Appropriate UPS?

[Trusteft]

I have a late 2012 mac mini with the 2.3 quad core i7. 16GB of RAM, 2 SSDs (samsung 850 evo) one 250GB and one 500GB. Connected mouse and keyboard and one or two external 2.5inch mechanical drives.

Combined with my monitor (40 inch 4K monitor which consumes about 62W) and a set of small studio monitors, how many VA UPS should I go for?

 

[MarkJames68]

Depends really on how long you want to run it on battery. 500+ should be plenty.

 

[Trusteft]

Depends really on how long you want to run it on battery. 500+ should be plenty.

Oh you know, just enough to make sure everything is safe to shut down properly. 500VA eh? Interesting. Thank you.

 

[fricotin]

I had a CyberPower 450 which was more than enough. The mini by itself uses less than 100 Watts max.

 

[belvdr]

Using APC's selector for 250W, with 0% expansion and 15 minutes of runtime at 120V, it states 1000VA ($122 Amazon). A 550VA ($58 Amazon) gets you about 5 minutes of runtime. A 1500VA is roughly $160 at Amazon.

Depending on how quick you are to shutdown, the extra money may be worth it to let you keep working a bit or for future expansion. I tend to opt for a larger unit, because I never know how quickly I can shutdown.

 

[ActionableMango]

I have a 1000va unit which ran an old inefficient 2009 Mac Pro with 12 cores and a GTX980 video card for about 20 minutes. Certainly enough time to shut down.

For a Mac Mini I'd imagine 500va would be fine and 1000va would be a luxury. 1500va would be overkill unless you need the Mini to keep running while you go get your generator started.