Please recommend an uninterruptible power supply

[EarthDog]

You know, overclocked Haswell-E is power hungry. Add some health overclocked FuryX to it and you get a pretty damn high system load.

Indeed.. but mostly that Fury X, LOL! I have a 980Ti and a 5820K at 4.2GHz, I don't break 375W at the wall stock. Overclocking to 4.2Ghz and the card moderately (1450/1900MHz), I see around 450W at the wall (so ~405W actual).

 

[xvi]

I figured so. Strap on some solar panels onto my back and it is a done deal.

Something like this?

That is a LOT more elegant than what I had pictured in my head.

 

[xkm1948]

Some more power numbers:

1080p playback: 185~190Watt.
CPU only sequence alignment: 300~320Watt(My job)
Old 3D Games: 375~400Watt. Like TF2, L4D2 and etc.
Newer titles: ~450Watt. It is interesting to see some crazy magic effect in DragonAge inqusition will bump the load from ~350Watt to 400watt instantly
CPU+GPU sequence alignment: 575~610Watt. WOW. To give it some credit the GPU sequence alignment is a lot faster than CPU along.

 

[laszlo]

i used a few UPS and never was satisfied with offered time 5-10-15 minutes depending how old the batteries are... when i saw that 2 new batteries cost me almost as a new unit i connected 2 x 12v car batteries and have juice even 1 hr....

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Nah, I think I am fine. I don't like to install extra software. Windows 10 recognized the UPS just fine. After configuring the power options it should be able to take care of that easily.

My Windows 10 installs sees a battery is attached but Windows doesn't know anything about it (e.g. charge level). It won't power down when it should unless I have CyberPower PowerPanel installed and configured. Additionally, the software usually provides a means to self-test which will tell you if it is new battery time. I did that on all three of my CP1350PFCLCDs today and discovered one of the units has failing batteries (100%->3% charge in a matter of seconds).

 

[Aquinus]

I'm with @FordGT90Concept on this one. Get PowerChute installed so it can shutdown before the battery gets run dry (that's how you killed Lead-acid batteries,) and so you can configure things like when it switches (due to dirty power,) and to keep track of various statistics. For my XS1500, it will randomly do battery tests on a regular basis to ensure that it's good. Running the UPS without PowerChute could kill your UPS a lot faster than running without it if you power does go out often.

The big key is that you want your machine to turn off when you're not around if it's on as opposed to running the battery dry which isn't good for the battery.

Congrats on the UPS though, may it serve you well.

Side note: Upper 500s is not unreasonable on my own machine under very heavy load.

 

[rtwjunkie]

I second @FordGT90Concept as well. The software is especially good at shutting down for you at whatever limit you set. I have set it so my server automatically shuts down after about 6 minutes IIRC. It will also tell you whether it has any records of boosting power or reducing power with brownouts or surges. It actually gives you a great deal of control over what the UPS does.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I can even turn off the audio alarm on my CyberPower units.

 

[Bill_Bright]

Nah, I think I am fine. I don't like to install extra software. Windows 10 recognized the UPS just fine.

I recommend you install it too. As stated, without PowerChute, Windows does not know how much battery run time you have left during an outage. The result will be a sudden "crash", with the potential of losing your data, and possibly corrupting your boot drive.

Other advantages are being able to test the UPS and checking logs. But also, you can change the cutover voltages for when the UPS intervenes as well as its sensitivity.

There are 3 running processes/services associated with PowerChute and on my system, together they consume less than 20MB of memory and worst case was a mere .1% of CPU resources which lasted about 1 second, if that.

I can even turn off the audio alarm on my CyberPower units.

I think that is a pretty common option. It is the button on the left on the APC shown above.

 

[xkm1948]

I will think about it. Thanks for the suggestions!

 

[Bill_Bright]

You can always uninstall it later if you find it is somehow adversely affecting your system.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I think that is a pretty common option. It is the button on the left on the APC shown above.

Older CyberPowers only have one physical button and that's for power. Newer ones have a lot more buttons (and one is for the alarm).

 

[xkm1948]

The PowerChute uses .Net 2.0. Yikes. Never liked .NET softwares, caused so much problem back in catalyst center's days.

 

[taz420nj]

I recommend you install it too. As stated, without PowerChute, Windows does not know how much battery run time you have left during an outage. The result will be a sudden "crash", with the potential of losing your data, and possibly corrupting your boot drive.

Other advantages are being able to test the UPS and checking logs. But also, you can change the cutover voltages for when the UPS intervenes as well as its sensitivity.

There are 3 running processes/services associated with PowerChute and on my system, together they consume less than 20MB of memory and worst case was a mere .1% of CPU resources which lasted about 1 second, if that.

I think that is a pretty common option. It is the button on the left on the APC shown above.

Windows 7/8/8.1/10 do see the charge levels over USB (not serial though). When you plug in a USB UPS it puts a battery/AC icon in the tray just as if it were a laptop, and it shows the battery percentage/charging status. Just like a laptop it takes a few cycles for it to learn the percentage-to-time correlation, but since the built-in low and critical battery actions (with a UPS, the critical alarm should always be set to hibernate BTW, or else it could force shutdown and you could lose data) are based on percentage anyway it is moot. Aside from letting you change certain other settings that you'll probably never change again, Powerchute is meh.

Is APC finally putting an actual USB port on their UPS's or are they still using that stupid proprietary 10 pin RJ45 data port? I have a buttload of those cables (brand new) if anyone needs one.

