Something happened to the UPS ...

[petrusbroder]

I have all my computers on UPSes. OK, they are aged (3 - 7 years old) but they work well and the batteries are maintained, almost no dust inside ...
Some time this morning one of my UPSes broke down, threw a main fuse and broke all three PSUs of the computers hooked up to the UPS. :'(

The UPS was for 2000W. The computers connected drew 600W, 550W and 300W each (i7 860 + GTX460, Phenom x4 + ATI 5850, + Phenom x4 without GPU) so the load was not too high (1450W).

I hope that the MoBos, CPUs and GPUs survived - but I have no time to test that before easter ... or more correctly said no time before May 1. D: My crunching power will be down: 16 threads and 2 GPUs are down. One of the comps was doing F@H, the others BOINC ...

 

[RobertE]

Ouch. Fingers crossed for minimal damage.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, one of my UPSes went recently too. Turned off the UPS, came back an hour later, it was alarming again, with "Overload" lit up. How did it turn itself on? I have no idea. Strange. I have it unplugged right now.

Edit: Computer and monitor are alright though, now they're plugged into a surge protector only.

 

[RaySun2Be]

Man that sucks , I hope the pcs are ok. I had a UPS go bad, and fried everything. PSU, CPU, Fans, both hard drives, video card, motherboard, most everything was toast. The UPS was older, but it was an APC, business grade rack mount. I'd never had so much carnage in all the years of running PCs.

 

[GLeeM]

Sorry to hear that, Petrus

 

[bryanW1995]

Wow, good thing I'm lazy and never set up my rigs on a UPS.

 

[PCTC2]

Well, 2000W and 1450W are the real power. Often, UPSes are rated in VA (Volt-Amps). This rating includes Reactive Power (imaginary). Depending on the PFC of your PSUs, you could have exceeded or come close to exceeding the VA rating, and your UPS failed to do component degradation. If you have a PFC of .9, you would be drawing over 1600VA.

Sorry to hear this happened to you Peter. Hopefully it didn't do anything to your hardware. When my PSU went, it took 6 HDs with it!

 

[Peter Trend]

PSUs, like all things with coils in, often have an inductive load when first switched on as well as a resistive load throughout normal operation. As PCTC2 said, the current draw can be higher than the rated resistive load (i.e. especially when first switched on).

My hunch is you need an over-rated, or at least brand new UPS, as when your UPS aged its ability to supply enough current diminished. Try a 2500W?

Hope you get back to crunching soon!