Personal computing discussed
Moderators: askfranklin, renee, emkubed, Captain Ned
localhostrulez wrote:I have 2 APC 550s and 2 750s. Only my 'fridge is not on a UPS. A fully charged 750 can definitely run my coffee pot for 4 cups of coffee.Well, I finally tried my APC Backups 550 thing again.
paulWTAMU wrote:7 or 8 years ago, a dual-socket SuperMicro motherboard in my office at work got killed by what I assume was lightening. At the very least, it died on a night when there were crazy big thunderstorms with an amazing amount of lightening. This motherboard has dual 8-pin CPU power connectors, one of which got thoroughly burnt. I scraped off the connector back to bare metal and swapped out the power supply. There was just enough plastic left to hold the 8pin CPU power connector in place. Other than the dead power supply, the only other fatality was the little fan on the chipset cooler, and occasional single-bit memory errors caught by ECC.I've never seen a building that got struck by lightening before; thankfully no real fires started.
MarkG509 wrote:localhostrulez wrote:I have 2 APC 550s and 2 750s. Only my 'fridge is not on a UPS. A fully charged 750 can definitely run my coffee pot for 4 cups of coffee.Well, I finally tried my APC Backups 550 thing again.
A few years back, there was a run of about 3 weeks where most mornings between 5 and 6am, the power would wink out just long enough to kill a PC and my alarm clock. Most days it would be back in a second or so, some days it would be out for a few minutes at a time. On the days when the power winked out in the morning, it would wink out again around lunch time or early evening. Apparently, the neighborhood was being rewired.
I'm at the point now, where if the power goes out, I can only tell if I see the ceiling fans spin down. With about 5x the 12V storage, I could (almost) go off the grid.
localhostrulez wrote:Never noticed a problem, machines etc. just keep running. When on battery they emit a bit of a buzz, but no other issues/noises. I use APC's PowerChute to turn off the smoke-alarm sound when the power's out. To be honest, I actually opened up the first of the 550s and clipped off the buzzer before I found out that PowerChute could permanently disable the alarm.How's the quality of them?
localhostrulez wrote:Strongly agree! I once changed a timing belt myself. Took me a whole weekend. Never again. Chilton's repair manuals tell you almost everything you need to know.Unrelated note: Toyota uses timing chains (yes!)
bhtooefr wrote:1980 Fiat Spyder 2000, double-overhead-CAM. Garage queen for 'her' first year until I needed to commute[1] from Long Island to NYC. By '82, needed new clutch and timing belt...just wasn't designed for that. My parents wouldn't let me do the work at their house, but my Aunt didn't quite know to object, until she saw my transmission on her kitchen table.A timing chain job on an overhead cam engine will be a colossal pain.
notfred wrote:Wireless is a mess. The certification authority Wi-Fi Alliance is more of a marketing thing than a technical thing. I have to deal with wifi stuff at $dayjob and try to dodge it and send it to colleague as much as possible as it drives me insane.
JustAnEngineer wrote:When my latest APC UPS died several months ago, I decided to give CyberPower a try on my gaming PC. So far, so good. I have a smaller UPS for my cable modem, router, switch, Ooma and TiVo.
The Egg wrote:I've been using the 1350 version of that Cyberpower for about 3 1/2 years now. Everything has been peachy so far, though a recent self-test had the battery capacity drop down to 38% almost instantly with 178w of load. Another 6 months and it might be time to replace the batteries ($67 for genuine on Amazon). 4 years is pretty mediocre. The batteries in the 1500 look substantially larger, so hopefully you'll get you 5 years or more.
just brew it! wrote:Even if the load is the same? Given the same load, I would've expected more battery material to equal more stored charge. Either way, my assumption was based more on very poor experiences with nearly all smaller UPS's. Maybe I should revise that to non-tower style units; we have a few BR700 tower units at work which have been decent.Larger batteries doesn't equate to longer life. I suppose if you're not using the UPS at anywhere near full capacity you might still get acceptable runtime even with batteries that are past their EOL. IMO 5 years is pushing it; 3-4 is more typical.
The Egg wrote:just brew it! wrote:Larger batteries doesn't equate to longer life. I suppose if you're not using the UPS at anywhere near full capacity you might still get acceptable runtime even with batteries that are past their EOL. IMO 5 years is pushing it; 3-4 is more typical.
Even if the load is the same? Given the same load, I would've expected more battery material to equal more stored charge. Either way, my assumption was based more on very poor experiences with nearly all smaller UPS's. Maybe I should revise that to non-tower style units; we have a few BR700 tower units at work which have been decent.
superjawes wrote:The batteries in a UPS are constantly being charged and drained similar to how a car battery would be. Usage might have some impact on lifetime, but the chemical reaction has a shelf life, and you can probably count on a battery failure once you hit that rated usage period. Even if your batteries have (had) a larger charge capacity, everything is tied to the chemistry. No chemistry = no charging = no stored charge.
localhostrulez wrote:I'm also wondering if manual will be noticeably more reliable (and I kinda like the idea of shifting myself anyway).
The Egg wrote:superjawes wrote:The batteries in a UPS are constantly being charged and drained similar to how a car battery would be. Usage might have some impact on lifetime, but the chemical reaction has a shelf life, and you can probably count on a battery failure once you hit that rated usage period. Even if your batteries have (had) a larger charge capacity, everything is tied to the chemistry. No chemistry = no charging = no stored charge.
Hmm.....I always thought it was only pulling through the battery when there's a power event. For instance, on my current model, the fan kicks on whenever the battery is used, but is otherwise off. I don't have much experience with enterprise-grade models though.
ludi wrote:localhostrulez wrote:I'm also wondering if manual will be noticeably more reliable (and I kinda like the idea of shifting myself anyway).
Depends mainly on how you drive. Gently driven, especially with lots of highway miles, a manual on a compact/economy car can go 150k+ miles between services, even if you never change the gear oil. Drive like a hoon, and you'll blow out a synchro or shred a clutch within weeks or months. (Speaking as someone who recently spent nearly $2300 for a tranny rebuild and clutch replacement on a 2002 Celica GT-S.) A huge chunk of the labor is just getting a few hundred pounds of mechanical bits uninstalled from one of the most awkward locations on the vehicle, and then putting it back together again, regardless of whether it is manual or automatic.
localhostrulez wrote:What's the chance of needing a transmission rebuild though? I get that I may need to replace the clutch if I get a manual (particularly for higher mileage cars) since those are consumable parts, but what about on the auto side?