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Enthusiast Power Protection: Four-Way 900 W UPS Roundup

Enthusiast Power Protection: Four-Way 900 W UPS Roundup
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It's downright negligent to ignore the power needs of your high-end hardware. While many power users go to the trouble of tracking down solid PSUs, we recommend going a step further and investing in battery backup. We round up four enthusiast units.

Few events are more upsetting than getting to the toughest part of a game and having your PC go down. Less traumatic (but still troublesome) are situations like losing a video only seconds before you’re done re-encoding it. Even losing a carefully-written email before it can be sent is enough to push some Tom's Hardware editors past the edge of sanity (Ed.: *raises hand*).

Enthusiasts often rely on little more than a surge protector to keep their hardware safe. But these devices can’t prevent brownouts from resetting a computer, nor can they prevent blackouts from stopping the computer in its tracks completely. The inevitable result is lost work, even when that “work” is an entertainment-oriented task.

While mainstream users have long been able to buy low-cost uninterruptable power supplies, the unique demands of enthusiast-class hardware have often put this type of protection out of reach.

A quick look at the specifications recommended by four top UPS manufacturers for our enthusiast build could help to explain the enormous price disparity. 

Enthusiast UPS Features
 APC Smart-UPS
SMT1500
CyberPower
CP1500PFCLCD
Opti-UPS Durable
DS1500B
Tripp Lite SmartPro
SMART1500SLT
TopologyLine-InteractiveLine-InteractiveDouble-ConversionLine-Interactive
Wave FormPure SineAdaptive SinePure SinePure Sine
Wattage980 W900 W1050 W900 W
VA Rating1440 VA1500 VA1500 VA1500 VA
UPS OutletsEightFiveSixEight
Surge OnlyNoneFiveNoneNone
Power GroupsTwo (4+4 Jacks)OneTwo (4+2 Jacks)One
Dimensions17.3" x6.7" x8.6"14.4" x4.0" x10.5"17.0" x6.0" x9.4"13.3" x6.7" x10.2"
Weight52.5 Pounds24.8 Pounds38.4 Pounds44.5 Pounds
Web Price $442  $191  $548  $338


Notice that all of the units in today’s review produce something that approximates a true sine wave, something that costs far more to produce than the stepped square waves of lower-cost parts. We’ll explain why this is so important on our next page, before going into the individual characteristics that make each model special.

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  • 0 Hide
    contrasia , 5 February 2013 18:18
    tbh tis should've NEVER been posted in the UK version of Toms Hardware, and a seperate one should've been made. Reason being, after some extra research after not being able to find any "cyberPower CP1500PFCLCD" UPSs being sold within the UK, it turns out that for people living within the UK, you need a "220v to 110v voltage step down transformer.". So this is NOT the right kind of UPS that should be recommended for people living within the UK, making this article misleading and inaccurate.

    I've always hated the copy/paste laziness of the UK version of the website, and this is exactly one of the reasons why. Not everything US based is good for UK consumers! >_