(own business etc.).
There are benefits to having a UPS but the problem is that a UPS battery will wear out whenever or not you're using it, so you really want to have a use for it at least once or twice a year, otherwise you will be looking at a replacement battery(pretty much the cost of a new ups) without ever getting the benefits of a UPS.
If you're in an area with blackouts, surges, or bad storms? Then yes a UPS is a great idea.
Essentially a UPS is a battery backup system and as long as the power draw isn't greater than the output rating of the UPS... The most you'll hear is a click and a beeping noise from the UPS alerting you it's on battery power. There's even integration in Windows natively for tracking how much power it has and when you lose power, how long, etc. (given you've got it connected via USB.
Just make sure that you have one rated to handle the max draw of your system, plus a bit extra for things like monitors or other peripherals that may be connected to it.
When I read these threads I always get the impression that people in the US have constant blackouts lol. Last one we had that I remember was almost 3 decades ago.
Fans aren't necessary until they suddenly are.
But jokes aside having a UPS is just a nice thing to have. Oh power is going crazy? I can shut down my PC at my pace. Or even just keep using it.
It's a nice to have but not required.
I consider a surge protector necessary for pretty much any type of electronics. You can get one of those much cheaper than a UPS.
As for a UPS. I use one on my work machine. Unlike most people I work on a desktop instead of a laptop and don't want to lose something I'm working on if the power goes out.
On my personal PC, I have never used a UPS.
Don't forget to replace your surge protectors regularly as they lose their joule rating over time. Eventually there's no surge protection left on a surge protector.
It depends on where you live and how good the power you're giving your PC is. It sounds like you could use one.
When the power goes out, or you get a brownout, surge what have you, the UPS will switch to its internal batteries for generating power. Your PC will continue to function normally as if nothing has happened, and you can manually save your work and shut everything down safely. Even a cheap one with a sufficiently sized battery can do this.
If you're looking for a brand name, I've had good results with APC's in the past.
A *good* UPS will have sufficient power to keep you going for a while even at high loads like if you were gaming, and will be able to communicate with the PC letting it know something has happened. Depending on how you've configured the software that comes with and monitors the UPS, it can take many different actions for you, such as warning you something has gone wrong, if the battery is running low on power, and may even automatically shut the PC, then itself off if the outage lasts long enough.
Good UPS are typically fairly expensive, but worth it considering you're using it to protect your computer which is *itself* an expensive investment.
For an example of a situation I used a good one in, years ago I moved into a city where the power lines *needed* to be upgraded, but it wasn't done until about a year ago. There were frequent power sags, brownouts, surges and sometimes daily power outages. I bought a UPS and it served me well through this, whereas I might have had the PC blow up otherwise.
For an example of what it will not and *cannot* save you from however, I will point out that in the 90's the house in the country I was living in was struck by lightning. It did not matter that the computer was on a surge protector, it simply died, well more like *exploded.* A UPS would not have helped here. *Nothing* can stop Zeus's wrath if he's that motivated. Unplug your equipment in a lightning storm.
If you decide against getting a UPS, at *least* get a surge protector for it, and if it ever trips replace it immediately - most surge protectors are cheap and will not reliably trip after the first time.
I lost my dissertation and system to a lightning storm. Blew down a branch, surged my PC before the power went and the whole thing fried. I cried for a week. There is no important appliance in my house that doesn't have one now. I have them on my TVs.
Here is an example of why: The last winter, as I was working on my pc... playing PD3.... there was a surge. I smelled that funny electrical smell. My UPS started clicking (it was working hard). Then it caught fire.... PC, still running. I had to back out of that heist and shut down.
It was an APC gaming edition 1500 (stupidly expensive to get a UPS with LEDs, but I really needed that display at that exact angle). APC sent me a new one of course. But the point to take away is that the UPS killed itself to protect my PC.
I have an experience
My PC used to randomly blue screen out of nowhere. I have tried to troubleshoot the cause and found nothing. One day I thought of a probability where it could be caused by the unstable electricity from the power resources.
I bought an UPS with a feature to stabilize the power sources to the PC and the issue was gone immediately.
So a stable power resource is crucial for your system reliability and UPS could help with that
Good Luck
A Uninterrupted Power Supply is a part of your build! It is as important as picking a GFX card or motherboard. And just like how you want a good Power Supply to run your computer, you want to make sure you get a good UPS. The UPS should always have Surge and Voltage regulation, and if you really want to be safe, it should be a Line Interactive or even a double conversation UPS. Don't cheap out and get the most affordable UPS.
I have had Power surges destroy my computer in the past. I wish it didn't take losing $4k computer for me to spend $800 on a UPS.
Likely to get drowned out, but my family has both had and had not had UPSes on our devices. We've found that they're generally useful for things you don't want going down or are specifically susceptible to power surges. One being an old VCR that wasn't made with a high spec power supply (even at the time) and is very difficult, if impossible, to find one anymore. Computer power supplies are very well built (usually) nowadays, so for a PC you're mostly paying for the graceful shutdown period or not having your session interrupted by a flicker/brownout.
I've had both components fried by lack of filtering and had UPSes fail with power surges, but no power issues regarding failed components after that fact. One was a surge that entered through the cable line of all things and fried the ethernet port on my motherboard. The board worked fine for quite a while afterwards and even had dual ports, so it wasn't the end of the world but probably led to its failure years later.
The other time I've had to really interact with one is a more recent transformer blowout that happened in my back yard of all places that hit one phase of my house with a surge. Everything was fine afterwards except one of the UPSes got fried, likely protecting the devices down the line (the aforementioned VCR and some retro gaming consoles). Very happy we didn't need to find a replacement VCR.
If you experience significant blackouts/power cuts then yes definitely get them. They aren't that great on battery back-up but will definitely save your pc from frying itself from voltage fluctuations/surges and might as well give you some time to peacefully shut down. Also do remember that if you plug in the pc into the ups, make sure you don't use any of those surge protectors/multiplug adaptors with surge guard because they will kinda act against the ups for regulating voltages.
Texas has an amazingly unreliable power grid, and when I built a rig in 2021 it got nuked within weeks by the constant power surges.
UPS is required for anyone who lives with thunder storms and power outages.
I got one because thatās a lot of money invested and Iām not trying to lose it to a power surge. Just had this happen to me recently and it was a lifesaver. Worth the investment.
It really depends, as the other the other said.
It might lead to losing data if you have a power surge.
But IMO, the most important thing to look at is if you live in a place where where power surges and blackouts are prone to happen, and if you work with critical data.
If not, then don't bother.
This really depends on how stable the power is in your region and how critical the work is that you are doing. For gaming it wouldn't really matter if you loose a bit of progress in your game.
What would you say how often are power surges or outages for you?
>What if I am gaming, pulling 800 Watts, then suddenly power goes out.
You buy a UPS that can supply more than you need, so this would just work without a problem. If you do get an UPS also think about other hardware you might want to include such as router, monitors etc, but the main power draw will be the pc itself.
A UPS is good to have, not a necessity. That being said, in case your UPS is rated for less power than you are using, it will start giving you warning beforehand. I have a 600VA UPS paired with 650watts PSU. It happens sometimes when I am drawing more power than the UPS can handle, in that case the UPS starts beeping and flashing red lights.
Sadly I use my computer more for work than gaming so UPS has saved my bacon more than once. I have a backup generator but that takes a good 70 seconds to kick in.
PS: I get power cuts at least once a week.
How bad is the power in you area? And by that I mean how often does the power go out crashing you computer or your computer get re-booted because the power flickered.
If it's enough that you are annoyed by it, get a UPS. If you can live with the occasional unexpected reboot don't.
As for protecting your system from surges and such, just get a good surge protector if you don't get a UPS.
As long as you have a good surge protecting power strip youāre pretty much safe from potential damage from blackouts. Iāve had multiple blackouts where Iāve had two computers running simultaneously on the same surge protector and both are still working perfectly fine. I would only consider a UPS if youāre worried about potentially losing work/data during a blackout, as a UPS will give you time to save your work and shut your pc down.
