New Computers with PFC Power Supplies and Other Electronics UPS's

[J P Sousa]

I was searching for a new UPS (uninterruptable power supply) and found that some newer computers (and other electronics) use a PFC power supply. I believe the government is responsible for this B-S.

Power Factor Correction (PFC) allows power distribution to operate at its maximum efficiency. There are two types of PFC, Active PFC and Passive PFC.)
http://www.endpcnoise.com/cgi-bin/e/faqpfc.html

Some of the articles I read say you need a "pure sine wave" UPS (more expensive) on these computers or it will have a hard shutdown, which essentially is the same as turning off the computer with the power switch or not using a UPS at all.  

I have not kept up to date on computer technology like I did a decade ago, so maybe those who are in the industry could give me some of your knowledge on this.

It sounds like the government forcing "green tech" on us similar to the famous low flush toilets that took 20 years to work but we had to buy them in the mean time.  

http://www.cyberpowersystems.com/products/ups-systems/adaptive-sinewave-series.html

[J P Sousa]

Sorry my post accidentally posted (just one sentence) before I completed the post. 

[EagleKeeper]

I read your post before you corrected it, I thought it was pretty funnay....you know, like your power supply failed before you could finish your post.

Heh, am I right?


Anyway, I've not heard of this tech before but what I've read about it since your post seems to to be a way to save the power company some $. Or maybe to charge if it not installed on the customer premise, and this would be the customers problem.

This is what I've spent the most time looking at so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPFKcUxbNuQ

My initial thought is that it doesn't do anything of value to you from a battery backup standpoint although I do not understand what the point of the capacitor at the power entry point is.

Anyway, when you are talking about power supplies for a single PC it seems to be a small thing.

I've had to maintain APC power supplies that took up whole racks and never heard anything about sine waves (APC battery backup and Cummins diesel generators).

I think I might be inclined to skip the PFC thing for such a small scale project but maybe an electrical engineer can shed some light on this.

[J P Sousa]

Thanks for the reply EagleKeeper.

I started researching because of complaints of the Cyberpower backups not doing the job and the company replying to the complaints citing PFC as a reason that "some" of the backups (not sine wave but SIMULATED sine wave backups) were not working.