It's been one of those summers in many areas of Australia, with plenty of afternoon thunderstorms. When it comes to protecting your technology, the simplest, cheapest and most guaranteed way to protect against electrical surges caused by lightning is to simply pull the power plugs out of the wall sockets. However, it’s not just surges that cause problems — blackouts themselves can cause a loss of data, especially when your PC drops its bundle on the spot. That’s where uninterruptible power supplies (UPSes) can pick up the slack — you can think of them as battery packs for desktop PCs, but not just desktops: they can run a range of 240VAC-powered devices for a period of time.
Of course, if you’re using a notebook, the notebook’s battery should automatically kick in and keep you going for up to three hours (depending on its charge), but for desktop PCs, a UPS is something you should at least consider. A UPS contains a sealed lead-acid battery that remains on trickle charge while the AC mains power is available. As soon as the power’s gone, the battery kicks in, powering a built-in AC inverter that supplies 240VAC mains power to the devices connected to the UPS’s AC sockets. They range in price from around $100 to thousands of dollars, depending on how much power you want them to supply, how long you want them to supply it, as well as other tricks such as USB monitoring, auto-shutdown and LCD notification panels. In terms of size, they range from oversized power boards to the size of desktop computers.
What to look for in a UPS
For home use, you’re looking for mainly three things: the number of AC power sockets available, the maximum output power capacity measured in volt-amps (VA) or watts (W), and the capacity of the battery or runtime of the system. The number of AC power sockets is the most negotiable of these because you can always expand them using an AC power board, although doing this may void any insurance offered with some models. Where you pay the real money is the output capacity and runtime of the UPS.
The output capacity of the UPS tells you how much power it can deliver or how much of a load it can handle on battery alone. The greater the output power capacity, the more PCs, notebooks and gear it’ll be able to keep powered up. For example, a UPS rated at 350W should be able to keep two late-model desktop PCs powered up (late-model desktop PCs with a monitor running light load applications should consume less than 150W).
You should aim for a UPS with enough power to handle the devices you need to keep running, which should only be your PC and monitor, rather than peripheral devices. Remember, UPSes are generally designed not to keep you working, but to allow you to shut down your systems gracefully without losing any data.
The length of time the UPS can maintain those power levels is determined to a large extent by the capacity of the battery. The larger the battery, the longer it’ll run, but the more expensive the UPS will be to purchase. Importantly, the less power you draw from the UPS, the longer the battery will keep you going too; for example, a UPS may output up to 375W of AC power for three minutes. If you drop the power draw back to 100W (a late-model dual-core desktop and 22in monitor), that runtime will jump from three minutes to around 10, giving you more time to save your files. These days, even the cheaper UPSes now offer USB monitoring software, which can also automatically begin the shutdown process on your PC without you having to be there.
Another issue you may need to consider is the time it takes to charge the built-in battery backup again. If you flatten it, it could take up to eight hours to fully charge again, which means if you get caught with another blackout before that time, you may not get the full runtime you expect, depending on how hard the battery had to work the first time around.
For most situations at home, a 400W UPS would be more than enough to enable two standard non-gaming desktop PCs sufficient time to shut down. That said, most UPSes only support auto-shutdown of one system — the other system you’ll have to do yourself. Unfortunately, to get a UPS with larger-capacity batteries usually means you have to go for one of the higher-output options, which will give you more output capacity than you’ll likely need and cost you more as well. That’s the trade-off.
Most models also include some form of surge protection on the AC outlets, so it’s worth checking to see what insurance they offer. Upwards of $25,000 of insurance may sound great, but the ideal is to avoid replacing your gear or requiring data recovery in the first place. My tip is if you hear thunder rolling around, shut down your PCs and pull the AC cables out of the wall sockets. Losing your important files and irreplaceable memories isn’t worth the risk.