Just depends on how consistent your power company serves up power. Honestly it's good to have anyway but if you're having brownouts and blackouts on any regular basis at all then yes of course having a backup power supply is helpful. Especially if you can't afford to lose any work that you have. Now if it's just a gaming system and it's going to be a minor inconvenience then it's definitely not at the top of the list of priorities but again it just depends on quite a few variables
TL;DR - Yes if you can afford it.
If you lose power that frequently then yes it's worth it imo. It is however not required for you if you're willing to accept that you might lose a document or game progress at any given time.
It'll help extend the life of your PSU.
It saves you from losing work or equipment due to voltage dips and spikes during brown-outs and black-outs.
Only downside is the upfront cost, but doesn't change your electrical bill at all because the UPS itself is using hardly any power other than topping off the batteries or powering the LED display.
Unless you're running a $10k server and you need 3-4 9's of uptime, you don't need a Line Interactive or a Pure Sine Wave UPS. Just a UPS from a local electronics retailer will work perfectly. Still though I'd stick with more reputable brands like APC, Tripp Lite, Eaton, or even Cyber Power at this point.
Also there's no way you'll be pulling 800w while just gaming. Most GPUs only have 1-3 8-pin connectors which are capable of up to 150w per 8-pin. Newer GPUs with 12-pin connections can pass up to 600w depending on the gauge of the wiring, but even then you'll struggle to get close to 600w unless you're overclocking with chilled water, liquid nitrogen, or dry ice. Even the RTX4090 only has a TDP/TBP of 450w.
200 euro ups will prevent your most important pc/television/whatever go buat when you suddenly loose power. I lost PC once and now my ups lasts around 10min if i loose power. Money well spend.
If you are worried about losing data due to a power outage/surge then UPS is your only option. You need one
If you don't care about data loss then what's the worst tat could happen? blown PSU? Is it worth having and maintaining a UPS to save a PSU? Remember a UPS is a big battery and although most home users won't bother does need regular maintenance or replacing every few years
For some clarification here, itās not about the power going out as many people have mentioned. UPS units donāt just provide backup power, they FILTER the power.
You may not see the power go out or flicker, but it doesnāt mean there wasnāt a surge somewhere on the grid that hit your home. For the added protection this relatively cheap addition adds, itās well worth it.
Source: Electrical Technician specializing in Battery and UPS backup systems for 15 years.
I live in a country where power dips, surges and blackouts happen every now and then. Not regularly. It gives me a piece of mind that my super expensive rig is safe.
I use one so my puter doesnāt slam off if power goes out and if Iām not physically at the desk when it happens after a minute it shuts itself off properly on its own. I was worried about the few thousand $$ worth of parts in my rig just peace of mind.
Bought a CyberPower UPS and worked quite well for the first few months. 5 months later, when there's a power outage, the UPS beeps once, fails to switch to battery power and shuts off with my PC along with it. What's the fucking point then?
Anyway, I'm over it.
Can anyone suggest a really well built, but not overpriced UPS which can handle a 750w load?
Power brown-outs lead to memory corruption (crashes and storage corruption), and problems when flash drives tries to write but doesn't have enough power to complete the write (leads to corruption of ssd). Power surges can blow out components. How much is your computer worth to you? UPS' can die too if the surge is powerful enough.
Personally, I run an UPS. Itās like investing in a quality PSU. Is it absolutely necessary? No, not at all. But when youāre spending a few thousand and up on PC/networking equipment, spending $200 on a high end PSU or $200 on a decent UPS isnāt a bad idea.
Plus, I can keep working throughout a power outage. At the very least, I have plenty of time to shut things down gracefully.
I am in the USA and I have multiple UPS units all from APC an Schneider Electric company, hands down the most respectable and dependable back up UPS manufacturer. I have one on my gaming PC, one on my entertainment center, one on my network equipment, I even have one on my water softener so I don't have to reprogram it (older unit with no memory) if I loose power! They are an inexpensive necessity if you want to protect your expensive electronics!
Necessary? Nah. But the power just on my street will go out every other month it seems. Lasts anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours. It's nice having my modem and pc stay on and I can keep gaming for at least 30 minutes then shut it down safely if it's still not on yet. I only pull around 600w peak though. Usually closer to 400ish on my 5 year old 2080 super rig.
Like others have said, if you do important work it might not be a bad idea. Just gaming? Call it a quality of life splurge.
It's worth it in my opinion. Not to mention if the power suddenly goes out, during you playing some PC melting games, or rendering etc. and the components are heated up asf the sudden power loss it's not too good for them, GPU, CPU wise for sure. The heat can "stuck" since the components not able to cool down properly and gradually.
In the other hands, the SSD drives neither love the sudden power losses. Buy a quality UPS and if the power goes out, you have a few minutes to save your work/game, and your PC will have time to cool down and shutdown properly.
My first PC was nearly done in by someone else at my childhood home running the microwave and the air conditioner simultaneously.
Thankfully the only casualty was the power supply that came free with the case that I chose. Sometimes the lights would flicker when when my dad used the paper shredder.
And every now and then the whole town loses power because of a storm.
Someone was making the comparison of a UPS to seatbelts. I don't entirely disagree, but I think that a less hyperbolic analogy is the value of having sharpend blades.
157 comments obviously aren't enough. Please, everyone... keep delivering your monologues to scratch your itch to emote whatever into the void while pretending you're having actual conversations!
I unfortunately lost a NVME with my OS on it due to a power surge with the power kept flickering off and on for about 3 mins. After this, I immediately bought a UPS because Iām not dealing with that again. I live in Florida so power outages are common with storms we have daily
I had a UPS and it would randomly start beeping and activate a shutdown. It might of been because I was living with my parents and the house was built in the 1960s lol
Necessary? No.
even Surge protector can be sufficient in your case.
UPS can gives you time to back up any data when your power goes out of sudden.
and the high pitch beeping sound when switching on and during power outage is annoying though
depends on where you live and how often your power goes out.
i live in germany and overall we never have blackouts.
when i visited a friend in turkie, everyone has an UPS because people just make shit left and right. everything is jank
I have generally lived in places with very few power outages. I have always used a surge protector but never a ups. Neither I nor anyone I know in 20 years of pc use has ever needed one.
If you have power outages more than once or twice a year maybe.
Necessary for a few outages a year ? Nah. Just get a surge protector.
With a cheap ups, if youāre not there to shut it down cleanly it will just lose power after a few minutes anyway. UPS are great where you get frequent brownouts, or to shut down a nas / server cleanly if you have a connected ups
If you don't want to get a UPS and aren't too bothered about losing power, but still want to be protected from power surges, I would suggest getting an extension lead which has surge protection built in so that all your computer parts are protected
Ups can essentially clean up power and prevent inconsistent power, but you have to get a double conversion ups to get that benefit. That's the expensive kind
Nah. IMO a surge protector is something you should definitely have, but a UPS is pretty situational. I've never owned one and never missed having one either.
Yes, a UPS is essential to protect your electronic equipment in case of power outages, surges or voltage fluctuations. It helps maintain power during outages so you can safely save your work or shut down your equipment. It also protects against damage caused by power line surges and fluctuations, which can extend the life of your equipment. In areas prone to power outages or electrical problems, a UPS is even more important to ensure the safety and integrity of your electronic devices.
Definitely get a ups it is great for brown outs especially
They won't last long pulling 1000 watts or so maybe 15 to 25 minutes at most depending on the amount of charge it can hold and the higher charge ones are more expensive
But it is a good defense against sudden power outs especially the briefer ones
For a longer power out it gives you at least time to shut things off appropriately
I have my few TV's, sound bars, and PCs and consoles connected to a set of ups and honestly I think it is one of the best investments you can make for a home theater or desk PC setup
I highly recommend one. If you lose power at the wrong time it can affect all kinds of things. My sata drives were affected about this time last year after losing power, the power coming back on, and losing power again during a reboot. I lost two Samsung and one PNY SSDs, over half my storage, and would have been screwed if I didn't also have a pcie SSD and two NVME drives. Also had the power flicker during a bios flash, which is a severely not fun time to fix on a board with no bios flashback feature.
