It has always amazed me that when you talk to people about building that great PC Gaming rig they will spend thousands on motherboards, GPUs and CPUs but when it comes to the PSU or protecting the power for the PC suddenly, they become scared of the price.
We often use a human body for an analogy of how the computer works but we fail to do this properly when it comes to the heart of a gaming PC. For the proper analogy we need to understand that the blood of a Gaming PC is electricity, and this means the real heart of your rig is the PSU.
When it comes to building your PC never skimp on the PSU, spend the extra to get good quality and your PC will thank you. A bad or even just a mediocre PSU can cause system instabilities and even possibly damage the hardware of your computer.
However, I do not want to spend too much time on the PSU as that is not my target for this article. A good PSU is great but unless you get good power to the PSU, it might not matter. People just do not spend much time thinking about power, they plug something in and it works. However, in the world we live in right now with power grids being pushed to the limit by data centers, perhaps it is time we look at our power sources and how to protect our PC.
The most common source of power protection is a good surge protector. So, for a quick refresher, a surge protector keeps the voltage in your power line from going above the “safe” output levels. If the voltage spikes to high, the surge protector will stop the power from coming through and thus protect your precious electronics from harm.
However, in today’s work, Surges and Spikes in voltage are not the only concern we should have. Brown Outs or Power Dips are now becoming more common, thank you AI) This happens when the load on the grid spikes up and the power supply to the grid is not able to keep up. Most of these are very short but can occasionally last a few seconds at a time, in some extreme cases for minutes.
What people seldom consider is that these can damage hardware over time but more importantly they can cause system instabilities. This means crashes or sudden weird behavior from your PC.
With this in mind we begin to zero in on my target for this article, protecting your PC with a Battery Backup or UPS.
The basic idea of a UPS is that when the power dips, goes out, or even spikes, the UPS will cut off access to the wall power and feed your PC direct from it’s battery, insuring your PC is getting a source of good, clean power. This will not just mean you will have a more stable computer; this can extend the life of your PC components.
When buying a UPS there are a few factors to take into consideration.
Lets start with how much UPS do we need? UPS are typically sold using a term called VA or Volt Amps. This can be confusing because there is no actually direction conversion of VA to Watts without knowing the PF (Power Factor) of the UPS. The good news is most UPS also list the wattage.
The Wattage is the number we need because this is the max power the UPS will output. This is important because if you try to draw more power through the UPS than this max wattage the UPS will just shut down.
As a rule of thumb most UPS will provide 900 watts to a 1500 VA unit and around 700 Watts to a 1000 VA unit. These are not standards just norms typically seen, be sure to read material on a UPS you’re looking to buy.
This number is total draw potential on the batter side of the UPS, the surge protection side of the UPS does not apply for this. That means the total power draw, at any one time from devices plugged into the battery side of the UPS needs to stay below this wattage rating.
This number is about the continuous draw on the UPS. This does not count transient spikes. Most mid-range consumer UPS can handle short spike of up to 150% of the rate wattage and higher end units as high as 200%. Still I would suggest making sure your typical power draw is well below the rated limited.
For most gaming PCs a VA of 1500 is the sweet spot, with some lower end system being okay with a VA of 1250 or 1000.
Now that we know the power level we need, we can buy anything in that range, right? Well technically but I would not suggest it.
UPS systems come in two basic varieties. The Sine Wave and Simulated Wave. Power from your wall, should ideally be in a smooth sine wave. This is how a Sine Wave UPS delivers power from the battery. A Simulated wave pattern, as the image shows, is not of a step up and down of the wave pattern, not as smooth.
The simulated wave works fine or many appliances, but PCs and some higher end electronics are more sensitive to the way the power is delivered, so for your gaming PC the best solution is a pure sine wave UPS. These cost more than a simulated wave UPS but again our goal is stability and protecting our equipment. There is no point in spending $200 to $3000 on a great gaming PC and then cheaping out $50 to $100 on protecting that PC.
Finally, we get to the argument I hear against UPS devices. People complain that they cost too much to get enough power to keep the PC running in a blackout. I understand the reasoning behind this argument, but I feel like people look at this the wrong way.
You have been gaming for a few hours, you’re deep into a tough quest or a raid with your buddies, then a power hiccup takes place. That quick 2 second power outage that happens during a quick storm. Did you save before the flash outage? If not, your efforts could be setback or in the case of a raid you might find your disconnected in the middle of the big boss fight and your team suffers a wipe.
My UPS is a 1500VA system that at full load, of 900 watts will provide power for 3 minutes. That is plenty of time for a quick save or to warn my online buddies I am about to drop. This means those micro-outages do not even get noticed. My personal gaming rig, under typical gaming load as a run time of about 6 minutes so I am pretty much set to exit my games gracefully if needed.
This brings me to the other factor of a UPS that most do not consider. Buy a second one. This one can be smaller, 400 VA UPS that I have for my ISP Modem and Router. This is enough to keep these running for almost an hour, meaning even if my game is online, I am still good for a graceful exit.
Total cost for this power protection, for both UPS was only $280. That might sound like a lot, but these devices are typically rated for 5 years before they need to be replaced, and I have had some last as long as 7. If we consider the 5-year limit that means I spend under $5 a month to ensure my system has good power protection and my gaming experience is not suddenly interrupted by power outage or some Datacenter suddenly coming to my town and creating brownouts.
Not a bad investment to protect the gaming experience I put so much time and money into.
The articles content, opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed in SAPPHIRE NATION are the authors’ own and do not necessarily represent official policy or position of SAPPHIRE Technology.
