Hardware Ups benefits

[Bk456]

I was offered a 1kv ups at work for free. I am gettin a generator set up at home and when the boss heard he offered me the ups.

are there any other benefits having one of these, I'm under the impression they just connect to your PC and give you enough time to get saved and turn off safely

 

[turner brown]

if your powering pc from generator then I would say use it as will save your pc from spikes in power and shutting down if genny drops

 

[Spectre]

I've had an APC one for years and bought it when there were local electricity distribution problems (brownouts caused by a bad crimped cable joint, which they dug up and repaired after multiple complaints over a couple of months by myself and other residents...). It happened to be when I was coming to the end of university, PC resetting in the middle of typing documents up etc.

It was capable of running a router, switch and my main PC for just under three hours I think, but now it just needs to protect a router, switch and small server.

Larger ones have fans so be aware that not all of them are silent, the fans speed up when the inverter is in full use on this one. Some have relays in them which click to change a transformer tap to compensate for high or low mains voltages.

Of course, I'd have anything like that for free . That's how I ended up with a rather impractical one before this one.

 

[trevortron]

I've used them too, power here is never that reliable, although it has improved over the past 10 years or so. Some UPS have a serial socket (remember those) which in theory could connect to the PC allowing it to save work & shut down safely if un-attended. I never used that function. I did use one on a Sky HD box, as we used to get very short power cuts, a second or even less which upset the old Thomson boxes somewhat.
But the batteries don't last forever, I frequently see old UPS's by the bin or at car boot sales for the simple reason it's usually cheaper to replace the whole thing than it is to replace the battery.
But yeah, if it's free, what the heck? Worst case scenario you still get a decent inverter!