Topic: Can anyone suggest cost effective UPS for minning rig (Read 1130 times)

After all the research, I realized that my best bet would be to go ahead with a 2KV home UPS, with 2 x 150 AH batteries.


I am adding voltage stabilizers to my supply circuit from the home UPS. I believe that would take care or voltage transients.

You mention frequent power cuts.
This means most likely power line transients too. In the most general case, voltage transients can occur between each leg and ground and between the two legs.
If it were me, I would have an isolation transformer in front of the UPS to protect all the electronics. Ebay is a source for a used transformer.
Make sure that the UPS and the isolation transformer are tied to a good ground.

Most UPS will run out of battery in 5-20 minutes and that gets gradually worse the more times you actually have to use it on battery. I don't think a cost effective UPS solution for your problem exists. At that kind of prices I would look very seriously at a solar panel.

I have 3 brand new APC SMT 3000's just sitting in my garage - anyone in Los Angeles want one for a good price? They are WAY too heavy to ship, I believe they are about 75lbs each or so.
http://www.apc.com/shop/us/en/products/APC-Smart-UPS-3000VA-LCD-120V/P-SMT3000

That's why you upgrade the batteries - the 12v 7AH gel cells in most recent APC "consumer" models don't last for beans 'cause they're being pushed too hard and don't have a lot of capacity to start with.

 Ignore VA - you need to pay attention to the wattage, as that's what matters on modern PFC power supplies (IIRC 80Plus requires PFC as part of the standard).


 Online UPS are nice, but they also tend to be quite a bit more expensive for the same wattage capacity and they also tend to be noticeably less efficient.



 Uptime on an APC 1500 (any of them, they're all pretty close on efficiency) is going to be measured in hours at a 750 watt load (and you're probably not pulling QUITE that much with your rig) if you upgrade to good-quality car batteries, and even more if you go with deep-cycle batteries.

Thankfully I started this thread.

It's frightening to learn from the runtime graph, that the UPS I had been looking to buy will max out in a couple of minutes.

VA doesn't really matter, always check the manufacturer's site for an uptime graph to see how long the UPS will hold at what capacity.

For example, my first UPS was an Eaton 5E 2000i 2000VA/1200W. But I quickly realised that it can only handle 500 watts load for 9 minutes. You can see the graph here: http://powerquality.eaton.com/5E2000iUSB.aspx?cx=84

My UPS was faulty (it constatly output 250 volts instead of 230V which is above spec for most 230V hardware) so I sent it back and got an Eaton 9130i (1000VA/900W). The numbers are lower yet it can handle 500 watts for 16 minutes (http://powerquality.eaton.com/PW9130i1000T-XL.aspx?cx=3).

So yeah, always check out the uptime graphs.

Thanks everyone for your valuable feedback.

Before posting here, I had been considering a refurbished APC 1500VA 865Watts Back-UPS, 6-Outlet, 1.5 KVA UPS BR1500-IN, it will cost me around $100

The issue is that, in one of the reviews on a reputed website, I found users complaining about the backup.

To be more precise, a review stated that the user can't even manage to run his PS2 with LCD on this UPS.

Got curious about how much wattage and VA should I consider.

My PSU is 750 Watts ANTEC Gold.

Find a cheap/free used rackmount UPS (will almost certainly need new batteries, try to get a 24V version) and connect a few marine or golf cart batteries to it. If you need faster charging, add an external charger.

if you want to buy an ups, the only choice is the apc, all the other have some issue, in some aspect, there is a reaosn everyone choose apc, is the best brand for ups period, nothing come close, i think witht he 1500va 900watt you can save the ass of your 1000watt rig without problem, but it's not cheap, it cost $400-500

A quick look suggests that it would cost you about $480 to get a UPS that can handle 500 watts for two hours: http://www.apc.com/us/en/tools/ups_selector/home/load.
But they're not designed to be frequently discharged. Recharging and mining at the same time after a power outage also increases your power consumption greatly until the batteries are full.

