Need a reliable UPS for Gaming PC (first time - pls help)

[Stealth3si]

Sometimes the fuse in my house trips and I lose power for 10 minutes. And I would like to buy a good reliable UPS to keep it running during downtime. This will be my first time looking for a UPS so I don't know what is a good brand or how much power I should be aiming for. The PSU for the PC is EVGA Supernova 750W G3 and the GPU is a 2080 Ti and the CPU is Intel 9900KF. They are overclocked. I have other devices such as a MSI Optix MPG341CQR monitor, a 55" LED HDTV, a SVS PC-2000 Subwoofer and a Denon AVR-X3300W receiver. However, I intend to only plug the PC into the UPS b/c the gaming session along with opened tabs and work-related documents is what I want to protect and save. Basically I'm doing a lot of stuff and have a lot of stuff open and I don't want to be interrupted. I don't really care ab the other devices since they turn back on in a few minutes and have no data or anything like that. In the distant future, I may plan to upgrade the PSU and GPU to a higher wattage. i.e. nvidia 5090, etc. Any help is appreciated!

[Subtitles]

A UPS is not meant to work as a supply power for a long time. It is used mainly to protect your computer from surges and let you shut it down manually in a short time.
If you want to keep playing then you should buy a power generator which works on petrol and unless you live in a private house this might not be allowed in apartments because of the risks of fire and you need to take necessary precautions.

There are other kind of power generators like solar power generators.

Anyway, if you still want to use a UPS, then I would suggest buying APC brand. We have used them in the past in a company that produced medical equipment and APC was quite reliable.
Please remember that a UPS uses a battery with a shelf life of about two years. I had to throw away my UPS because the battery replacement was more expensive than buying a new one. Perhaps new models use a better battery now so this is a point that needs checking.
Useful read
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uninterruptible_power_supply

Please check the reason why the fuse trips perhaps it is cheaper to deal with this than buying a UPS or a power generator.

[Stealth3si]

Yes I just want it to stay on until I can shut it down. In most cases, the power goes out and comes back on its own in 5-10 minutes. I just need the UPS to keep it running for 5-10 minutes until the power come back on. Once the power comes back on, will the UPS go back to using the electricity from the wall or from the battery?

As for the fuse tripping issue, it's been happening for many years and yes I had electricians service it quite a few times over the past decades but the house is just v old (over 30 years old) and has poor design, fault wiring and parts and was initially built w/ shoddy workmanship when the neighborhood got a grant from the city to build a housing project in the middle of an impoverished district. Whenever the issue is fixed, everything is great until it comes back after a year or two and then we replace the faulty parts again. Rinse and repeat. I've been dealing with this for most of my adult life and it just take one day out of the blue to ruin a session where important data is lost. I don't think it's an over use of electricity, the wattage meter is showing 450ish watts from the wall. The trip affects only the room where the PC is in, meaning the power to the room goes out and comes back after a few minutes while it resets itself. No other room in the building is affected by the fuse trip. But yea it's probably faulty wiring or parts which happens to only affect that one room.

[Subtitles]

Well it looks like a UPS might be a good thing to have.
Just visit the APC website and look for a suitable model. You can also call them or ask for their recommendations on which model is best for you.
https://www.apc.com/us/en/

There are other manufacturers so check others in case you find APC rather expensive.

[creakndale]

Stealth,
One thing to also keep in mind is that most efficient, modern Power Supply Units (PSU's), like your 750W EVGA, incorporate a Power Factor (PF) correction circuit. In my experience, these PSU's do not like to run off of Modified Sine Wave (MSW) Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).

When I started looking into this over 15 years ago, I bought an APC Back-UPS (Modified Sine Wave) and thought I was good. At my first power outage the PC immediately shut down. My rig contained an XFX 650W PSU which incorporated Power Factor correction circuitry. It took awhile to figure out why this happened but bottom line: the Power Factor Correction circuit inside the XFX Power Supply would shut the power supply down when it was fed a Modified Sine Wave.

I ended up getting an APC Smart-UPS which outputs a Pure Sine Wave (PSW). That solved the issue. The negative is a Pure Sine Wave UPS is much more expensive compared to a Modified Sine Wave UPS.

My suggestion... look at the reliable APC Smart-UPS with 1500VA (900W) or greater capacity. However, this size UPS starts at around $500. The large batteries make the UPS heavy (55 lbs. for the 1500VA model). The Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) batteries typically last 5 years.

If you want to get more technical, get a "Kill-A-Watt" meter and plug your PC and monitor into it and note the Volt-Amp (VA) usage. Then you can view the Runtime Curve to see if a specific size UPS will last through your power outage.

Here's a link to the 1500VA's runtime curve as an example.
https://www.apc.com/us/en/products-runtime-graph/SMT1500C/apc-smartups-line-interactiv...tslot-avr-lcd/

creakndale

[Stealth3si]

Stealth,
One thing to also keep in mind is that most efficient, modern Power Supply Units (PSU's), like your 750W EVGA, incorporate a Power Factor (PF) correction circuit. In my experience, these PSU's do not like to run off of Modified Sine Wave (MSW) Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS).

When I started looking into this over 15 years ago, I bought an APC Back-UPS (Modified Sine Wave) and thought I was good. At my first power outage the PC immediately shut down. My rig contained an XFX 650W PSU which incorporated Power Factor correction circuitry. It took awhile to figure out why this happened but bottom line: the Power Factor Correction circuit inside the XFX Power Supply would shut the power supply down when it was fed a Modified Sine Wave.

I ended up getting an APC Smart-UPS which outputs a Pure Sine Wave (PSW). That solved the issue. The negative is a Pure Sine Wave UPS is much more expensive compared to a Modified Sine Wave UPS.

My suggestion... look at the reliable APC Smart-UPS with 1500VA (900W) or greater capacity. However, this size UPS starts at around $500. The large batteries make the UPS heavy (55 lbs. for the 1500VA model). The Absorbent Glass Mat (AGM) batteries typically last 5 years.

If you want to get more technical, get a "Kill-A-Watt" meter and plug your PC and monitor into it and note the Volt-Amp (VA) usage. Then you can view the Runtime Curve to see if a specific size UPS will last through your power outage.

Here's a link to the 1500VA's runtime curve as an example.
https://www.apc.com/us/en/products-runtime-graph/SMT1500C/apc-smartups-line-interactiv...tslot-avr-lcd/

creakndale

Thank you for sharing your experience and info! Do you remember the exact model that used the modified sine waves?

My kill-a-watt meter shows ab 460-ish watts and VA under load. When the outage occurs, I only need ab 5-ish minutes for the power to the room to reset itself. I looked around on Amazon for APC and found also a CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD. Apparently, I did a bit of research on this and it seems it's v close to pure sine wave.