Both are on sale at Costco, at the moment.
$109 https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/battery-backup/cst135uc2/
Or
$170 https://www.cyberpowersystems.com/product/ups/battery-backup/cst1500suc/
I got a rig with a i9-14900 with a 4070ti Super, but with local brownouts I was hoping either one will cover it. Hoping to go with a cheaper option, but if the group consensus is the more expensive option I’ll go for it. Thanks for the help! 🤞🤞
I’ve got a similar Cyberpower 1500, it’s simulated sine wave. It’s perfect for my desktop, network gear, and NAS. Pure sine wave seems like it would obviously be better, idk how exactly, but none of my hardware seems to care about simulated sine wave. The 1500 gives me enough time to shut down the desktop and it’ll run the NAS and network gear for a few hours. If I’m full power gaming (5800X3D, 3090, big ultrawide OLED) and the power goes out, I get about 15 minutes. Batteries lasted 3 years before they needed to be replaced, that could have been due to high ambient temperatures.
Thinking of going with the 1500, despite it costing $170 vs the other one. I do want the ability to log off in a brownout. I still don’t really get sine vs simulated myself, but I’ll trust there’s a logical reason? 🤔
Wow, thanks so much for sharing this! It really helps to see it explained.
It sounds like the one for $109 should suffice for my situation then, right? Seeing as it’s just a desktop, essentially.
Yes, it should be fine for your use-case. More sensitive equipment would want/need a true sin wave.
Mind giving a few examples for what the more sensitive equipment might be? Really appreciate you answering.
My understanding is that pure sine is only needed for inductive loads, like motors. If you run a vacuum cleaner with modified sine, it’ll sound bad, maybe not work, maybe something will overheat, etc.
Computer power supplies are resistive loads (although reading about it just now it’s slightly more complicated than that) and they don’t mind the modified sine.
Computers use switch mode power supplies. The first step is a bridge rectifier, they could run on a square wave or ~170vdc. Most have active power factor correction, which chops the incoming current up even more.
Cheap capacitive dropper power supplies won’t like a modified sine. Simple motor loads won’t either. If you’re doing radio frequency work, it will be a huge source of noise but shouldn’t damage anything.
performance metrics for power supplies (a PSU as opposed to a UPS) are calculated using the regional AC sine. anything other than a pure sine is going to make the connected PSU work harder and, eventually, marginal components may fail.
having said that, stepped square, modified square, simulated sine are generally going to be perfectly fine for virtually any consumer equipment you connect to it.
cyberpower make cheap (but halfway decent) UPS units. I have used both APC and cyberpower for years without issue.
So I can easily get by with the simulated in my situation? I only plan on using it for my monitor, desktop, modem and router.
I would say yes. I have never used a pure sinewave UPS outside of a data center situation and all of those are on-line units as opposed to line-interactive anyway. I have personally never seen an issue with stepped sine UPS units on typical pro/consumer workloads.
lots of small and mid sized shoestring budget deployments make use of “economical” (but name brand) UPS units on legit sensitive equipment without fuss.
edit to add: of course, if your mains supply is absolute garbage, then a better quality can make a difference. if utility is clean and the UPS will just be doing ocassional brown/black out duty, then I would not spend more on a sinewave UPS.
It will mainly be brownout/blackout duty, thanks for responding. 🙏
I can’t figure out why that one is more expensive, the 1500 seems to me the better one at minimum because of more outlets, more output, and it puts out a true sine wave power. I just got a comparable model at Best Buy for about the same price. (Also got a smaller backup to put the modem/router on). Either way, Cyberpower looks to be the best manufacturer to go with, APC has a lot of negative reviews compared to them. I used to have a APC long ago that did fine, but that was then.
Leaning towards the 1500 myself, but I don’t know much about simulated vs pure sine. The 1500 is $170 and the simulated one is $109. Which is a lot, but I don’t want to end up sorry lol. 🤔
Mainly just depends on how sensitive you think your equipment may be to the variations, and of course how often you think you’re getting brownouts. Plus a bit more features. For $170 that seems to be a great deal.
Lately I’ve seen 2 brownouts, and fortunately I wasn’t using the computer either time. 🤞
Then I’d opt for the better one, because you don’t see all brownouts, only the ones that are long enough to affect lights and more sensitive devices. I have one touch light that would go out when everything else would be fine. So you most likely have very “dirty” power, at least in the room you see this going on.
I’ll also add that since putting my UPSs in, occasionally I’ll have them click. It’s not registering as anything on the software monitor, nothing I can see via lights, but I’m sure it’s breaker or whatever they use to step in and keep things clean.
They usually aren’t common, but started this year during the summer in SoCal. Likely due to Southern California Edison, but most the locals are peeved. I just want at least some assurance I can have a minute or two, so I can power down.
Mine claims about 25 mins to power down with a resting pull of 240 watts, 15 mins while using GPU for SD or AI stuff (400 watts). The key importance in my mind though isn’t the time to shut down, but how long term dirty power will cause failure in your components. I learned this the hard way back in the C-64 days where I went through 3 of them (Circuit City warranty covered them) before I got a very crude version of a UPS to stop killing the poor computer with ups and downs in power surges.
Ah I see, well it sounds like I have a lot to learn in this area lol. Not to mention, glad I finally got a UPS. 😳
Most usually say to avoid simulated sine wave and others will say pay extra for sine wave.
Someone here might be able to answer the question better, but you might want to pay extra. I think later replacement batteries for the sine wave might cost extra though.
I wouldn’t worry too much about replacement batteries. They are just standard sealed lead acid batteries that you can replace with generics without paying the high OEM prices. The ones I’ve replaced are just a spacer between two batteries with a sticker holding it all together. I just took my bad ones to a local battery place, said I need replacements and then they recycled the old ones for me.
Good to hear. So you say there are battery places? I live in the states, worried it shortens my list of choices.
The cheaper one (CST1500SUC) seems better, actually. Not sure why. It claims sine wave output while the other one is Simulated Sine Wave. Assuming they mean Pure Sine Wave and Modified Sine Wave, Pure is much better.
Arguably computers really don’t care about pure vs modified, but pure is usually more expensive.
That was sorta my question, while one’s $109 and the others $170. It’s really hard for a newb like myself to know, as I don’t know the difference lol, I live in an area of SoCal with recent brownout’s. So I’m looking for protection. 🤔 Not sure if Simulated will be enough or I’ll be sorely disappointed I didn’t go pure.
Sorry to be irrelevant, but I hope that you know about the voltage problems that many 13th and 14th gen Intel CPU’s have. If you haven’t already, I would advise you to look up some BIOS configurations to prevent damage until Intel releases their microcode update this month.
It’s not irrelevant at all, as I’m aware but appreciate you mentioning it. Since it really needs more attention right now.
With that said, I’ll trying to look through Lenovo’s BIOS settings and see if I can find anything related to the issue. I know most companies try locking down over clocking settings. 🤔
And for now, I’m intentionally avoiding using the rig until the Intel update for the issues released, and have a UPS. It’s not optimal, but I’m trying to be patient lol. sigh
I do know that Cyberpower has some reports in the past of their UPSs being a fire hazard. Definitely caused me to go with APC when I bought one a couple years ago. https://www.tomshardware.com/news/cyberpower-upses-reportedly-pose-fire-hazard
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