I know this is more hardware related, so please let me know if I should move this post elsewhere.
I built my first server earlier this year, and put buying a UPS on the back burner. Unfortunately for me, this might have already been my biggest mistake since going down this rabbit hole. The rental I’ll be in for at least another 10 months has some questionable wiring (a lot of rooms/outlets wired to the same breaker), which I believe has created some electrical anomalies and possibly killed some of my computer components. The memory on my PC went first, and now the 7-month-old PSU on my server is toast.
Bear in mind, I am not an electrician, so I could be entirely wrong on why this has happened. Regardless, it’s time I invest in a UPS. I have searched forums, blogs, YouTube, and cannot find consistent pros and cons for any of the big manufacturers. It seems like APC and CyberPower are the two big consumer grade manufacturers, which is probably what I should be looking at.
Here is what my server currently consists of:
| Type | Item | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| CPU | Intel Core i3-10100 | |
| CPU Cooler | Thermalright Peerless Assassin | |
| Motherboard | MSI MAG B560M | |
| Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-2666 CL16 Memory | |
| Storage | Crucial P3 1 TB NVME SSD | X2 |
| Storage | Hitachi Ultrastar He12 12 TB HDD | |
| Storage | Western Digital Ultrastar DC HC520 12 TB HDD | X2 |
| Case | Fractal Design Define 7 | |
| Power Supply | be quiet! Pure Power 12 M 550 | Replacement until I finish the RMA process on the dead power supply. |
| OS | Unraid | |
| Estimated Wattage | 238W | I have not tested this personally, but I will say the server is never really being stressed all that much. |
Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!
Build your own just for fun. That’s homelab style
Yeah no, line voltage will kill you if you don’t know what you are doing, not to mention the fire hazard as was mentioned. The 12/24 volt used in computer systems much easier to mess around and not ‘find out’ other than maybe a fried component. Unless you are an electrician/ electrical engineer with proper training don’t open/mess with Power Supply Unit (PSU) or UPS.
One mod anyone could do is swap their lead acid for a LiFePO4. You just need to make sure the same voltage,battery quantity (larger backups often have 2 batteries in a series) and the battery dimensions are the same. They should be drop in replacements and do last longer.
That being said, I myself, do have training and if you want to waste your time I probably would mod some UPS with a car battery for longer down time support. Watched a YouTube video of a person do it to find the pitfalls for me and the issue is heat as it’s not expected to run off battery + inverter for longer than the smaller battery normally allows it maybe 5 minutes compared to like 1 hour, so several fans and heat sinks on critical components would be needed adding minor complexity and planning.
APC is cheap garbage.
If you are concerned about the power quality causing damage, you want an online or double-conversion UPS. Those ones don’t even bother trying to condition power, they run off the battery all the time.
I don’t have a whole lot of experience, but Eaton has been reliable. People also recommend Tripp-Lite and Cyberpower but they’ve always seemed cheap to me.
APC makes low end offline UPS units, which are cheap garbage.
They also make line interactive and online ups units, which are decidedly not completely garbage.
I pick up line interactive APC units from used locations like eBay, and go buy off label replacement batteries. Haven’t had any problems with them so far.
To date, over the last ~10 years of running a homelab, I have used mainly SMT 1500 units, one was a rack mount. I’ve recently upgraded to an SMX2000. I’ve replaced batteries, but never a UPS, and never any server components due to power issues. I’ve run servers ranging from a Dell PE 2950, to a full c6100 chassis, plus several networking devices, including firewalls, routers and PoE switches. Not a single power related issue with any of them.
It doesn’t sound like you need a UPS. It sounds like you needed automatic voltage regulator.
It’ll condition the power so it’s clean, and if it’s not clean it’ll cut the power off.
Many good UPS’s have a voltage regulator built in, but then you have the hassle the battery and everything. Up to you depends on what’s easier to find for you locally
UPS does this already. It’s safer with a battery for a number of reasons if faulty wiring is a concern.
So I’ll just speak very generally, and assume you mean power conditioner, because generally a PCU does the VRU stuff, but not always the reverse.
So let’s say you plug a VRU into a faulty socket: the regulator will only power up the passthrough port when it has the input source stabilized to meet whatever it’s conditions are, and then it provides power - cool. What happens when that faulty wiring starts flipping on and off super fast, or has a drain for more than 5 seconds that doesn’t meet the line input conditions? Dead output.
Now let’s say we plug in a UPS which has all of the above features, but the wiring goes to fault - UPS beeps and provides power from the battery. No loss in power, and the server isn’t going down and rebooting many times throughout the day.
Anecdotally (meaning I’ve seen this hundreds of times live, but never seen a study), a UPS can take a LOT more punishment from power SURGES like lightning strikes, which I would be concerned about if the wiring is also faulty. There may be no proper grounding or surge protection in the building he’s describing if the power is this bad.
Despite some of the comments here, I suggest that you don’t overthink it; just buy an APC Back-UPS 600VA and be done with it. You have relatively low power requirements. The UPS will provide some surge protection (490J), several minutes of uptime, and a USB connection for automated shutdown.
The 600VA unit is less than $100 USD and replacement batteries are about half that. I’ve been using several of this same model for years without issue and we have many brown/blackouts being in a rural BC community. The batteries have lasted me 4-5 years.
You can always plan for something more significant down the road, if your hardware or needs change, but this should do fine in the interim.
I’ve been running a pair of cyberpower systems for over a decade. I had to replace the battery in each of them once, but they’ve been working great.
I assume newer ones use some sort of Li-Ion battery tech, but mine are just plain old Lead Acid.