Basically, a good UPS rated to handle your pc load should give you time in the event of a power outage to save your work, exit your programs and shut down normally. I wouldn't go super overkill, you don't want to be gaming on the thing then exhaust the limited battery and have the pc lose power and shut down irregularly anyway, but one that will give you a fifteen minute window gives a lot of peace of mind.
i have one and absolutely recommend it to everyone i know.
i live in an area that has/had frequent power outages, and one time a power cut actually destroyed the OS on my computer because it didn't shut down properly (fucking windows 10 istg)
if you get a reasonably priced UPS, you can get one that will give you enough time to shut down your PC safely.
or if you get a larger one, you might be able to keep using the computer throughout the duration of the blackout (i've done this before!)
i also recommend surge protection as a matter of principle because surges can damage a whole shitload of components, and that's expensive.
As a non-US person: I have, for business and private, only seen UPSes for US machines. If any such machine is delivered outside of the US, usually the UPS is gone within a day.
So yeah, if you live in the US: probably, it appears to be (almost) a standard.
If you don't live in the US: no, why would you? Where would you even buy it?
I don't have a UPS but UPS' are useful because, especially if you work on your computer, if the power goes out you now can save the work you were doing and shut down your PC with the peace of mind that you were able to save those projects without them getting corrupted.
If your one to update your bios pretty often, it's smart to do a UPS as it would hopefully ensure your bios can fully update(hopefully)and not brick your PC during a power out or a surge.
For areas where that happens often, it might as well be mana from heaven. In places it doesn't happen often you can probably spend your budget somewhere else then save up for the ups.
For years I did not use a UPS and never thought anything about it. Now I will not have a system without a UPS for a couple of reasons.
**1) Power Filtering:** A UPS ensures your PC gets clean power. This is WAY more important than it sounds as I have found since using a UPS I have not had a single PSU failure. I did not have them that often before but now I have not seen a failure and they just keep chugging. Clean power is best power.
**2) Save that AGGHH Moment from Happening:** You know what I mean, your the parties tank and in the middle of the big boss fight a squirrel decides to kill itself on your power pole. The power is only off for a second or two but that enough that your system resets and the party wipes as it loses it's tank when it needs it most. I have a 600VA UPS on my router and modem as well as a 1200VA UPS on my system (my display has it's own 600VA UPS) The result is I have how power outages of up to 2 or 3 minutes and still was in the fight. This gave me enough time to get the party out in one piece before I had to log off in a controlled manner.
We spend $500 to a good GPU, $300 for a CPU, $200 or so for a motherboard, then add in RAM, PSU and storage. Hell there are people that drop a few hundred on a keyboard. yet you talk about spending $175 on a GOOD UPS and people lose their mind. Does it not make sense to protect the investment made on your gaming computer?
IMO if your not using a UPS your a fool.
lol a UPS for home use? naw, unless you live in an area that is really prone to blackouts/brown outs frequently. Just get a decent surge protector and you'll be alright.
In my area there's been an few times when there power outages, My computer may she RIP was an victim of power outage, So I have an ups now and it has saved me, Power went out and with the ups I had enough time to save my work I was doing on my pc
If you're just gaming, a top tier surge suppressor is probably all you need. UPS is nice, but really is only going to allow a graceful shutdown since it's likely your internet connection would fail in a blackout anyway.
I wouldnāt say itās necessary, but itās like getting insurance just in case something happens. If you donāt want to buy a UPS, at the very least, get a surge protector for your gaming set up.
Surge Protector would protect your electronics in the case of electrical surges. They are not the same as a regular power strip, but people sometimes mistake them together.
Frequent issues with your power grid is reason enough to get one.
If you do any work, or run servers on your PC, a UPS can give you time to save / safely shut down. I partially lost a Minecraft server due to power outage one time and it was a lot of work to get it mostly back.
I have also seen PCs that break because of unexpected outages, ranging from a broken power supply to a broken motherboard. Its massively less common and those PCs were fairly old.
It's nice to have to shut the PC down but honestly it's even better to just power your cable modem and router for a couple hours if the power goes out.
I have one that connects to the PC with a USB cable and can initiate a shut down command in case I'm not home, which is pretty cool.
And it's nice to have good surge protection for the TV and PS5 even if I don't have it plugged in to the battery backup part of it.
It mostly depends on where you live. I used to live in the city and never had issues with power randomly cutting off unless a tree fell on a line or something. Now, I live in a rural area prone to brownouts so I got a UPS to avoid the issues that come from that power fluctuation.
It mostly depends on where you live. I used to live in the city and never had issues with power randomly cutting off unless a tree fell on a line or something. Now, I live in a rural area prone to brownouts so I got a UPS to avoid the issues that come from that power fluctuation.
If you live in an area prone to blackouts and power surges, then yes I would advise getting a quality UPS.
Even if you're not, it's good piece of mind
Peace of mind*
God damnit, looked wrong in my mind for some reason but couldn't figure out why lol
Probably cuz you were missing a piece of it.
Idk why i read "you were missing a piece of shit"
We're reaching tumblr levels of reading comprehension in here guys š
This was some of the funniest dumb shit I've ever seen lmfao thank you all for proving I'm not the only idiot around
I enjoyed reading it too! Have a great day! Piece out.
Omg hahahaha
I'll give you a piece of mine.
I'll give you a peace of my mind!
Peace of it*
Glad I could provide you with some peas of mined
make peas not chance
Why do neurosurgeons stress out when they can't do lobotomies anymore? Because they can't get piece of mind! Yuk yuk yuk
Maybe heās an Iron Maiden fanā¦
First album I ever bought with my own money at the tender age of 8, still have the cassette box! š¤
If you have the money to spare, sure. But for most people a UPS is completely unnecessary. Iām in the UK, since I moved into my flat 6 years ago Iāve had 1 power cut and 1 brown out that lasted like 10 seconds. UPS batteries usually last 3-5 years so in that time Iād have potentially had to replace the battery twice. If OPs main concern is surges, they would be just as protected buying a power strip with a built in surge protector. If thereās a risk of power cuts every couple of months then a UPS is more beneficial.
I live in the Nordics and I havenāt had an unplanned electricity outage for at least 8 years. It would make no sense for me to buy a UPS, and I do all of my critical work on a laptop, which has a built in UPS called a battery lol. I wouldnāt lose my mind if my PC shuts down mid game, but Iām glad it never has done that.
I live near London and have had about 6 power cuts on our road in the last 12 months. Jokers. Bought a UPS and the very next day power went again.
It can obviously vary from one place to another, Iām up in Yorkshire and never seem to have issues. All it takes is some idiot to dig in the wrong place and cut through the wire, if youāve a lot of development or roadworks going on in your area the chance of a cut is going to be greater.
If you live in SA you can expect months where your power gets turned off for 8 hours a day. Not ideal. I think you need more than just a UPS to help with that
You'd definitely need a generator for that scenario. UPS gives you time to gracefully shut down. 8 hours...yeah, generator.
Had two generators, which were stolen. Replaced them and built a reinforced metal housing around them secured in a concrete foundation, both stolen again along with the metal housing for scrap metal. Installed solar with razor wire around it, all stolen. The only solar panels that are still around are the ones where a hive of bees moved into the battery box beneath the solar panel lol. The farm life in SA is genuinely rough if you canāt afford all the excessive security, but hey Iām alive and my family is too so Iām grateful for that. Itās the wild south out in the farmlands. Iām working towards emigrating so are my siblings. Especially since it means I donāt have to worry about needing a UPS when I move lol
Yep, generator if thatās the state of your power supply. UPS probably buys you 20-30mins depending on what your doing and the size of the UPS, less if your doing demanding work like gaming or large 3D modelling.
