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My cable modem and router plus a few other gadgets run on 12VDC wall warts so I run them all from a little 12 V PS with a built in battery backup. My little power supply is about 15 years old, battery half that and it has never failed me.
Jimmie
Lookie here:
The account number works for me. But, if you don't have one they CAN charge sales tax and sell it to you (if you don't get a jerk).
damn, the one I actually needed is still $40 there. I guess maybe I'm spoiled by looking at wholesale prices all the time
nate
The Eaton Magic Decoder ring:
3 series are standby 5 series are line interactive 9 series are on-line dual conversion.
Helps to have a business licence or retail permit too. (you get the better price that way)
Any respectable distributor doesn't give the same price to "retail" customers as he does to dealers or other wholesalers. The guy I buy from sells to garages and security companies etc, as well as to guys that sell to those guys.
On 2/17/2011 1:35 PM, snipped-for-privacy@snyder.on.ca wrote:
I have an enterprise level work station that I use and I get them cheap from a company that sells medical office systems. When a customer upgrades, the computer company takes the several year old systems back to the shop, cleans out the hard drive and sells them. In 2009 I got several of the systems for me and a few friends. All 3GHz P4 with Hyper-Threading and they're darned fast. When new, the motherboards were quite expensive and high quality. 7200rpm Barracuda SATA hard drive and a SATA CD/DVD+RW along with a multi-memory card reader. Not the same low level of stoutness you see in the consumer supply channel. The only one I've had any problem with was the system I assembled for my friend's wife who closed the box up in a compartment under a desk and filled all gaps around it with papers and file folders. She smothered it during the summer, poor thing. It could just be the power supply, I don't know yet but I haven't seen any burned spots. I service point of sale systems from time to time and the Dell, HP/Compaq and IBM/Lenovo computers are not the same models for sale at Walmart, Office Depot, etc they're only distributed through the business and corporate supply channels. These computers are built with higher quality components and heavy duty power supplies. I've noticed they'll take a lot of abuse without gronking. Another item that is very different is the hard drive. The enterprise grade drives are designed to hammer away 24/7 with a high MTBF ratings and consumer grade drives are designed to operate with a certain number of hours of operation per month in mind. The drive that came with my PC is somewhere in between. Of course heat kills, keep the dirt out of your PC and it will last a lot longer, I find some of the dirtiest PC's in the cleanest of offices. :-)
TDD
Thanks, that is helpful.
The more I think about it the more I think that I may still be shopping for a new UPS in the vague future, because I'm hopfully going to be looking for a new house soon. If it ends up set up like my friend's place I would actually need three units and I currently only have two. The Eaton line does appear to be quite a bit less expensive than comparable APC stuff and if it's better quality so much the better. My only experience with them is ordering some large power conditioners that were spec'd for a job at work... engineer spec'd a part number, I ordered it. They worked fine, although they were noisy.
The reason I could see myself needing three UPS's would be as follows:
1) first one, for cable modem and switch in basement.2) second one, for wireless access point, located somewhere centrally in house for best coverage.
3) third one, at big mother PC set up in home office (which may or may not be at same location as 2)the reason I didn't need this at my old place was that there was no "structured wiring" panel or Ethernet wiring run inside the walls, so I didn't have 1) above. I used the built in switch in my wireless router to provide a drop to the "office" which was actually in the basement and directly below the living room, where the wireless router was located. So, only two UPSs.
thanks again,
nate
I'm not sure what you would consider "consumer grade" equipment, but yes, my home built computer has been running non-stop for over 5 years. I usually upgrade my system long before anything fails on it's own. I select many components for quietness and lower power consumption, which usually translates to higher quality as well.
Except for damage caused from power surges/outages, I have not had any hardware failures in many years (except for some faulty RAM I bought that started flaking out in the first couple of weeks). Hopefully the UPS will help reduce those rare failures.
Of course, something WILL eventually fail, or be damaged by external causes (power surges, fire, theft, etc.). So, I'm rather religeous about backing up routinely and swapping backups with drives I keep off site. I can always build a new computer, but I can't replace one of a kind data (photos, financial records, etc.).
Anthony Watson Mountain Software
You're a smart feller to backup your data. Do you clean the dust out of your PC on a regular basis?
TDD
Why spend $40 when you can buy them for $10 "all day"????
Why do you need a 3/4 KW ups for a wireless router? If you catch 'em on sale, you can buy a perfectly adequate ups for about the cost of a battery alone.
It can vary considerably, but statistically, almost ALL power disruptions last less than a few cycles. If the power is out for more than a minute, it'll probably stay out longer than most consumer UPS's can handle.
Your options are like comparing apples to oranges. YOU have to decide whether you want apples or oranges.
If it were me, I'd plug the router into the ups that serves the PC and be done with it.
That's for work, not for personal use.
However, it appears that $40 retail is about as good as it gets.
because the old one is 650VA, and APC will only let you trade even or up, not down.
That's really the situation that I'm trying to alleviate, rebooting of the router when the power drops out for a half second or so.
Doesn't work, PC is in different room. (see my most recent post.) If the wireless router is placed in the basement, I don't get good coverage on the 2nd floor.
nate
Don't know there, certainly he should shop around for price.
He indicated a new UPS for the PC, not the router. The old PC UPS would be moved to the router.
The purpose of the UPS is to provide time to either:
As I noted in my other post, it comes down to quality. If the UPS with dead batteries is a high quality unit, it's likely worth replacing the batteries. If the UPS is a cheap unit it's likely better to just replace the whole thing.
Many of us have equipment in multiple locations in the house. Short of wiring in dedicated outlets around the house wired to a single large UPS, it is most practical to have multiple smaller UPSes.
We use a lot of Eaton brand here at work. Batteies usually last about
5 years so we normally replace the whole unit.Jimmie
"Pete C." wrote in news:4d5ee369$0$7164$ snipped-for-privacy@unlimited.usenetmonster.com:
HOW does 750 VA(IOW,watts) translate to "3/4 Kilowatt"?
Jim Yanik wrote in news:Xns9E90C92F7C8C5jyaniklocalnetcom@216.168.3.44:
750 watt = 3/4 x 1000 watt = 3/4 kWatt
Yep. I tell my customers "Hold my beer and watch this. Your computer is about to elect a new Pope!"
Squirt.
Sure enough, giant clouds of white smoke appear. The angles sing, the saints rejoice. God's voice (via the internet) is no longer muffled!
Jim Yanik wrote in news:Xns9E90C92F7C8C5jyaniklocalnetcom@216.168.3.44:
Apologies,brain malfunction.
People are dumbfounded by the amount of dust that collects inside their computers when their surroundings seem so clean. For years, I've admonished folks for putting their computers on the floor under the desk or anywhere on a carpeted floor. I've grown quite fond of thin clients that hang off the back of the monitor and are convection cooled. It's a lot easier to keep a server on a rack clean especially if the case has air filters. :-)
TDD
It doesn't. 750 VA does not generally equal 750 W, it depends on the power factor. UPS typically get rated by VA or KVA capacity at an ideal
1.0 power factor, however since most loads are less then 1.0 power factor the UPS's real world capacity in Watts is less than it's rating in VA. Thus a 750 VA UPS is more like 500W capacity.
About two weeks ago I got a memo saying that all equipment associated with a PC should be on the same breaker as the PC. Otherwise would be an unusual case but I'm sure it happens. Good advice for home entertainment equipment too.
Jimmie
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