Are these ups good?

[goodpsusearch]

I got 5 similar ups. They are not a known brand name, Xpower, but they are working. 2 of them are 800VA rated and the rest are 600VA.

2 use 12V 9Ah batteries and the others use 12V 7.2Ah. All need replacement.

Searching the web I found they are line interactive. I also found a psu comparison from pc world greek edition: http://www.pcw.gr/Product/UPS-genera...e/55-2236.html

battery time 7:10
voltage threshold before switching to battery (V) 175
switching time (ms) 10
power 800VA
type Line Interactive
dimensions 100 x 140 x 330 mm
weight 6 kg

What do you think?

Adding them at my pc (athlon XP 2000+@2200+, 1GB DDR, ATI 4650 AGP, 2 x 7200 hard drives, 2 dvd rom/rw drives and 2 case fans)
or at this system (Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 2.66GHz (gigabyte dynamic overclocking up to 3.2ghz), 1x512mb ddr533, nvidia 7600GT, hdd sata 80gb 7200rpm, dvd rom & dvd rw , 2x9cm fans) will make them run safer?

[japlytic]

Re: Are these ups good?

The main board looks like a Centralion Blazer 400, which the circuit can be found on www.eserviceinfo.com

[momaka]

Re: Are these ups good?

Adding them at my pc ... will make them run safer?

Nope.

UPS units are like batteries - if the power to your house goes out and your computer is connected to a UPS unit, then you can still use your computer for some time (think of it as running a laptop on a battery).

From what I've read on this forum, though, cheap UPS units are usually not a good idea. But I have absolutely no experience with any so don't take my word for it.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

Thank you for your posts.

I always thought that ups was useful for 2 thing: Its battery and some voltage regulation it does. The first function has little interest for me, but the second, if true, will be very appreciated. Are these units able to filter voltage fluctuations?

[i4004]

Re: Are these ups good?

they essentially just produce their own voltage once mains voltage goes too low...

they also should be able to protect pc psu from too big voltage spikes etc.

when mains is ok(99% of the time), it's just passing it thru.

but it's very usefull when power goes out and you were typing a big document etc.
you can save it and shut down the pc.
that is its main purpose, to let you finish your job.

[Toasty]

Re: Are these ups good?

Caution using non sine-wave units with PFC PSU's. There has been some discussion here and elsewhere about damaging the PSU's. Until you're sure, don't use them with any device that uses a PFC power supply. A bit of Googling will help.

Toast

[i4004]

Re: Are these ups good?

>Caution using non sine-wave units with PFC PSU's.

mostly a-pfc units, i believe.

indeed, delta with a-pfc destroyed old apc backups unit over a period of time...

so i just don't buy a-pfc psus, rather than buying new ups unit...hehe...

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

I ordered new batteries for 2 of them and recently received them. Just one 800VA ups is enough to keep on my basic pc and 19'' tft eizo L767 for more than 5 minutes!

I was also able to boot system from battery, I then tried switching from ac to battery while system was running 3D Mark 05 (cpu and graphics card stressed) and it did very well!

Antec True Power 2.0 A-PFC worked flawlessly with the pseudo-sine-wave output these units produce.

The second ups is going to be used with a pentium D 2.66 and Nvidia 7600GT pci-e, monitor samsung 17'' TFT, not tested yet thought...

Meanwhile, a friend of mine who is in my university's computer service, decided to mod his own ups and made a small guide in Greek. I upload it here with his permission, just in case anyone finds it useful.

Sorry, no time to translate it in English, but I will try to help if you have any questions about it

http://rapidshare.com/files/33891528..._Watt.doc.html

http://www.yousendit.com/download/S1...TmE5NVVLSkE9PQ

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

I opened this 600VA UPS piconet that has been working for 2 years to check its capacitors. I found a bad Jamicon TK 50V 10uF and replaced it with Chemicon KY 50V 10uF. Some pics attached.

The only bad thing about that ups is that it gets very hot (fan-less design) and this has an impact at the battery life. For that reason a friend of me drilled holes at his ups case and placed the battery out of it.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

Just a question about a mod I did on that 600VA ups to use an external battery. The battery is a used VARTA 12V 56Ah automotive battery.

It managed to power a 100VA PC for more than 30minutes and the multimeter showed 12.20V. I didn't let it more because car batteries should not be fully discharged.

The ups is able to charge the battery and finally provides a standby charge voltage of 13.72V.


The only thing that concerns me is that the cable I made to connect the UPS and the external battery gets too hot after some minutes of ups in battery mode. I went to the electronics store and bought a bigger cable, but it gets warm too. As you can see in the photos attached the new cable is clearly larger than the original UPS cable. That doesn't make any sense to me.

What do you think?

[budm]

Re: Are these ups good?

Well 600VA UPS has 400Watts power, so for 12V batteries to produce 400Watts of power, it will need to supply about 33A of current (Ohms law), now you know why the wires get hot! you will have to keep it as short as possible and larger than the load require. It is going to be a hunk of wires. If the look at the internal fuses where the batteries wire go to, you will see 40A fuses there.

[kc8adu]

Re: Are these ups good?

i use #6 in short runs on 12v units.the excessive drop in your wires will cause early low voltage shutdown and more heat as the duty cycle ramps up due to the low voltage.
and yes repeated deep cycling will damage a car battery but it will most likely die of grid corrosion on long term float.this may take many years.dont worry about it.
just tested a 14 year old 8d that has been on a ups at least 10 of those years.it still gives good runtime and passes a 1000a load test.has about 30 deep cycles on it.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

You were right!

I connected the old wire in parallel to the new as you can see in the photo attached. The cable length is 1 meter.

I tested it with ~275VA load and it got hardly warm. In fact the original UPS cable gets warmer! The UPS cable is 12AWG.

Thank you

[budm]

Re: Are these ups good?

You can measure the voltage drop on the wire easily.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

There is ~0.15V voltage drop. That means ~4W heat loss across the wire?

[ben7]

Re: Are these ups good?

Just a question about a mod I did on that 600VA ups to use an external battery. The battery is a used VARTA 12V 56Ah automotive battery.

It managed to power a 100VA PC for more than 30minutes and the multimeter showed 12.20V. I didn't let it more because car batteries should not be fully discharged.

The ups is able to charge the battery and finally provides a standby charge voltage of 13.72V.


The only thing that concerns me is that the cable I made to connect the UPS and the external battery gets too hot after some minutes of ups in battery mode. I went to the electronics store and bought a bigger cable, but it gets warm too. As you can see in the photos attached the new cable is clearly larger than the original UPS cable. That doesn't make any sense to me.

What do you think?

The cable gets hot because you are using spade connectors on there! Those don't handle more than 25A safely.

[budm]

Re: Are these ups good?

Is that the voltage drop before or after the new wires?
That wasted power of 8Watts, 2 wires: one for supply, one for return.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: Are these ups good?

It is after the new wires. Before the new wires there was a ~0.35V voltage drop if I rememer correct.