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What happened to true sinewave UPS?

1,253 149 January 3, 2025 at 08:41 AM
I just burned up another cyberpower UPS so I'm looking to replace it with APC or Tripp Lite. The cheapest true sine 1500VA model I see is the SMART1500PSGLCD. Are stepped sine and PWM sine ok for modern equipment? What about older active PFC PSUs?
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BerMM2
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FlashX83
01-04-2025 at 07:45 AM.
01-04-2025 at 07:45 AM.
Are you sure your UPS burned up and not just dead batteries? If it's happened more than once, I'd definitely be concerned that you have a problem other than just bad luck with Cyberpower.

Anecdotal, but my ancient Corsair TX650 (circa 2010) is active PFC and works fine on my simulated sine wave Cyberpower 850VA. Although realistically I doubt my PC (5700x and RX6700XT) pulls much more than 300w under load, so it's not like the PSU is working hard.

I have another simulated sine Cyberpower 1250VA in the living room hooked up to my TV, Xbox and PS and all of them work fine on it as well.


The APC BGM1500B is pure sine wave and cheaper than the Tripp Lite you mentioned, at least on Amazon now.
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BerMM2
01-04-2025 at 09:38 AM.
01-04-2025 at 09:38 AM.
Quote from FlashX83 :
Are you sure your UPS burned up and not just dead batteries? If it's happened more than once, I'd definitely be concerned that you have a problem other than just bad luck with Cyberpower.

Anecdotal, but my ancient Corsair TX650 (circa 2010) is active PFC and works fine on my simulated sine wave Cyberpower 850VA. Although realistically I doubt my PC (5700x and RX6700XT) pulls much more than 300w under load, so it's not like the PSU is working hard.

I have another simulated sine Cyberpower 1250VA in the living room hooked up to my TV, Xbox and PS and all of them work fine on it as well.


The APC BGM1500B is pure sine wave and cheaper than the Tripp Lite you mentioned, at least on Amazon now.
Burn up was not an accurate description. I do have a primary issue. For an unknown reason my room has plenty of power until something like my mini fridge or window AC cycles. The AVR feature takes care of that and the batteries get things shut down during the occasional outage. This cyberpower is the warranty replacement for one that tried to burn up a couple years ago (that one had an alarm go off, quickly filled the house with burning electronics odor, and refused to power off until I dragged it outside and yanked the batteries). During a recent string of storms this one was immediately shutting off during power interruptions despite passing self tests and finally refused to power on at all (Google suggests this is common with Cyberpower). I'll probably troubleshoot it further later, but for now I've never had an issue with APC or Tripp Lite so I'm looking at them. The BGM1500B is carried at BestBuy (I have a gift card) and they'll price match Amazon. The only feature I'd miss from the Tripp Lite is the 24 volt expansion jack that I was hoping to connect to one of my rarely used mobility scooter battery packs, maintaining the pack and extending the UPS runtime (I did this once with a rather old Tripp Lite and it appears that they still use a powerpole connector).
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BerMM2
01-04-2025 at 10:14 AM.
01-04-2025 at 10:14 AM.
Quote from BerMM2 :
Burn up was not an accurate description. I do have a primary issue. For an unknown reason my room has plenty of power until something like my mini fridge or window AC cycles. The AVR feature takes care of that and the batteries get things shut down during the occasional outage. This cyberpower is the warranty replacement for one that tried to burn up a couple years ago (that one had an alarm go off, quickly filled the house with burning electronics odor, and refused to power off until I dragged it outside and yanked the batteries). During a recent string of storms this one was immediately shutting off during power interruptions despite passing self tests and finally refused to power on at all (Google suggests this is common with Cyberpower). I'll probably troubleshoot it further later, but for now I've never had an issue with APC or Tripp Lite so I'm looking at them. The BGM1500B is carried at BestBuy (I have a gift card) and they'll price match Amazon. The only feature I'd miss from the Tripp Lite is the 24 volt expansion jack that I was hoping to connect to one of my rarely used mobility scooter battery packs, maintaining the pack and extending the UPS runtime (I did this once with a rather old Tripp Lite and it appears that they still use a powerpole connector).
Another big plus for the Tripp Lite is that the USB connected PC can provide the UPS status to other PCs on the LAN, signaling them to shut down or hibernate. Very helpful if protecting multiple small PCs. Some APCs can do this by connecting directly to LAN (but not the BGM1500).
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YanksIn2009
01-07-2025 at 08:03 AM.
01-07-2025 at 08:03 AM.
Quote from BerMM2 :
Burn up was not an accurate description. I do have a primary issue. For an unknown reason my room has plenty of power until something like my mini fridge or window AC cycles. The AVR feature takes care of that and the batteries get things shut down during the occasional outage. This cyberpower is the warranty replacement for one that tried to burn up a couple years ago (that one had an alarm go off, quickly filled the house with burning electronics odor, and refused to power off until I dragged it outside and yanked the batteries). During a recent string of storms this one was immediately shutting off during power interruptions despite passing self tests and finally refused to power on at all (Google suggests this is common with Cyberpower). I'll probably troubleshoot it further later, but for now I've never had an issue with APC or Tripp Lite so I'm looking at them. The BGM1500B is carried at BestBuy (I have a gift card) and they'll price match Amazon. The only feature I'd miss from the Tripp Lite is the 24 volt expansion jack that I was hoping to connect to one of my rarely used mobility scooter battery packs, maintaining the pack and extending the UPS runtime (I did this once with a rather old Tripp Lite and it appears that they still use a powerpole connector).
Cyberpower units\batteries when they start to go will at times pass a self test but you will find they are at very low levels afterwards. They should be replaced at that point as they are no longer reliable imo. An easy way to test them is to plug in some non critical electronics\devices and then simply pull the wall plug and force it to go on battery power. You should easily be able to see how much power really is left in the batteries.

That said, it could be just a bad unit, but I own multiple CP1500PFCLCDs and have never had a problem beyond having to replace the batteries.

My 2 cents.
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