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Setup / UPS / current

APC Easy UPS BV650I in my setup.

A 650VA line-interactive unit carrying the lighter end of the equipment.

APCBV650Icurrent
Why I chose it

BV650 is the smaller of the two units and it is matched to what is actually plugged into it: the router, the display and the network gear, which together sit well inside 375W. Line-interactive with automatic voltage regulation means brownouts and spikes are corrected without draining the battery at all, which is the common case here rather than a full outage. Four Schuko outlets on the rear cover the network stack without a power strip.

How I use it

It stays plugged in permanently and does nothing visible unless the power fails. Its job is that a brownout does not take the router and the displays down at once.

Trade-offs

650VA is not enough for a desktop and a monitor together, which is why the larger unit exists — splitting the load across the two is the whole arrangement. The stepped approximation to a sinewave output is fine for PC power supplies with their own filtering, but it will upset sensitive or older hardware. The Schuko outlets take a plug straight from the wall with no C13 lead, which is the whole point of this build, but it also means you cannot feed it a C13 cable to daisy-chain into the other unit. There is no USB communication port, so there is no automatic safe shutdown — if an outage outlasts the battery, everything downstream loses power anyway.

Note on trademarks Every product, brand and company named on this page is the trademark of its respective owner. They are listed here purely to identify the hardware on one desk. I am not affiliated with, sponsored by, endorsed by, or claiming ownership of any brand or product mentioned.