Thank you both,
@phairphan and
@dwig, for your responses!
I owned the predecessor to that APC unit and recently purchased the CyberPower unit. I was/am happy with both for a 2009 cMP. That sounds like the correct wattage for the power supply, but it doesn't draw that constantly (or ever, in my case). My machine has 4 spinners, 2 SSDs on a PCI card, USB 3 card, the much more power-hungry HD 4870, FW drive, and a 32" 4k monitor . I've never had to run down the battery, but the runtime estimate is ~15 minutes. As long as your power situation is relatively stable and you're not planning to continue actively using on battery power, either of those units should be fine.
From all the research I did, it seems the "pure" sine wave UPS will be better for the type of power supply found in your MacPro. Although the unit is more expensive, I recall noting the replacement batteries were considerably cheaper than the APC unit.
Unless you live in a region with a lot of power problems or you intend to actively use your machine on battery, I probably wouldn't be concerned about the ability to connect an external battery pack. What is use your use case?
Yea the 980 watts is the maximum the power supply CAN put out (which is true with any computer). Actual wattage output from the power supply will be less, depending on what you inside. You seem to be running more than I do and with the same/similar UPSs, and battery power doesn't seem to be an issue...so that's a good sign.
Yes I've been reading mix things on the pure sine wave. I think Mac Pros use a Power Factor Correction power supply and would prefer to have a pure since wave UPS. Although my current UPS (an
APC Back UPS 1500, BX1500), which seems to have gone out after just over 12 years is, I think, a stepped/simulated sine wave UPS. I've had no noticeable issues with it. I also used it on my Power Mac G5.
I wanted to possibly connect the external battery pack to the APC UPS simply to have more battery capacity. Given the maximum power requirements (again under max load with lots of extras inside), 1500VA (~900 watts) seems to be too small. 1500VA also seems to be the high end VA for the "consumer level" UPSs. To go higher you need to go to higher end UPSs which are made for servers, networks, etc. And of course that means more cost. But it seems like you have no issues with 1500VA with a similar setup I have.
Not that I can tell. We've been using an APS Back-UPS Pro 1500 on out 2009 Mac Pro for over 4 years with no issues. Power here in Key West is unreliable with brownouts and outages occurring several times a month. The power company is very good and service is usually out only a few minutes with 15-30 minutes being the longest. Still, the UPS gets regular "use".
Ours also upports a 23" monitor, 3-4 external HDs, DSL router, Ethernet switch, an EPSON 9800 printer (44"), and a few small accessories. I still get decent runtime.
We have the 1000 version of the same UPS supporting out MacMini, another EPSON 9800, and a 20" monitor. We'll be replacing the antique PowerMac in the near future and will be adding another ASP Back-UPS Pro 1500 to the set to support it and will divide up the other 1500's devices between it and the new one.
Power over here seems to be good. Sometimes the UPS does "activate" for a few seconds at most. Maybe for brownouts...?
Wow that is a lot of stuff on that UPS. Which echos what
@phairphan said. Well that seems encouraging then coming from two separate individuals.
Inrush Current
While I'm here and we're talking about power, how about the issue of
Inrush Current...? From what I've read about it, that refers to the current spike on power on or wake up. Any issues/experiences with that?