power issues with the G5...

[hardhatmac]

I'm running two computers off a single battery backup and I'm having problems with overloading. So obviously I need a bigger battery or just a seperate battery for each computer.

My current battery is has 1100 watts or volts whichever it is....and I'm running a G5 2.5 quad with two SATA 500 gb drives, the Nvidia 7800 graphics card and 6.5 GB of ram---the other computer on the battery is a dual 2.4 Xeon PC with 1 gig of ram, 5 IDE drives (ranging from 200-300 gb a peice) and 5 SCSI drives....and when both computers are at full load my battery starts to scream at me....

I have a second battery that is 720 volts or watts, but that one is too small to power my PC.....how much power does the G5 need? Will it run off of my 720 battery?

thanks!!

 

[iGary]

900 minimum.

 

[bbrosemer]

Id tend to agree with igary that G5 your using is a beast and will need a beastly power supply.

 

[hardhatmac]

Hmmm....too bad....this 720 battery is useless then....the bozo's who built my PC said it would run just fine off the 720....

I'll go buy a bigger one

Thanks alot!

 

[Makosuke]

Yeah, the G5s dont' draw a massive load when idle, but as soon as they crank up, boy that's some juice. And of course those VA ratings on UPS boxes are largely a sham--if they could actually handle loads that high, you wouldn't need anywhere near the huge numbers they put on the boxes.

I HIGHLY recommend the APC XS 1000, personally. It's like the thing was built for the G5 towers--right amount of juice, it's a solid UPS from a reliable company, quite reasonable price for the power output (and APC doesn't fudge their VA ratings as bad as some of the off brand companies), and OSX can communicate with it without any drivers at all--just plug in the USB cable and you're good to go.

Actually, considering the monster of a Quad you have, you might even consider the XS 1500--they're not that much more expensive these days, and will net you longer runtime on battery and/or more leeway once the batteries start aging and capacity goes down, so it'll effectively last longer.