1350va 810 watts

[Noah Kadner]

What’s the question? I assume you are asking how long the battery backup will last? Hard to say without knowing the model # and manufacturer’s claim.

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops

[Craig Alan]

Can I just add up the listed “power consumption” in watts and compare that to the 810 watts of output the battery back up claims it provides or is there more to it than that?

My guess is that if you have a long power outage the battery will run out. But it should be able to handle brown outs and short outages.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Noah Kadner]

Those are meant to give you time to shut down safely in a power outage, not be a backup generator. I’d be surprised if you got more than an hour. Most of those units come with software to automatically shut the computer down in case you’re away when the power goes out.

More answers are here: https://www.howtogeek.com/161479/how-to-select-a-battery-backup-for-your-computer/

Noah

FCPWORKS – FCPX Workflow
FCP eXchange – FCPX Workshops

[Craig Alan]

That would be a nice option and I know they should offer this but whether a given model works with the latest Mac OS, I’ll need to find out. But there are times power is lost for a second. Is there any harm in continuing? Or should you always reboot after a black or brown out?

And regardless of how long it will continue to power the Mac and raids, it needs to be able to supply power to all of them when power is lost … so my original question remains. If I added up the listed power consumption of each device, am I ok if they do not exceed the 810 watts?

If FC is open and doing a long render or ingesting a 64 gig media card, what will happen if power is lost and the UPS software is programmed to turn off the Mac – is that safe? Raids like to be ejected properly not be shut down in the middle of an operation.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Wes Thom]

If a system is consuming anywhere near that massive power, then a room is hot; heated by something equivalent to a four slice toaster. Is you system really that hot? Hardly. If consuming as much as 300 watts, then it is a high power system.

Your UPS has more than enough power to perform its function: temporary and dirty power so that unsaved data can be saved. So that a short blackout does not cause unexpected reboots.

View spec numbers for its surge protection. It claims surge protection – subjectively. No numbers is why scams are so successful. How many joules does it claim to absorb? 600? So it absorbs 200 joules and never more than 400. Surges that tiny are converted by a MAC into rock stable, low voltage DC to safety power its semiconductors. It claims near zero protection. Just enough so that you will believe it does 100% protection.

Destructive surges can be hundreds of thousands of joules. Protection from surges is done by something completely different and that costs tens or 100 times less money. UPS is only temporary and ‘dirty’ power so that unsaved data is not lost; once we include perspective – the numbers.

[Jeff Kirkland]

I always find trying to figure out UPS loads fairly mind-boggling – and it’s really all about current draw but yes, you could add up the wattage of the equipment you’re going to connect. The higher the load, the faster the battery will run down.

A quick Google search suggests the manufacturer expects the battery to last about nine minutes at half load (400 watts). The Mac on its own is about 1/4 load so, pushed to the max while rendering, should run on the battery for about 18 minutes-ish. Reduce that as you add peripherals.

The seems s a little short for the size of the battery so you might want to double check that run -time figure.

In actual use, the UPS is going to smooth out your power issues, and keep things running through brown-outs and short outages. For a longer-term outage, the battery is intended to buy you the time to shut the system down gracefully.

Power where I am is rock solid, so I haven’t bothered with a UPS in a long time but when I did, I had one for my Mac and a second one with the RAID and monitor plugged in.

Even if the UPS has software to automatically shut the Mac down, there’s still a good chance that it won’t happen if there’s an app that cancels the shutdown, or pauses it, waiting for confirmation from you that it’s ok to continue.

Ultimately though, you should just plug everything in, making sure you don’t exceed 800watts, start a render and cut the power to see how long you get. It’s the only way to really know how long you’re going to run during an outage.

Hope that helps a little…

Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer | Southern Creative Media | Melbourne Australia
http://www.southerncreative.com.au | G+: https://gplus.to/jeffkirkland | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Craig Alan]

Hi thanks. I contacted Cyberpower and the guy was very helpful. We reviewed the power requirements and he felt this would cover my needs with room to spare. They have downloadable software that will shut down the Mac if needed and cover power during brown outs. The only thing he raised was whether Macs need Pure Sine Wave UPS.

I ordered one with this feature from BH but it’s backordered so I should have time to test this one and cancel if this one works. I read on some forum that a Mac would only need that if running on battery for a period of time and that it is not needed for a brown out or for shut down. Pegasus rep feels that their updated firmware covers the ability to not get corrupted under these circumstances.

What I plan to do is plug in just the mac with a small project playing an endless loop in FC. I’ll unplug the battery back up so it needs to have the battery kick in and see what gives. If that works I’ll try it with a raid running a test project.

You are right other than maybe audio components this sure is hard to figure. Every device seems vague in terms of power requirement specs.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Patrick Donegan]

” this would cover my needs with room to spare”

That is so very subjective.

If you really want to be able to be able to make sure you can keep the computer and
hard drives running for an hour or so during the rendering, there are commercial
UPS’s that allow you to add one, 2 or more external batteries to the unit,
to make sure there is enuf time for your needs.

It all really depends on how much money you want to spend to make sure the power stays on.

This one, like all the others are telling you, is to make sure you can shut down,
and have no clue about processes that take more than 10 minutes.

FCP X 10.2.2 – user since FCP 1.25
iMac mid 2011, MBA mid 2012
HVX-200, Shure wireless mic

[Craig Alan]

[Patrick Donegan] “” this would cover my needs with room to spare””

[Patrick Donegan] “That is so very subjective. “

Meaning that it’s watts rating will cover the devices I told him would be plugged into it.

It’s not a generator and it cost $100 (costco) or $140 (bh on sale) if i go for the one that provides Pure Sine Wave UPS. ? if that is needed?

What I need is: cover brown outs and provide power when needed with the feature to power down the computer.

My concern is not running on battery power for long renders or exports (though if money were no object that would be nice) but rather what happens if an app like FC is in the middle of an operation or some unfinished process. Will the Mac still power down if battery power has kicked in and the energy saver system preference is set to power down after x minutes?

Hopefully that system preference is smart enough to handle the shut down regardless of what any given app is doing.

I have been surprised how hard it has been to get clear advice on what to buy and how it works when it comes to UPS.

Mac Pro, macbook pro, Imacs (i7); Canon 5D Mark III/70D, Panasonic AG-HPX170/AG-HPX250P, Canon HV40, Sony Z7U/VX2000/PD170; FCP 6 certified; FCP X write professionally for a variety of media; teach video production in L.A.

[Joe Marler]

[Craig Alan] “What I need is: cover brown outs and provide power when needed with the feature to power down the computer.”

I use an APC XS 1500 for my 2015 iMac 27 and two drive arrays. It is not a pure sine wave UPS but my iMac has no problems running on it: https://amzn.com/B002UUTCNE

Powered on and sitting there, the total power draw for the iMac, 8TB Pegasus R4 and 8TB G-Tech G-RAID is about 95 watts. This theoretically produces a run time of about 74 minutes on the UPS. If the iMac is doing heavy work, power consumption (as measured on the UPS display) increases to about 150-170 watts, with proportionally shorter run time.

I don’t even have the auto-shutdown feature installed, as outages are rare in my area and 98% of those which occur are brief.