I've been using CyberPower units for a while and I'm nothing less than happy with them. I have two OR1500LCD rack mounts and three of the AVR1500LCDs (the other one you were considering) and they haven't let me down.

 

[R-T-B]

The PowerChute uses .Net 2.0. Yikes. Never liked .NET softwares, caused so much problem back in catalyst center's days.

I think that was more AMD's fault than .net tbh.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

The PowerChute uses .Net 2.0. Yikes. Never liked .NET softwares, caused so much problem back in catalyst center's days.

.NET is awesome because Microsoft coded, tests, and makes sure it is secure and updated a huge amount of core data. Applications written 10 years ago are still getting security updates because of it. .NET is a brilliant technology--way better than JVM.

All of my software is coded using .NET Framework. The only bad thing about .NET is that applications can take a while to start after restarting the computer because the CLR has to start up. This is why Terraria takes forever to start.

 

[R-T-B]

.NET is awesome because Microsoft coded, tests, and makes sure it is secure and updated a huge amount of core data. Applications written 10 years ago are still getting security updates because of it. .NET is a brilliant technology--way better than JVM.

All of my software is coded using .NET Framework. The only bad thing about .NET is that applications can take a while to start after restarting the computer because the CLR has to start up. This is why Terraria takes forever to start.

Java too gets a bad rep. While I won't dispute .net is better performing in many situations, most of java's bad rep comes from the idiocy of still insisting on shipping a web plugin with it.

 

[Aquinus]

.NET is awesome because Microsoft coded, tests, and makes sure it is secure and updated a huge amount of core data. Applications written 10 years ago are still getting security updates because of it. .NET is a brilliant technology--way better than JVM.

All of my software is coded using .NET Framework. The only bad thing about .NET is that applications can take a while to start after restarting the computer because the CLR has to start up. This is why Terraria takes forever to start.

How does someone complaining about .NET turn into a slam against Java, which is also partially false? I have Jars that were made a decade ago that run just fine on the latest JVM and last time I checked, Oracle releases new versions on a regular basis with security updates...

 

[AsRock]

Still, idling around 170watt is kinda crazy. I guess I will use my macbook air more at home now when I am not playing games.

Holly crap, I remember my X38 ASUS maximus mobo E8400 and later a Q9550 used to run 190w idle with a 6970 at the time, i ended up replacing the board and it dropped to around 85w idle. Overclocked or not with power saving it did not matter it just idled at that.

When buying a new system it's one thing i check as it's not needed and is just a plain waste of electric.

Nah, I think I am fine. I don't like to install extra software. Windows 10 recognized the UPS just fine. After configuring the power options it should be able to take care of that easily.

Same here, how ever with the APC just like my Cyberpower you should be able to alter trip points when the power is to low or to high.

 

[R-T-B]

How does someone complaining about .NET turn into a slam against Java, which is also partially false? I have Jars that were made a decade ago that run just fine on the latest JVM and last time I checked, Oracle releases new versions on a regular basis with security updates...

My guess: They are both high level languages that at some level, get interpreted by a VM. Not sure how he figures Java doesn't get updated though.

It's all off topic anyhow.

 

[remixedcat]

I'd rather have .net than java tho java is way more insecure :|

 

[Aquinus]

I'd rather have .net than java tho java is way more insecure :|

I'm going to claim foul on that one. Got any proof to back that up that it's the JVM itself that is where all the holes are at?

If you use Java like most other programming languages, e.g. to write standalone applications, it is no less secure than other languages and more secure than C or C++ because of no buffer overflows etc.

But Java is regularly used as a plugin inside the web browser, e.g. similar to Flash. Because in this case the user runs untrusted code without having explicitly installed it, the idea is to have the code run inside a limited sandbox, where it should not be able to somehow act against the system or the user (e.g. read local files and send them to the website, scan the local network etc). And this is where Java failed in the recent years, e.g. new bugs popped up sometimes on a daily basis which allowed escaping from the sandbox.

Also, sometimes bugs in the byte code interpreter or native libraries lead to buffer overflows and could compromise the system, but in this regard Flash is usually considered worse.

And as for the other languages being better: these usually can't even run as untrusted code inside a sandbox (exception is JavaScript and maybe Flash), so they would be even worse because there is no inherent way to limit their interaction with the system.

http://security.stackexchange.com/q...-insecurities-are-other-languages-more-secure

Anyways, this is all an unneeded distraction...

 

[R-T-B]

I'd rather have .net than java tho java is way more insecure :|

Again, it's no more insecure than .net. Any .exe is inherently insecure if you run it as admin. Actually .jar has the advantage of not being treated as a direct exe, but I digress.

The reason Java is considered such is it's web plugin, which nearly all browsers block now anyways. Why Oracle maintains that is beyond me.

 

[Aquinus]

Why Oracle maintains the web plugin is beyond me.

I fixed your statement just to be clear that it's not the JVM that's insecure but rather a web plugin that allows unsigned code to run.

 

[rtwjunkie]

secure

Anyways, this is all an unneeded distraction...

Not really. Everyone has been explaining to the OP why he should install the UPS program, and his reasoning not to is that it is written in .NET, which is ludicrous.

Anywho, these .NET and Java comments are an extension of that, discussing what possible reason the OP could want to stay away from .NET programs (which really limits one's self to what programs are available for use, including a number of games).