Help me choose a UPS

[PAugustin]

Thanks for those replys. I'd be glad if I could go woth a 700VA because of the price. The only upgrade I see in the future is Parhelia, it'll wait a few month though.

[rylan]

For standard home use, a standby (offline) type UPS is perfectly sufficient.
APC makes good quality stuff and is reliable.. check into the BackUps Pro600, it should be good for your system and give you around 20-30min of uptime.

As was mentioned, an active online system is better, but quite a bit more expensive, and in my opinion isn't necessary unless you've got some power chuggin server action going on.

[PAugustin]

Well I don't have any critical server to protect. Only my home system. I don't really care about battery uptime as I haven't had any blackout for years.
The main purpose of the UPS will be to filter the power of my system. For exemple: when somebody switch a light off on the first floor, there's a crack in my speakers. I guess the rest of my system suffers also.

[LvR]

If your main motivation for getting a UPS is the light switch causing audio crackle and possible system damage, then I think you are wasting your money.

Rather get a sparky that knows what he is doing to investigate what is going on and possibly get that switch/light replaced. Arcing contacts (either on the opening or closing action) can be very easily cured by spending about $3 on a new switch. You will also sleep much easier at night I am sure knowing that a certain fire hazzard has been taken care of.

[az]

I have this with the fridge at my girlfriend's - but it's a combination of a small one-room apartment, a cheap fridge, and el-cheapo speakers.

I think a UPS would be overkill, too, though. But if you want the blackout protection AND the filtering, it must be an online UPS.

I don't know, but aren't there any good filters out there?

AZ

[PAugustin]

LvR: thanks for the input. I currently live in a house and there are a lot of switchs but it might be interesting too look at them first. It would be a lot cheaper to change some switchs.

az: the speakers are old Cambridge fps1000, so cheap speakers also. And my Denon stereo system has no cracks at all...

[rylan]

Don't the APC standby UPS units provide some power line filtering?
You can always get a good surge supressor strip that has line filtering too.

[Jammrock]

To reduce costs on the UPS, you can only plug in one monitor to the battery backup. That would drop your required power by quite a bit. So if the power drops, you still have one screen to work off of.

Jammrock

[Greebe]

The only thing that limits the online time of any UPS is the amount of power the batteries can hold. With saying that and knowing the crowd around here adding more batteries in parallel with the original ones can significantly increase the running time (not the power rating)

[Wombat]

You might be able to get away with just a line regulator.

[Dilitante1]

check ebay and grab a line filter AND the biggest UPS u can find 8D

best option


-Dil

[PAugustin]

Thanks everyone.I've checked my finance today and... I won't buy anything until I can find a job.
I'm gonna keep this thread for future reference.