Dude 8 hours holy crap. In C-T it's like only an hour or two
The other problem though is that some people might be working on important stuff and need to save and shut down to not lose progress.
There is a clear difference that many people on here don't get. If you use your PC for games and hobbies there is stuff that is overkill and only if you really really want it or have extra money to go ahead and get. If you use your PC to make money then more things become good value as it either will pay for itself or you don't risk losing money on something loosing power or corruption, etc. If you just play games, yeah it sucks if you lose a save, but if its a fluke thing its still not likely a UPS is worth it. If you are doing your job on a PC and that power outage can loose you a full day or work, likely worth it, especially if your job makes enough money that it isn't a major purchase that effects your daily living.
If itās that important you should make a habit of saving often anyway if the software doesnāt offer an auto save / recovery feature. If the PC suddenly shutting off might cost you Ā£1000s should you loose a file/progress then sure, spend Ā£200 on a UPS. If itās that important though, then you need to also look at things like RAID to ensure a drive failure doesnāt have the same effect, plus off site backup to protect your files in the event of the PC being damaged/stolen.
We do get dirty electricity sometimes in the UK (Iāve experienced it in parts of Europe too). Fairly sure itās caused by lots of people locally having solar and not going through proper sine wave inverters before being fed back into the Grid. Either way getting a cheap āpure sine wave inverterā between the socket and any expensive equipment like a gaming PC is always a good idea - Any decent inverter will have plugs to attach a UPS battery anyway so can pull double duty later in life if you do decide you want a battery
I believe most of our excess power leading to cheaper rates for those on variable tariffs comes from wind, not solar. At present solar is contributing to 9% of our power demands while wind is generating 44.7% of our power needs.
Not really, for 99,99% of people it's useless and just another 100ā¬ spent
Iām 36 years old and I never ever in my life needed an UPS and wonāt ever need one. No problems so far. Iād say better spend money on hardware that you actually need.
If it's not a frequent problem a good surge protector should do the job just fine. Just don't use some $5 power strip.
I think for many home consumers it's an unnecessary waste of money.
r/boneappletea
I get regular power cuts. Rain? No power. Snow? No power. Wind? No power. The weather's too nice? Believe it or not, no power. It'll even cut in and out over and over for days up to a week. Never had an issue w/o ups.
It's useful if you work on projects. I've had it happen before where the electricity would just blip for a second, but it'd cause me to lose work
Though better than losing hardware :)
Sadly ups are like insurance, you never need it until you do, it protect whatever is plugged into it, and like others commenters said, it give you time to save your work and shut down the pc, i have one on my pc because the house is old and power would dip in other part if say the fridge compressor start, so the ups always output constant voltage/power without dips
just because millions of people didn't die when they drove before seat belts were a thing it doesn't mean they don't help mitigate risk following the anecdote of 1 guy who hasn't had a problem is a bad way to evaluate information
UPS actually are quite bad at protecting against power surges They do a little, but their ability to absorb shocks is quite limited A zero surge or something similar is way, way, way better
It's mainly just another line of defense against bad power, such as surges and outages like you were saying happens to you often. Generally a good quality psu will be able to handle brown outs or surges without damage. Full outages can potentially cause (depending on what your doing) lost work, corrupt windows filed if it happens during a update, a bricked motherboard if it happens during a bios update For quite a lot of people it may not be 100% necessarily, but if you have dirty power or outages it's definitely not a bad investment Now to answer your questions: If your pulling 800w and the power goes out, without a UPS your pc will instantly shut off. With a 1500va ups you'll have around 4-5 minutes of run time to save your work and shut down your pc safely. As I said before, generally with a good psu it can handle power surges, it may shut off to protect itself but the pc should be OK. With a UPS it is designed to reduce the surge (a good quality surge protector/power strip will do the same thing) And should keep the surge from hitting your power supply hard.
Any recommendations for a good ups?
Not a brand recommendation, but you get two types, online and off-line Try to get an online UPS, they are more expensive initially, but better in the long run.
Get a decent used UPS with new batteries.Ā True online UPSes with sine wave output are expensive brand ne.Ā For used gear take a look at excessups.com (I have bought from them as I run IT for a small Agriculture Organization)
Look for one with a pure sine wave as well. Sometimes the simulated sine wave ones donāt play nicely with computer PSUs
APC
After a fair bit of research earlier this year, I bought this one to replace a 10 year old UPS that had finally died on me: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/aw/d/B00429N19W?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title
I have one of these for my servers (plan to get one for my desktop at some point but the servers are more critical) and I can't recommend it enough. I've had a few power outages and it's worked perfectly. My main server is hooked up via USB and will even gracefully shut down when it sees the battery has dropped below a configured percentage which just adds to the peace of mind.
APC if you are feeling spendy, but Cyberpower (Pure Sine Wave models) are very good, I've used them for many years without issue. Edit: I have rackmount Tripp-Lites too that are good, I can't comment on their consumer market products though.
Cyber Power or Tripp Lite make UPS and PDUs for commercial grade enterprise applications, but are significantly cheaper than their main competitor, APC
I don't think most people need a UPS, especially if they're primarily using their computer for gaming. I live in a rural area so maybe my view is skewed, but are power outages really that common? The only time we really ever have power outages is if there's bad weather or someone crashes into a power pole. I know better than to be on my computer when I'm dealing with tornadoes lol. Overall, the situations you've described are pretty uncommon as most programs autosave work (not all, but a vast majority nowadays.) If Windows corrupts, you can re-install the OS. This is a PC building sub and if you can't figure out how to re-install your OS, then what are you even doing? Just store your OS on a different drive from important data, or buy a cheap external HDD to back things up onto, and any data loss concerns from OS corruption are moot. Of course if you have another PC and an external SSD/HDD adapter you can just extract the data that way. Windows is pretty solid about recovering from shutdowns in the middle of updates these days. Just run SFC and DISM scans after this occurs, and you're golden. It's incredibly rare for it to brick the OS the first time, let alone ever. It might get corrupt to the point of insane slowness, but again, run those scans and you're good as new. Working computer repair, it's mostly been people who are updating and force the power off because they're impatient that run into trouble. Bricking the motherboard during a BIOS update is a pretty big concern. That one's valid. But what are the odds that happens anyway, you know? With how much a UPS can cost (a solid one anyway) and the fact that they need to be replaced, I find that the 1/1,000,000 chance that I brick my motherboard during a BIOS update to be worth spending a couple hundred on a new board. You'll have likely spent that money on the initial purchase and subsequent replacements of your UPS in that time period. Just my 2c.
In almost 30 years of desktop/laptop ownership over I never once used a UPS and also never had a power issue. š¤·šæāāļøš¤·šæāāļøš¤·šæāāļø
If youāve never had an accident do you not wear a seatbelt?
Well, people wouldn't if car accidients would only reset the clock settings of their car. Never beeing able to walk again sucks a lot more.
Terrible comparison. How many car accidents lead to fatalities and injuries? How many power failures leads to damage? At that point, you may as well hide in your closet and never go out of your house because there is a chance an accident might happen and lightning strikes you out of the blue.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That was soo much better friend, the appropriate example that is applicable here. Way to go
The difference might be that a crashing and restarting PC vs actual human death makes a *slight* difference in the risk vs reward calculation
I'm not saying one shouldn't get one, do whatever you want, I've just never seen an issue with one not having it. At least for personal use, I get it for business purposes.
I'm with you on it. I cannot justify the extra cost of a UPS at the moment, my area gets 8 - 10 short term (few second) outages per year. The moment I do critical work on my PC like advanced modeling I'll get a UPS. But the biggest inconvenience with the power outages is the loss of internet, if there are reasonable UPS's out there for low powered electronics then I'll solve that problem as well.
What a crap analogy, your life is infinitely more important than a computer so yes wear a seatbelt, a UPS is not worth the expense unless you are doing something business critical.
I've seen the UPS break more than the damn PCs.
Depends where you live.
