UPS / Battery Backups - Tested

See this thread by Alex on his opinion on UPS systems: www.digitalstormonline.com/forums/forum_posts.asp?TID=16991&KW=UPS

But in my apartment complex, I get 1-5 second black outs once a day and longer ones once a week. And i'm in California, so I get to look forward to rolling blackouts this summer.
My requirement was a UPS so Windows did not get corrupted. I did not need hours of runtime - a few minutes of runtime for me to shutdown the PC or for the UPS to gracefully shutdown the PC.
I'm partial to the Cyberpower UPS, as I have used them in the past and they work great: www.cyberpowersystems.com

System: ODE Level 4
Intel Core i7 3930K @4.5Ghz
2x ATI Radeon HD 7970 3GB
1050W Corsair P/S
Dell 30" @2560x1600
Only the PC is plugged into the UPS, nothing else.

Playing games: Crysis 2, Dirt 3, etc with max/ultra settings, the system uses ~550-650 watts (i've never seen higher than 650 watts playing games):


Under extreme stress testing: FurMark, Unigen benchmark, LinX with max/ultra settings, running ALL at the same time, I see 900-950 watts, the highest I've ever seen is a spike to 1010 watts. Though this load is not realistic under normal use, I tested the UPS under this load to be sure it worked:


UPS #1
Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD 900W 'Simulated Sine Wave UPS'.
This is from their "Small business and home solution" product line.
Street price $170-200.
I tried this first, not knowing how much power the system used. This UPS did NOT work well with my system. At 600-700 watts it worked fine, but above 700 watts, every time the power failed, the UPS ran for a few seconds and would shutdown - so the PC would lose power. I'm not sure if this was due to battery capacity given the load, or the "Simulated Sine Wave" function.
Recommendation: I would stay away from "Home solution" products and a 900W rating is not enough.

UPS #2
Cyberpower CP1500PFCLCD 900W 'Pure Sinewave UPS'.
I was going to test this, but I decided to pass given the 900W rating.

UPS #3
Cyberpower PP1500SWT2 1000W 'Pure Sinewave UPS'.
This is from their "Enterprise" product line.
Street price $300.
This model worked PERFECTLY. Testing at 920-950 watts, it consistently provided a few minutes of backup and gracefully hibernated my PC. It handled the spike to 1010 watts fine... the overload alarm goes off, but the system kept running. Zero issues with this model.
Recommendation: If you're in the 850-1050 watt PS range, I highly recommend this UPS.

UPS w/Higher wattage rating
If you are considering getting a 1400-1500+ watt UPS... they get very expensive and you'll need a 20A or even 30A circuit (obviously I could not upgrade the power in the my apartment).


Obviously I'm drawing conclusions from very limited testing - but I wanted to share my results.


Edited by Dreamin - 24 Mar 2012 at 6:19pm

Thanks for the informative post.

I have the Cyberpower 1500PFCLCD, I've used it exclusively with the rig in my signature and also the Dell U2410 monitor plugged into it. With normal usage (333w exactly) I get around 15-18 minutes of run time. At peak usage, which for me is around 760w realistically (not running tons of tests) I average around 4-5 minutes.