Since moving to the outskirts of Melbourne up in the mountain I've quickly realised that I've gone back to living in 1990 because I can only receive Ch 7 on a good day, ADSL2+ sync speed of 3-3.5MBPS and continually power outages.

The first two won't blow up my computer but the third one will, so what do people recommend for a home UPS that just needs to power 1 desktop (300w PSU) long enough for it to initiate a shut down, say < 10 minutes?

catch of the day had a little belkin UPS / powerboard a while back going cheap. one of my mates picked one up for his linux box since he lives in the sticks and the power would cut out a bit and seems to do the trick.

http://www.belkin.com/au/IWCatProductPage.process?Product_Id=460629

Officeworks has them for 109$
http://www.officeworks.com.au/retail/products/Technology/Power-and-Cables/UPS/BEF6S600

Those prices are nuts, I was expecting to pay $300-400 for a small UPS. Glad to see there are plenty of options in the $100 range.

nah bugger that, plug your monitor in elsewhere and have it turn off if the power goes out
just run your PC from the UPS and make sure the UPS is configured to shut your machine down when it reaches critical battery levels

All I can recommend is to not buy anything under $150. They'll won't last too long. I've bought a few and one of them even fried my motherboard when someone yanked the plug from my PC.

Also, make sure you change the battery after 2 years or so - otherwise it won't protect anything. I didn't know this was mandatory, and during a momentary brown-out at a LAN, my PC was the only one to reboot ... and I was the one with the UPS!

nah bugger that, plug your monitor in elsewhere and have it turn off if the power goes out

I never bothered with the software as I don't leave my PC without saving shit first so only really needed it if the power went off while I was still a my PC. Also you don't get the voltage regulation on equipment not plugged into the battery part of the UPS (mine has 3 or 4 battery and 3 or 4 that are just surge protected). Before getting the UPS I'd always get HDD failures and have graphics cards die on me but since I installed it I haven't had any components fail. It might be coincidental but I think a stable voltage is doing wonders for the life span of the electronic gear I plug into the UPS.

Then again we were getting pretty bad brown outs where I am which really isn't meant to be the norm so YMMV.

I have one of these.
http://powerquality.eaton.com/products-services/backup-power-ups/5110.aspx?cx=22

Had it for about 4 or 5 years and it's still running strong. Unlike your basic standby UPS it is line interactive with automatic voltage regulation which means it doesn't just switch on when the power goes out but will cut in and out when supply voltage drops too low which can happen a lot when you live in the sticks. I have a 1000VA model, you could probably get by with the 700VA. I wouldn't go lower since you have to account for your monitor and it will allow you a little wriggle room for adding additional equipment.

I honestly wouldn't bother with a UPS that didn't have AVR, it's far more valuable than simply being able to shut down your PC.

I have the same

Wow, this UPS is awesome - well recommended QGL!

I got a Star Power 1800VA UPS from Umart for $109.

Couldn't be happier for running time vs price - holds up pc and 2 monitors for 40+ minutes

I got a Star Power 900VA UPS from Umart for $65 for another computer - happy with it also.

Oh and they have a usb connection so you can get their software to shutdown the pc automatically after x-minutes of power outage. Wall plug type connections also so you can plug any device/powerboard in.

last edited by Jerry at 20:57:18 03/Jan/12