Cyberpower on Amazon - Discounts and Prime

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Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
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I haven't switched to the PFC units yet but I do have the AVR units which have been working really well for me. I am really just using them as dumb batteries though.

Also - PFC costs seem to be higher because Amazon is OOS
 

john4200

New Member
Jan 1, 2011
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amazon has the PFC1500 for $199.99, but you have to click "more buying choices" to see it. Even out of stock, the price is much higher than the AVR model.
 

xnoodle

Active Member
Jan 4, 2011
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Hm. Is running PFC supplies off a AVR unit bad? I need to replace one of my APC 750VA SUA750RM2U, hitting my power ceiling with them.
 

john4200

New Member
Jan 1, 2011
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Hm. Is running PFC supplies off a AVR unit bad? I need to replace one of my APC 750VA SUA750RM2U, hitting my power ceiling with them.
Not necessarily. But some PSUs are more sensitive to it than others. At a minimum, you should test whether the U part of UPS works for your PSU by pulling the UPS powercord out and verifying that the computer does not shut down or crash. If it does, you might need a sinewave UPS.
 

xnoodle

Active Member
Jan 4, 2011
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Manually flipped the breaker. Seems OK. None of my VMs on the new hardware (C6100) hung. All my older hardware was tested during Hurricane Sandy :(

Now to see if Costco still has the CST1300AL for $89.99, if not I'll think about ordering the 1500VA model.
 

mrkrad

Well-Known Member
Oct 13, 2012
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I've got a machine that does it! Two different power supplies. These new PFC 94% go two ways:

with a standard APC modified square wave without current limiting:

1. Powers off instantly when you test the ups - never unplug a ups, you lose ground and a spike will fry your system. You can use a power strip in front of the ups to turn off power without losing ground!

2. destabilizes - The second power supply we had didn't force a current overload (cheap APC don't have current limiting) - the system would corrupt ram and did not have ECC. So basically memtest86 and prime95 would fail instantly and the system would crash shortly on battery .

The cost of double-online conversion was too much, so cyberpower came out with PURE-sine models. They are truly pure sine.

These were too expensive still! so they came out with a super-modified square wave.

Current limiting models will also prevent UPS shutdown.

If you have a server, you can also mitigate the effect by putting each power supply on a separate UPS!

I forgot the electrical term, but there is a huge current rush when it switches and many ups' will just shutdown since they are too cheap to have current limiting. Second the current rush is a problem because it is rejecting the modified square wave, as it rejects more it requests more power and the wave starts to deform as the ups can't keep up, this in turn causes the PFC to want more ! and vicious cycle.

I just got a new dl360e low end special (single 1.8ghz quad core) and I ordered it to not get the super 94$ "blue plug" (has extra pins for communicating via the power cord to the PDU). Anyways i guess they gave me a free upgrade from the regular efficiency "black plug" (no extra wires to access ILO via the pdu). So i'm testing the server out to make sure it doesn't freak out on power outages/self-test.

Not all power supplies are equal here. If i had my choice, i'd rather have the less efficient power supply. The older tricks like running active/passive (99% on ps1 , 1% on ps2) are good enough and quite honestly a DL360 G6 can idle at the same rate as a DL360e Gen8 (G8 means penis in chinese, hence Gen8).

Newer is not always better! Always test your power solution using a loaded server (prime95/memtest) on battery!!