ups home build - to cover short period mains dropouts

Jan 02, 2012 5 Replies

Any suggestions as to what make/model UPS (of whatever!) to use to protect 1 PC (~ 500W) against short term mains dropout (5 sec. would be fine). I quite like the idea of building my own so if anyone has a circuit design available that would be great (although I suspect not economic). The PC is used for sound/studio work so I don't really want a noisy fan cooled unit. The ones I see on ebay seem more that I need for what seems a modest power requirement (as is only a few seconds). Thanks for any suggestons.


I rate APC units. Use them for all sorts from single PCs up to large server racks. Making your own isn't economic:

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Ok thanks - I just guessimated the 500W - based on it being a 500 W - psu but doubt it's taking that. :-)

Do these things tend to make much noise? Either fan-based or inverter? tvm

Ta for all the suggestions - I won't be wasting time trying to build one anyway!

I only needed coverage for about a quarter second to cover about 95% of outages, and just paralleled up a second HVDC storage capacitor in some of the PSUs. That was in the days before PFC PSUs - not sure if it would work with a modern PSU.

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