Also, there are two main types of UPS:
 - line interactive: it passes the power from the outlet through to your mining rig and only switches to the battery if there's a power outage. This is the cheaper/simpler solution and depending on your PSU in the mining rig the UPS might not switch to the battery quick enough so your rigs could restart. Unlikely, but possible especially with lower end computer PSUs.
 - online or double conversion: the UPS converts the input voltage to the battery voltage and converts it back again to 120/230V or whatever you can set it up to. This is more expensive, there's a few percentage of loss during the conversion (just like with a regular PSU) but it doesn't have to switch, it continously provides electricity. It also helps with bronwouts (when voltage is just low) but you don't need help with brownouts that since your computer PSU very likely can handle lower voltages but it's nice to have with other appliances.



I'd rather just setup the rig to continue where it left off after a power outage:
 - "Restore on AC/Power loss: Power on" in the BIOS so the computer turns on automatically as soon as it gets electricity;
 - put a shortcut of your miner (.bat) in start menu/programs/startup so that mining starts when the system boots.
 - don't run wallets on that computer as their blockchain will eventually corrupt and require a resync or restore if you have a backup.

My experience is that an area that has frequent power cuts like that isn't worth mining in.


 Most UPS that are "inexpensive" are only designed to have a runtime of 5-20 minutes - so you have to add a lot of battery to extend that to the 2+ hours you want, by which point the UPS is getting to be a fairly large percentage of the cost of your mining rig itself - and you aren't going to find an "inexpensive" UPS that can handle more than about a 4 card RX4xx/5xx rig at all.

 Keep in mind that if your outages are FREQUENT, that it takes quite a bit of time to RECHARGE the batteries after an outage = more capacity = more runtime but also = more RECHARGE time.
 If you're losing power for 1-2 hours a DAY a UPS is not going to help for very long, as it won't have the TIME to recharge the batteries fully between outages.

 I'd figure on an APC 1500 (which specific model doesn't matter, they all perform pretty close to the same - and have about an 850 WATT limit on how much you can back up with them, 1500 is their VA rating and ASSUMES your power supply does not have power factor correction) and add 2 car batteries to that (get a PRO to do it if you're not a qualified electronic tech, it's not hard *IF* you know what you're doing but you do need to KNOW what you are doing).

 The reason I specify APC is that I've worked with them for DECADES, and ALL of them have "current-limited" charge circuits so you can safely add more battery capacity to ANY APC model without any chance of overloading the charging circuitry. My current router/firewall appliance (and a "florescent for when power goes out so I can SEE" lamp) currently are connected to an APC 200 that has a car battery on it - and has a runtime measured in DAYS with that light of a load on it - but also would need probably a week for a full recharge if it ever DID have to run for days.

 At that point you're probably looking at $350 rough ballpark, presuming a new APC (don't try to put USED car batteries on such a setup) - might be more like $400-$450 depending on how good of batteries you put on it, and keep in mind I've not priced out UPS units OR batteries for a while so I might be on the LOW side on those numbers.


 Now figure out how long that is going add to your ROI.


 Now figure that you are going to have to replace those batteries every few years - they SHOULD last for their warrenttee period or somewhat longer, as a UPS doesn't load them nearly as hard as starting a car does.


 You can probably get by with leaving the monitor on the system NOT connected to the UPS - this will reduce the load on the UPS a little, which will help battery life AND will help UPS longevity a little.


 This is why running a mining rig on a UPS is generally considered to be a BAD idea and a waste of money.

Nah, I use a dedicated 4G wifi dongle for internet for the rig, it keeps charging itself from USB and have a integrated battery for 5 Hrs. backup.

Won't your internet be down during a powercut?

Hi,
  I have a setup with i3 and 2 RX480s mining at around 50 MHs, the area where rig is setup, faces frequent power cuts, I am looking for a cost effective way to keep the rig running for up to 2 Hrs in case of power cuts.

I am also planning to add 2 to 3 more cards to the setup soon.

Please share your experiences.

Thanks