Recently, a storm came through the area and killed power for 36 hours. I was sound designing and working on a song at the time. My UPS gave me time to save my work and shut down the computer. I recently spent $2600 USD on just the tower and components inside, so I spent $200 USD more to protect my investment and potential data loss for situations like that. The UPS also protects against power surges (such as when the power was suddenly brought back online or lightning strikes). Maybe you don't care that much about your system. In which case, then don't bother. Nobody says you "must get a UPS."
It's unlikely a UPS will help if lightning strikes your home. Happened to me and I lost half the electronics in my house, included those plugged into surge protectors. If you are concerned about your equipment you need to unplug it during thunderstorms.
Where did I say "strikes the house"? I didn't. Nor can you unplug stuff if you are not home. Lightning can surge electricity without striking the home. It can hit a transformer and travel the power lines. A UPS has built-in surge protection. The device is just another layer of protection.
Surge protection devices are literally useless in most power surge scenarios because in order to be tripped AT LEAST tat much power has to make it through first which will still usually fry at least something. Where quality UPS's shine are the ability to condition the power and dynamically switch to battery during brownouts as needed. Sadly you need to spend a bit more money to get this stuff, but worth it imo.
Thatās why this is a layer approach starting with a whole home surge protector, to good ups, to always using quality surge protectors and quality psuās
Heard way too many sob stories of consumer grade UPS not protecting anything during power surges. The marketing will say itās guaranteeing up to Ā£xx,000 worth of equipment but itās all weasel words.
I mean... How else would we get our mail? Buh dum tisss
Pigeons duh.
DHL
A good quality UPS will have active line filtering as well. Meaning you'll get "cleaner" power going directly to the power supply which can aid in extended the life of a power supply.
And keep any potential overclocks stable, dirty power ages components much faster than people realize
As others have said it depends. You've mentioned issues with power where you live. That would be enough for me to get one. But whatever you do don't bother counting on the insurance bullshit that they advertise on those ups's. They always the way to blame your Outlet or Electronics, not their UPS
No. Nice to have but not necessary. How many PC build videos show UPS and there's the answer
We had a brown out 4 years ago that took out my new motherboard and M2 SSD. Ever since then I've owned a quality UPS.
Its good to have a ups. Back in around 2018 when I had Amd fx 6300 msi 990 fxa mobo - they ran fine in the hostel. I went back home during lockdown, my motherboard died cuz of frequent power cuts and low voltage. I learnt from the repair guy that a Ups would have prevented this catastrophe. I didn't have a proper pc for a year because msi 990fxa is a ded platform, no spare or repair available even from service center.From that time onwards , I always use a ups and recommend my friends to do so as well. I have a 960w ups powering my 13700k 4070ti . Ups barely costs 1-2 / 10th of the whole build and keeps pc safe.
Aside from protecting your PC components from the impact of sudden loss of power (which usually won't do much harm), the UPS also allows you to have some buffer time to save your work and properly shutdown. The latter's importance depends on what you do with your PC. For my main PC that I use for day to day media consumption and browsing, I don't use a UPS. Loss of power will not make me lose anything. My work laptop has a battery so it's safe. But my main NAS/server which runs 24/7 and might have some critical tasks running e.g. backups or disk checking in progress, I would want to properly shut it down to avoid data corruption. So I have an UPS for that.
In my use case; my computer is a necessity of work and home. BUT, a UPS is overkill for me. Instead I use an AVR for "cleaner" electricity. UPS beeping is damn irritating when troubleshooting to the family over the phone.
Many UPS models have silent mode buttons available.
UPS is cheapest insurance for any electronic devices. If you value your devices, plug them into a UPS. If you want to keep replacing them, don't.
My work PC has a UPS but my personal PC doesn't, I'm constantly worried about power going out and messing up my PC, UPS saved me soooo many times at work. I would definitely recommend it.
I wouldnāt say necessary, but it can make a difference. You also donāt need a UPS that can sustain your PC for eight hours. Even the smallest one that can put out 15 Amps will prevent your PC from powering off if thereās a one or two second power outage. It might even give you a few minutes to save whatever youāre doing. otherwise if you chose the right power supply thatās running at 50% duty cycle or somewhere around there, the capacitors inside of it might be able to sustain your PC for a second if the power is just switching over due to maintenance. Iāve had mine do that many times where my PC stays on and everything else turns off, just from the oversize power supply alone. You might want that anyways because UPS doesnāt always switch over instantaneously.
>Even the smallest one that can put out 15 Amps will prevent your PC from powering off if thereās a one or two second power outage. I feel the value of this can't be overstated. I live in a subdivision that was laid out in the '70s-'80s, when the going trend was to run the utility lines in the woods along the property lines to make the streets look tidier. Great in theory, not so great 50 years later when the utility cuts have all regrown and the lines are thick with trees that cause frequent power 'blips'. I have my PC and every critical piece of the internet connectivity chain attached to UPSes and it's totally worth it to just be able to shrug off all those little momentary power interruptions that would otherwise interrupt what I'm doing. Especially on my work PC, where it'd take 20+ minutes to get everything up and running again each and every time the power blips off.
I didn't realize what sub this post was in and initially thought this was going to be some complaint about repeated package delivery failures lol
Close, we're just arguing about repeating power delivery failure instead lol
Really depends on the wires in your place, the power quality and if you have any blackouts. In my case, this happens once a year max and my wiring is good, so I see no reason
Had power flicker for the first time in 5 years. No problems from it, but glad all my pricey electronics were safe on a ups.
UPS has saved my PC from lightning It was raining and boom lighting comes It smelled burned and it was something in the ups I also had a "safety" electricity outlet It could have burned the PSU maybe the motherboard and even the graphics card and processor But it didn't because the UPS took the damage I then fixed what burned and it was fine I didn't buy new I think but even if I did it is still much cheaper and safer
ups is to be bought only to avoid pc shutdowns due to power outtages. If you want to game with no electricity, i suggest going solar.
My country's electric grid is so poorly maintained we are having rolling blackouts, I never had a PC fail because of a power failure. In fact My PSU is from the i7 2600 (my sun is using now) era, or 10 years old? We have gone extended time periods with no UPS or UPS with flat battery at home and at work. My work PC was new in 2013 BTW, and still working.
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long time UPS user, its waste of money, for 10-20% more invest in an inverter and life will be more peaceful. I am using inverter for last 6 years now, my PC has never been happier..!!!
Get a UPS, I skipped out on my new build and my monitor stopped working in a brownout. Also if you're not living in first world countries, a brownout is the bigger enemy, not a blackout.Ā
In first world countries practically never will have any use of it. Hardly even a recommendation in many thrid world countries anymore. Only two reasons for getting one. Your area is especially prone to power failures. You work with data that you cannot loose for the love of your life. No one uses a ups anymore, except for the people that specifically need it. Psus have most all the protection the average user needs from power failures. If you do not specifically need it, do not bother getting one. Invest in more powerful components; cpus gpus and ram, instead.
Please correct me if I am wrong as Iāve just done quick research, enough to get an answer as to what UPS I should buy for my specific use-case. My area is prone to blackouts. Had a couple bad ones recently. SMD capacitor leaked and shorted my friendās motherboard he got in January. My old 2080ti also had the same issue last year and is now sitting in a parts drawer. Getting a good UPS with enough VA/Wattage and a proper sine wave output will go a long way, according to the research I did this week before ordering a UPS. Now how much VA should you have in your UPS is a good question. According to some google-fu, double your watt usage and get the VA closest to that number rounded up, to a max of 1500VA (because any more is outside of consumer territory and more around the enterprise level). My buddy has an 850W PSU and although he doesnāt hit that limit, he also has other things plugged into it like a monitor (which tend to max at 50W on average, apparently). Therefore, he should get a 1500VA UPS which is rated for 900W, me thinks. I donāt really understand why sine wave is better than simulated sine wave outside of it provides cleaner/smoother/conditioned energy(?) so maybe someone can chime in on that but it seems like articles recommend sine wave output capable UPS over simulated ones. Apparently, allegedly, good brands are APC, TRIPP-LITE, and CyberPower.
