Topic: Is it worth it to have a ups for mining farm?? (Read 1547 times)

My 2 cents:

I have a UPS running servers, main desktop and my internet connectivity, that stuff takes minutes to come back up and isn't too hungry power wise, so doesn't need silly grade UPS. EVERYTHING is behind at least one surge protector. One on the main power board, others scattered around.
I currently have mining rigs eating 10kW, they are not on a UPS system, the cost of doing so would have significantly increased the hardware cost and decreased the amount of rigs I coulkd run, I didn't even bother looking at the increased power costs. They all restart quickly after power outages. Mining during outages is just not economically sensible for me. If it was, I'd also need a generator on top of a UPS.

I think it depends on how large your mining farm is and whether you think you'll lose money on having your farm offline for "x" number of hours. For me, I have my farm in a datacenter with generators and redundant internet connectivity.  My recommendation would be that if you have a small farm, just use a surge protector or maybe a small ups to cover your router/switches/wireless infrastructure if it's sensitive to power loss for some reason. For a large farm, I'd recommend colocation into a datacenter.

For gpu fars it can be good, because HDD without power can cause loss of data.

For less than $200 I got my APC Back-UPS Pro 1000. PowerChute says I have 9 mins and am using 420w. That's heavy video editing, OC AMD 8320, 24" IPS monitor, 14TB of raid storage/scratch drives, my JillyJally, fans and stereo. While not under heavy load I have about 40 mins.
The Pro 1000 has AVR and though I've only had issue with a brown-out once in the last 6 months.
For the price of a single 240gb SSD I have peace of mind that my system can shut down properly and that it's protected from noise and dirt frequencies.

I can't stress enough how invaluable my UPS is to me. I have about $10,000 connected to it. $200 is nothing compared to system loss or data loss..

Silly cannot even begin to describe the person who invests a crap ton of money into hardware and doesn't protect.

Ok, since people are getting their problems mixed up with perceived solutions, let's talk about three different topics being discussed.

Surges -  A quality surge protector will provide some amount of protection from surges.  How much is a matter of debate.  They draw very little power for themselves.  Some of the protection is provided by sacrificial circuits and they should be replaced at regular intervals.

Line conditioning - A quality line conditioner will handle brownouts and surges.  They often include some noise protection.  These are a fraction of the cost of a UPS and never wear out.  They draw a little more than a surge protector but still very little.

UPS - There are several types of UPS ranging from one that transfers over in the case of a drop to online UPS's which are always rectifying, filtering, charging and driving the inverter.  The protection you get increases with the more expensive types.  The overhead costs also increase.  Batteries must be replaced every 3 to 5 years.  Some include a buck/boost line conditioner that will handle over/under voltages without resorting to the battery.

Great, so what do I have?

I have UPS's for my file servers and separate UPS's for my networking gear.  My internet connection and wifi can stay up for 4 hours which is about what my laptop battery can handle.  My file servers shut down after 5 minutes.  My miners are behind a better than average surge protector.

Would I run my miners off a UPS.

No freeking way.  Electricity is the major cost in a properly costed miner.  Throwing away 10-15% of my revenue simply because I was too lazy to restart them in the rare case of a power failure is out of the question.

Now, if I lived in a place with cheap electricity or unreliable electricity I might have a different opinion.  If I lived in a place with bad wiring and lots of brownouts I would buy a line conditioner.  APC sells theirs under the label "Line-R".  But the purchase price of a UPS combined with the maintenance costs of a UPS added to the running costs of a UPS make them a poor choice for high current items for many people.

And, to the people who think the only way to protect their miners is a UPS, I say ... FUD

That and think carefully about what problem you are trying to solve and don't confuse the different problems.

If you're only thinking about the power loss and not the protection, think about it this way..

UPS for loss of power is like AAA for your car
UPS for protection is like insurance for your car

How many people drive their car without insurance but yet have AAA?

I happened to have a UPS for other purposes, which convenient

Obtain cost becomes high enough to pay for something in return?

Surge protection is very important, but I don't think that you need a UPS. Unless you have temperamental miners that might not always restart themselves when power resumes.

If you want to keep mining during a power failure then I think you're looking at something more like a generator rather than a UPS.

Yep.

Put your network on a surge-UPS-surge suppressor setup, then put your computer on a surge-UPS-surge setup.

The surge supressors are usually rated for 1500 J, UPS are usually much lower (600-800 J), and then some of them when they kick in, they can surge also, so have a surge suppressor on the protected line coming out of the UPS.

That way, your equipment is totally protected.

Never, ever, skimp on surge suppression. I had a brand new, just built, killer system a couple of years ago (killer for the time), totally got wiped out by a surge, motherboard and PW fried, processor was messed up, hard drive fried. The only thing that made it out of that system was, strangely enough, an SSD that worked fine (and still works). 2 x graphics cards shot.

Used a cheap ass surge supressor. Never again.

I have my internet connection on a UPS, the mining farm is also connected but only a connection that prevents power spikes. So if there is a blip everything keeps working, power outage the internet stays up and the farm will come back online once full power is back.

Totally disagree with the prevailing thought itt.  A good UPS is not just about running while the power is out.  TBH unless your Internet connection was protected as well if your power goes out you are most likely going to lose Internet connectivity as well so your miners will stop hashing anyway.  A good UPS also protects your equipment from spikes and brown outs which are very bad for sensitive electronic equipment.  There is no way I would even consider connecting something that cost a few thousand dollars directly to an outlet.  Dirty electric is way too common nowadays.

JMO

This is one of those cases when you don't want to have a UPS as a backup for your equipment.

Getting a decent UPS is expensive and takes away from any ROI you're getting.  Economically, it doesn't make sense and adds to your investment costs.  Ants power back on to continue mining as long as the PSU is on anyways.

No.  If the power goes out and comes back on, Antminers restart themselves.  Same thing with their wifi connectivity.

Do you mean "will it pay for itself" or "will it save you money"?  If so, the answer is a resounding "NO!"

If, on the other hand, you have frequent brown outs and don't want to be bothered resetting your equipment, then .... maybe.

just do the routers and the switches

the ones i was looking at were some of dells 2000watt ones that could hold up to 8 min, but you are probably right

I looked into the same thing once and decided that its not. The UPS will decrease efficiency and in order to supply enough battery power to keep even a small farm running for more than a few seconds would require a pretty huge UPS which is expensive.

Even if your only looking to keep them running during a small power flicker, the few seconds you keep them running will never pay for the cost of the efficiency, let alone the cost of the UPS.

the top says it all!! i have some antminer s1 and some servers that need ups upgrade anyway so was thinking to get some for the whole farm.
Is it worth it ??
Thanks,
JT