Recommend a UPS?

SparrowHawk

Hi All,

Looking to purchase a UPS for my home setup. What I would expect to run off it are:
HP Microserver
2 x Laptop
2x Router
1xSwitch
2xNAS Box

Can anyone recommend one that would handle the above?
Or recommend a B&M shop that I can go talk to someone about them & maybe purchase?

Thanks in advance,

SH

ED E

Go through all your devices, find out what the draw is, then you'll now what your requirements are.

coylemj

You don't need a UPS for laptops, they can look after themselves for a few hours, well after most UPS devices will have shut down. If you're buying a UPS, make sure that it's a brand with good support as you will need to replace the battery after a few years. APC is the market leader for home and small office devices, you'll see them beside the cash register in most restaurants and bars.

Add up the watts rating for all of the devices you need to provide cover for - don't count non-essential devices like printers, you can connect them to surge-protected sockets but they typically don't need UPS cover because you can get by without them during a power cut. Most decent UPC devices will have a number of sockets with UPS cover so they will provide uninterruptible power for network devices, servers and desktop PCs, then there will be sockets with surge protection only and you may also have network passthrough sockets for surge protection.

When you're deciding what to buy, it's the number of watts and the number of minutes power cover that will determine how much you will need to spend.

EdenStudios

Agree about the laptops. If you've a modern laptop with good battery life it can generally take you through most outages.

Just a note about the routers. You're probably running some pretty heavy traffic via these but in the past we reverted to tethering on phones for a few hours connectivity.

is that a possibility?

biko

You can try this http://www.apc.com/tools/ups_selector/
Just enter all your devices etc and see what model it recommends, then buy one of theirs or from a competitor.

SparrowHawk

Hi All,

After more research I went for one of these. Perhaps more than I currently need, but been using for a couple of months (one power outage) and very happy with it.