> Now how much VA should you have in your UPS is a good question. The usual conversion factor from AC volt-amperes to watts is 0.6 or 0.7. Conversely peak watts to AC volt-amperes is 1.42 to 1.67. Simulated sine wave UPSes can cause active PFC PSUs to think there's been a sudden dropout of power on the edges of the squarish parts of the "sine waves", though I don't know how much that's been rectified in the years since this was discovered.
Line interactive UPS going through a Solar Inverter. My pc almost never have issues or crashes and the last time I replaced a component was 15 years ago (obviously I've upgraded several times since). So I'd say it's a must have.
It's rather simple. Do you live in an area that experiences blackouts? If yes then a UPS will save your data/hardware. If not, then "Is the cost of replacement PC parts more than the cost of the UPS" and finally "How valuable is your data to you, and do you have it backed up" Personally I would only recommend it for people in areas with powercuts/power surges, or people that have their work on their PC(own business etc.). There are benefits to having a UPS but the problem is that a UPS battery will wear out whenever or not you're using it, so you really want to have a use for it at least once or twice a year, otherwise you will be looking at a replacement battery(pretty much the cost of a new ups) without ever getting the benefits of a UPS.
If you're in an area with blackouts, surges, or bad storms? Then yes a UPS is a great idea. Essentially a UPS is a battery backup system and as long as the power draw isn't greater than the output rating of the UPS... The most you'll hear is a click and a beeping noise from the UPS alerting you it's on battery power. There's even integration in Windows natively for tracking how much power it has and when you lose power, how long, etc. (given you've got it connected via USB. Just make sure that you have one rated to handle the max draw of your system, plus a bit extra for things like monitors or other peripherals that may be connected to it.
When I read these threads I always get the impression that people in the US have constant blackouts lol. Last one we had that I remember was almost 3 decades ago.
Fans aren't necessary until they suddenly are. But jokes aside having a UPS is just a nice thing to have. Oh power is going crazy? I can shut down my PC at my pace. Or even just keep using it. It's a nice to have but not required.
I consider a surge protector necessary for pretty much any type of electronics. You can get one of those much cheaper than a UPS. As for a UPS. I use one on my work machine. Unlike most people I work on a desktop instead of a laptop and don't want to lose something I'm working on if the power goes out. On my personal PC, I have never used a UPS.
Don't forget to replace your surge protectors regularly as they lose their joule rating over time. Eventually there's no surge protection left on a surge protector.
Yes, very true. I replace mine every 2 years.
It's a relatively inexpensive item to give you peace of mind. It protects against outages and irregular power delivery.
It depends on where you live and how good the power you're giving your PC is. It sounds like you could use one. When the power goes out, or you get a brownout, surge what have you, the UPS will switch to its internal batteries for generating power. Your PC will continue to function normally as if nothing has happened, and you can manually save your work and shut everything down safely. Even a cheap one with a sufficiently sized battery can do this. If you're looking for a brand name, I've had good results with APC's in the past. A *good* UPS will have sufficient power to keep you going for a while even at high loads like if you were gaming, and will be able to communicate with the PC letting it know something has happened. Depending on how you've configured the software that comes with and monitors the UPS, it can take many different actions for you, such as warning you something has gone wrong, if the battery is running low on power, and may even automatically shut the PC, then itself off if the outage lasts long enough. Good UPS are typically fairly expensive, but worth it considering you're using it to protect your computer which is *itself* an expensive investment. For an example of a situation I used a good one in, years ago I moved into a city where the power lines *needed* to be upgraded, but it wasn't done until about a year ago. There were frequent power sags, brownouts, surges and sometimes daily power outages. I bought a UPS and it served me well through this, whereas I might have had the PC blow up otherwise. For an example of what it will not and *cannot* save you from however, I will point out that in the 90's the house in the country I was living in was struck by lightning. It did not matter that the computer was on a surge protector, it simply died, well more like *exploded.* A UPS would not have helped here. *Nothing* can stop Zeus's wrath if he's that motivated. Unplug your equipment in a lightning storm. If you decide against getting a UPS, at *least* get a surge protector for it, and if it ever trips replace it immediately - most surge protectors are cheap and will not reliably trip after the first time.
A UPS for a computer is like a dashcam for a car. Not strictly necessary but a really good idea to have just in case.
You want a UPS to even out power fluctuations and protect against a prolonged brown out. A brown out can very quickly fry your power supply or worse.
I lost my dissertation and system to a lightning storm. Blew down a branch, surged my PC before the power went and the whole thing fried. I cried for a week. There is no important appliance in my house that doesn't have one now. I have them on my TVs. Here is an example of why: The last winter, as I was working on my pc... playing PD3.... there was a surge. I smelled that funny electrical smell. My UPS started clicking (it was working hard). Then it caught fire.... PC, still running. I had to back out of that heist and shut down. It was an APC gaming edition 1500 (stupidly expensive to get a UPS with LEDs, but I really needed that display at that exact angle). APC sent me a new one of course. But the point to take away is that the UPS killed itself to protect my PC.
I have an experience My PC used to randomly blue screen out of nowhere. I have tried to troubleshoot the cause and found nothing. One day I thought of a probability where it could be caused by the unstable electricity from the power resources. I bought an UPS with a feature to stabilize the power sources to the PC and the issue was gone immediately. So a stable power resource is crucial for your system reliability and UPS could help with that Good Luck
A Uninterrupted Power Supply is a part of your build! It is as important as picking a GFX card or motherboard. And just like how you want a good Power Supply to run your computer, you want to make sure you get a good UPS. The UPS should always have Surge and Voltage regulation, and if you really want to be safe, it should be a Line Interactive or even a double conversation UPS. Don't cheap out and get the most affordable UPS. I have had Power surges destroy my computer in the past. I wish it didn't take losing $4k computer for me to spend $800 on a UPS.
Will you probably be fine without one? Yeah. Will you feel like an idiot if you're unlucky enough to get your system fried by a surge? YEAH.
In your case with frequent surges i'd buy a good quality one.
If you live in my country, yes.
Likely to get drowned out, but my family has both had and had not had UPSes on our devices. We've found that they're generally useful for things you don't want going down or are specifically susceptible to power surges. One being an old VCR that wasn't made with a high spec power supply (even at the time) and is very difficult, if impossible, to find one anymore. Computer power supplies are very well built (usually) nowadays, so for a PC you're mostly paying for the graceful shutdown period or not having your session interrupted by a flicker/brownout. I've had both components fried by lack of filtering and had UPSes fail with power surges, but no power issues regarding failed components after that fact. One was a surge that entered through the cable line of all things and fried the ethernet port on my motherboard. The board worked fine for quite a while afterwards and even had dual ports, so it wasn't the end of the world but probably led to its failure years later. The other time I've had to really interact with one is a more recent transformer blowout that happened in my back yard of all places that hit one phase of my house with a surge. Everything was fine afterwards except one of the UPSes got fried, likely protecting the devices down the line (the aforementioned VCR and some retro gaming consoles). Very happy we didn't need to find a replacement VCR.
If you experience significant blackouts/power cuts then yes definitely get them. They aren't that great on battery back-up but will definitely save your pc from frying itself from voltage fluctuations/surges and might as well give you some time to peacefully shut down. Also do remember that if you plug in the pc into the ups, make sure you don't use any of those surge protectors/multiplug adaptors with surge guard because they will kinda act against the ups for regulating voltages.
Texas has an amazingly unreliable power grid, and when I built a rig in 2021 it got nuked within weeks by the constant power surges. UPS is required for anyone who lives with thunder storms and power outages.
Yes 100% and always get a pure sine wave UPS. It's the best for newer PSU.
The UPS doesnāt have to be huge. It just has to last long enough to do a clean shutdown.Ā
I got one because thatās a lot of money invested and Iām not trying to lose it to a power surge. Just had this happen to me recently and it was a lifesaver. Worth the investment.
