Overdrawing a Battery Backup/UPS

Like any good computer person and/or cruncher who is concerned with computer safety, I've got the Silver Hammer hooked up to an Uninterrupted Power Supply/Batter Backup (whichever term you prefer...).

Here's the question: I have 750W UPS, but the computer is drawing more than that. This makes the UPS beep irritatingly - imagine a dying cow, except it can only make a beeping sound instead of mooing, and you've got the sound I'm hearing...

Is going to cause me problems in the short term? I'm going to buy myself a UPS that's allows a higher power draw, but if I leave the Silver Hammer on and crunching, is this going to cause any problems?

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Originally Posted by Maxwell

Like any good computer person and/or cruncher who is concerned with computer safety, I've got the Silver Hammer hooked up to an Uninterrupted Power Supply/Batter Backup (whichever term you prefer...).

Here's the question: I have 750W UPS, but the computer is drawing more than that. This makes the UPS beep irritatingly - imagine a dying cow, except it can only make a beeping sound instead of mooing, and you've got the sound I'm hearing...

Is going to cause me problems in the short term? I'm going to buy myself a UPS that's allows a higher power draw, but if I leave the Silver Hammer on and crunching, is this going to cause any problems?

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Short answer: Yes.
Long answer: Depends. Quality of the UPS components and build will determine stress related degradation. If your UPS is made by the likes of CyberPower I would strongly suggest you unplug the SH from that unit. Not that CyberPower is terribly bad stuff just that it is not good stuff.

This is an APC UPS... any news on that one? I mean, I'll have a new one within a few days, but I'm disinclined to shut down and move the plug unless I need to...

I had the same annoying problem with my backup supply. Turns out that the batteries were not fully charging anymore. I replaced the batteries and have not had a problem since.

When I had the 2 Dell PowerEdge dual Xeon servers hooked up to my APC 1500 UPS (pretty big and heavy - might be same one you have), the lights would flash, meaning it was overloaded, but no beeps.
Now that I have just the Beerinator on there, the lights don't even flash...so I'm getting bazillions more credits with less juice! :D

Try a manual reset of the UPS; I had to do this once after a "brown-out" power outage here. (Yep, SoCal is pulling so much juice you could probably almost light the rest of the nation with our grid if you took out NY and Chicago!)
You power the unit down, then unplug it from the wall. Then, unplug the little "plugin" in the back that is like a "key" to the battery. This disconnects the internal battery from the unit. Hold the power button "on" with your finger for like 20 to 30 seconds. Then hook it all back up and turn it on...leave it on for about 1 min to go through its self-check cycle. Then turn your HAMMER on again. See if that takes care of the beeping.

@Pop: I have the APC 750W model, and I'm clearly overdrawing it - Dual 5970s @ 850MHz, 1090T, HAF 932 case, HDD, and a monitor. I'm clearly drawing more than 750W - I moved the machine off the battery back up side and put it on the surge protector side, and the beeping went away...

Ah, OK. Well, best of luck on that score. Those things "Ain't Cheap"! :p

Overdrawing it isn't a huge problem, they only use the surge protector as long as your power is on. It does mean it will draw down in nothing flat if the power actually goes out, and it is harder for it to recharge once it does draw down. As far as the beeping goes, you can turn it off, I think by holding both buttons down for few seconds. If all else fails you could read the instructions, but you have to turn in your man badge if you get that desperate.

One suggestion is to take the monitor off the UPS. Depending on how much you are over drawing the UPS it will either run out of juice very quickly, cause a brown out situation with reduced voltage, or immediately drop out. Just pull the plug out of the wall and see which it does :)

PS most of the MB have a power option in BIOS to restart the computer after a power outtage. If you set BOINC to run at Win startup you won't lose much crunching time since the UPS will probably only run a computer for 15 minutes before it drops out anyway.

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Originally Posted by Shadowlurker

Overdrawing it isn't a huge problem, they only use the surge protector as long as your power is on. It does mean it will draw down in nothing flat if the power actually goes out, and it is harder for it to recharge once it does draw down. As far as the beeping goes, you can turn it off, I think by holding both buttons down for few seconds. If all else fails you could read the instructions, but you have to turn in your man badge if you get that desperate.

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I suspect he's turned that in years ago. One too many shots to the nuts if you know what I mean. :D