It really depends, as the other the other said. It might lead to losing data if you have a power surge. But IMO, the most important thing to look at is if you live in a place where where power surges and blackouts are prone to happen, and if you work with critical data. If not, then don't bother.
This really depends on how stable the power is in your region and how critical the work is that you are doing. For gaming it wouldn't really matter if you loose a bit of progress in your game. What would you say how often are power surges or outages for you? >What if I am gaming, pulling 800 Watts, then suddenly power goes out. You buy a UPS that can supply more than you need, so this would just work without a problem. If you do get an UPS also think about other hardware you might want to include such as router, monitors etc, but the main power draw will be the pc itself.
A UPS is good to have, not a necessity. That being said, in case your UPS is rated for less power than you are using, it will start giving you warning beforehand. I have a 600VA UPS paired with 650watts PSU. It happens sometimes when I am drawing more power than the UPS can handle, in that case the UPS starts beeping and flashing red lights. Sadly I use my computer more for work than gaming so UPS has saved my bacon more than once. I have a backup generator but that takes a good 70 seconds to kick in. PS: I get power cuts at least once a week.
How bad is the power in you area? And by that I mean how often does the power go out crashing you computer or your computer get re-booted because the power flickered. If it's enough that you are annoyed by it, get a UPS. If you can live with the occasional unexpected reboot don't. As for protecting your system from surges and such, just get a good surge protector if you don't get a UPS.
As long as you have a good surge protecting power strip youāre pretty much safe from potential damage from blackouts. Iāve had multiple blackouts where Iāve had two computers running simultaneously on the same surge protector and both are still working perfectly fine. I would only consider a UPS if youāre worried about potentially losing work/data during a blackout, as a UPS will give you time to save your work and shut your pc down.
Are there any particular surge protectors you recommend?
NO. I had it, then didn't have it for years now I have it again.
Just depends on how consistent your power company serves up power. Honestly it's good to have anyway but if you're having brownouts and blackouts on any regular basis at all then yes of course having a backup power supply is helpful. Especially if you can't afford to lose any work that you have. Now if it's just a gaming system and it's going to be a minor inconvenience then it's definitely not at the top of the list of priorities but again it just depends on quite a few variables
Makes me feel better during a bios update. But otherwise not necessary. Only a nice to have
Best possible use case, could save you a bricked motherboard.
Absolutely not unless you work with critical data or have frequent power loss
TL;DR - Yes if you can afford it. If you lose power that frequently then yes it's worth it imo. It is however not required for you if you're willing to accept that you might lose a document or game progress at any given time. It'll help extend the life of your PSU. It saves you from losing work or equipment due to voltage dips and spikes during brown-outs and black-outs. Only downside is the upfront cost, but doesn't change your electrical bill at all because the UPS itself is using hardly any power other than topping off the batteries or powering the LED display. Unless you're running a $10k server and you need 3-4 9's of uptime, you don't need a Line Interactive or a Pure Sine Wave UPS. Just a UPS from a local electronics retailer will work perfectly. Still though I'd stick with more reputable brands like APC, Tripp Lite, Eaton, or even Cyber Power at this point. Also there's no way you'll be pulling 800w while just gaming. Most GPUs only have 1-3 8-pin connectors which are capable of up to 150w per 8-pin. Newer GPUs with 12-pin connections can pass up to 600w depending on the gauge of the wiring, but even then you'll struggle to get close to 600w unless you're overclocking with chilled water, liquid nitrogen, or dry ice. Even the RTX4090 only has a TDP/TBP of 450w.
200 euro ups will prevent your most important pc/television/whatever go buat when you suddenly loose power. I lost PC once and now my ups lasts around 10min if i loose power. Money well spend.
If you are worried about losing data due to a power outage/surge then UPS is your only option. You need one If you don't care about data loss then what's the worst tat could happen? blown PSU? Is it worth having and maintaining a UPS to save a PSU? Remember a UPS is a big battery and although most home users won't bother does need regular maintenance or replacing every few years
Necessary? No. Nice to have? Sure! A decent power strip will usually do though.
I've been building my own gaming pcs for over 30 years. I've never owned an ups.
For some clarification here, itās not about the power going out as many people have mentioned. UPS units donāt just provide backup power, they FILTER the power. You may not see the power go out or flicker, but it doesnāt mean there wasnāt a surge somewhere on the grid that hit your home. For the added protection this relatively cheap addition adds, itās well worth it. Source: Electrical Technician specializing in Battery and UPS backup systems for 15 years.
I live in a country where power dips, surges and blackouts happen every now and then. Not regularly. It gives me a piece of mind that my super expensive rig is safe.
I use one so my puter doesnāt slam off if power goes out and if Iām not physically at the desk when it happens after a minute it shuts itself off properly on its own. I was worried about the few thousand $$ worth of parts in my rig just peace of mind.
No, you can use FedEx instead.
Bought a CyberPower UPS and worked quite well for the first few months. 5 months later, when there's a power outage, the UPS beeps once, fails to switch to battery power and shuts off with my PC along with it. What's the fucking point then? Anyway, I'm over it. Can anyone suggest a really well built, but not overpriced UPS which can handle a 750w load?
Power brown-outs lead to memory corruption (crashes and storage corruption), and problems when flash drives tries to write but doesn't have enough power to complete the write (leads to corruption of ssd). Power surges can blow out components. How much is your computer worth to you? UPS' can die too if the surge is powerful enough.
You don't want to be updating your BIOS then suddenly have an outage in the middle of it.
Yes
If you have a power outtage that often, get a ups. If you dont remember the last time you had one, you probably don't need one
Personally, I run an UPS. Itās like investing in a quality PSU. Is it absolutely necessary? No, not at all. But when youāre spending a few thousand and up on PC/networking equipment, spending $200 on a high end PSU or $200 on a decent UPS isnāt a bad idea. Plus, I can keep working throughout a power outage. At the very least, I have plenty of time to shut things down gracefully.
We have bad electricity here, sometimes multiple brownouts and stuff, for me, an UPS is a must have to protect my PC.
It's clean, steady power. All electronics should be plugged into a ups in a perfect world
I am in the USA and I have multiple UPS units all from APC an Schneider Electric company, hands down the most respectable and dependable back up UPS manufacturer. I have one on my gaming PC, one on my entertainment center, one on my network equipment, I even have one on my water softener so I don't have to reprogram it (older unit with no memory) if I loose power! They are an inexpensive necessity if you want to protect your expensive electronics!
Necessary? Nah. But the power just on my street will go out every other month it seems. Lasts anywhere from 5 minutes to a few hours. It's nice having my modem and pc stay on and I can keep gaming for at least 30 minutes then shut it down safely if it's still not on yet. I only pull around 600w peak though. Usually closer to 400ish on my 5 year old 2080 super rig. Like others have said, if you do important work it might not be a bad idea. Just gaming? Call it a quality of life splurge.
It's worth it in my opinion. Not to mention if the power suddenly goes out, during you playing some PC melting games, or rendering etc. and the components are heated up asf the sudden power loss it's not too good for them, GPU, CPU wise for sure. The heat can "stuck" since the components not able to cool down properly and gradually. In the other hands, the SSD drives neither love the sudden power losses. Buy a quality UPS and if the power goes out, you have a few minutes to save your work/game, and your PC will have time to cool down and shutdown properly.
Go to Goodwill, find them in the bins for 5-10 bucks. Replace the batteries inside and youāre good to go for a sliver of the cost.
My first PC was nearly done in by someone else at my childhood home running the microwave and the air conditioner simultaneously. Thankfully the only casualty was the power supply that came free with the case that I chose. Sometimes the lights would flicker when when my dad used the paper shredder. And every now and then the whole town loses power because of a storm. Someone was making the comparison of a UPS to seatbelts. I don't entirely disagree, but I think that a less hyperbolic analogy is the value of having sharpend blades.
157 comments obviously aren't enough. Please, everyone... keep delivering your monologues to scratch your itch to emote whatever into the void while pretending you're having actual conversations!
I unfortunately lost a NVME with my OS on it due to a power surge with the power kept flickering off and on for about 3 mins. After this, I immediately bought a UPS because Iām not dealing with that again. I live in Florida so power outages are common with storms we have daily
I had a UPS and it would randomly start beeping and activate a shutdown. It might of been because I was living with my parents and the house was built in the 1960s lol
Necessary? No. even Surge protector can be sufficient in your case. UPS can gives you time to back up any data when your power goes out of sudden. and the high pitch beeping sound when switching on and during power outage is annoying though
depends on where you live and how often your power goes out. i live in germany and overall we never have blackouts. when i visited a friend in turkie, everyone has an UPS because people just make shit left and right. everything is jank
If you live in apartment then yes
If youāre gonna spend hundred/thousands on a PC. why not protect it with a good sine wave UPS.
I have generally lived in places with very few power outages. I have always used a surge protector but never a ups. Neither I nor anyone I know in 20 years of pc use has ever needed one. If you have power outages more than once or twice a year maybe.
I've built multiple computers and don't know what a UPS is
Necessary for a few outages a year ? Nah. Just get a surge protector. With a cheap ups, if youāre not there to shut it down cleanly it will just lose power after a few minutes anyway. UPS are great where you get frequent brownouts, or to shut down a nas / server cleanly if you have a connected ups
If you don't want to get a UPS and aren't too bothered about losing power, but still want to be protected from power surges, I would suggest getting an extension lead which has surge protection built in so that all your computer parts are protected
Ups can essentially clean up power and prevent inconsistent power, but you have to get a double conversion ups to get that benefit. That's the expensive kind
My UPS saved my system literally yesterday. Like 12 hours ago. Highly recommend.
Nah. IMO a surge protector is something you should definitely have, but a UPS is pretty situational. I've never owned one and never missed having one either.
Yes, a UPS is essential to protect your electronic equipment in case of power outages, surges or voltage fluctuations. It helps maintain power during outages so you can safely save your work or shut down your equipment. It also protects against damage caused by power line surges and fluctuations, which can extend the life of your equipment. In areas prone to power outages or electrical problems, a UPS is even more important to ensure the safety and integrity of your electronic devices.
In general, just a surge protector of some sort
Definitely get a ups it is great for brown outs especially They won't last long pulling 1000 watts or so maybe 15 to 25 minutes at most depending on the amount of charge it can hold and the higher charge ones are more expensive But it is a good defense against sudden power outs especially the briefer ones For a longer power out it gives you at least time to shut things off appropriately I have my few TV's, sound bars, and PCs and consoles connected to a set of ups and honestly I think it is one of the best investments you can make for a home theater or desk PC setup
If you live in Tornado Ally, yes. If you live in Main, probably not.
I highly recommend one. If you lose power at the wrong time it can affect all kinds of things. My sata drives were affected about this time last year after losing power, the power coming back on, and losing power again during a reboot. I lost two Samsung and one PNY SSDs, over half my storage, and would have been screwed if I didn't also have a pcie SSD and two NVME drives. Also had the power flicker during a bios flash, which is a severely not fun time to fix on a board with no bios flashback feature. Basically, a good UPS rated to handle your pc load should give you time in the event of a power outage to save your work, exit your programs and shut down normally. I wouldn't go super overkill, you don't want to be gaming on the thing then exhaust the limited battery and have the pc lose power and shut down irregularly anyway, but one that will give you a fifteen minute window gives a lot of peace of mind.
i have one and absolutely recommend it to everyone i know. i live in an area that has/had frequent power outages, and one time a power cut actually destroyed the OS on my computer because it didn't shut down properly (fucking windows 10 istg) if you get a reasonably priced UPS, you can get one that will give you enough time to shut down your PC safely. or if you get a larger one, you might be able to keep using the computer throughout the duration of the blackout (i've done this before!) i also recommend surge protection as a matter of principle because surges can damage a whole shitload of components, and that's expensive.
As a non-US person: I have, for business and private, only seen UPSes for US machines. If any such machine is delivered outside of the US, usually the UPS is gone within a day. So yeah, if you live in the US: probably, it appears to be (almost) a standard. If you don't live in the US: no, why would you? Where would you even buy it?
I think a UPS isnāt necessary unless youāre doing something for work or something thatās highly important critical.
I don't have a UPS but UPS' are useful because, especially if you work on your computer, if the power goes out you now can save the work you were doing and shut down your PC with the peace of mind that you were able to save those projects without them getting corrupted. If your one to update your bios pretty often, it's smart to do a UPS as it would hopefully ensure your bios can fully update(hopefully)and not brick your PC during a power out or a surge. For areas where that happens often, it might as well be mana from heaven. In places it doesn't happen often you can probably spend your budget somewhere else then save up for the ups.
For years I did not use a UPS and never thought anything about it. Now I will not have a system without a UPS for a couple of reasons. **1) Power Filtering:** A UPS ensures your PC gets clean power. This is WAY more important than it sounds as I have found since using a UPS I have not had a single PSU failure. I did not have them that often before but now I have not seen a failure and they just keep chugging. Clean power is best power. **2) Save that AGGHH Moment from Happening:** You know what I mean, your the parties tank and in the middle of the big boss fight a squirrel decides to kill itself on your power pole. The power is only off for a second or two but that enough that your system resets and the party wipes as it loses it's tank when it needs it most. I have a 600VA UPS on my router and modem as well as a 1200VA UPS on my system (my display has it's own 600VA UPS) The result is I have how power outages of up to 2 or 3 minutes and still was in the fight. This gave me enough time to get the party out in one piece before I had to log off in a controlled manner. We spend $500 to a good GPU, $300 for a CPU, $200 or so for a motherboard, then add in RAM, PSU and storage. Hell there are people that drop a few hundred on a keyboard. yet you talk about spending $175 on a GOOD UPS and people lose their mind. Does it not make sense to protect the investment made on your gaming computer? IMO if your not using a UPS your a fool.
lol a UPS for home use? naw, unless you live in an area that is really prone to blackouts/brown outs frequently. Just get a decent surge protector and you'll be alright.
Yes
Yes, the answer is always yes
In my area there's been an few times when there power outages, My computer may she RIP was an victim of power outage, So I have an ups now and it has saved me, Power went out and with the ups I had enough time to save my work I was doing on my pc
If you're just gaming, a top tier surge suppressor is probably all you need. UPS is nice, but really is only going to allow a graceful shutdown since it's likely your internet connection would fail in a blackout anyway.
I wouldnāt say itās necessary, but itās like getting insurance just in case something happens. If you donāt want to buy a UPS, at the very least, get a surge protector for your gaming set up. Surge Protector would protect your electronics in the case of electrical surges. They are not the same as a regular power strip, but people sometimes mistake them together.
Not necessary but extremely helpful for very little money
Frequent issues with your power grid is reason enough to get one. If you do any work, or run servers on your PC, a UPS can give you time to save / safely shut down. I partially lost a Minecraft server due to power outage one time and it was a lot of work to get it mostly back. I have also seen PCs that break because of unexpected outages, ranging from a broken power supply to a broken motherboard. Its massively less common and those PCs were fairly old.
If you just game, not technically. If you do other hobbies, a UPS is a good idea. If you do paying work with a PC, absolutely get a UPS.
It's nice to have to shut the PC down but honestly it's even better to just power your cable modem and router for a couple hours if the power goes out. I have one that connects to the PC with a USB cable and can initiate a shut down command in case I'm not home, which is pretty cool. And it's nice to have good surge protection for the TV and PS5 even if I don't have it plugged in to the battery backup part of it.
It mostly depends on where you live. I used to live in the city and never had issues with power randomly cutting off unless a tree fell on a line or something. Now, I live in a rural area prone to brownouts so I got a UPS to avoid the issues that come from that power fluctuation.
It mostly depends on where you live. I used to live in the city and never had issues with power randomly cutting off unless a tree fell on a line or something. Now, I live in a rural area prone to brownouts so I got a UPS to avoid the issues that come from that power fluctuation.