Testing

To test the Ultra Products 1025 VA 615 Watts Backup UPS, it was of course connected to a BTX form factor based system as shown in the image below.

The system specifications for the test system are as follows:

• Intel Celeron D 356 3.33 GHz processor
• Intel 945GCZ mBTX motherboard
• 512 MB OCZ DDR2 PC2-5400 memory
• 200 GB Western Digital IDE hard drive
• Cooler Master Type II BTX Cooler 
• Cooler Master CM Media B260 mBTX Case
• Cooler Master CFX12V 275W PSU Power Supply
• X2Gen 19" TFT LCD monitor
• Logitech MX500 USB mouse
• Maxell PS2 keyboard

The specifications for the system are rather basic, and it isn't overloaded with power hungry components.  It might be a lightweight in terms of power consumption too, so the UPS should provide more uptime than other high-end systems.  Just to get a baseline of what the power consumption would look like, the whole system (including the monitor) was initially powered up while connected to a Seasonic Power Angel monitoring device in order to take a few readings.  This is what the Power Angel had to say about the system while idling at the CentOS 4.4 x64 dektop:

• V = 116.7
• W = 124
• VA = 183
• A = 1.55
• Hz = 59.9

As I anticipated, the system really does run rather efficiently.  183 VA is quite low as compared to some of my other systems that feature things like 600W+ power supplies, multiple hard drives, dual core processors, and SLI enabled video cards.

The next step was to try and setup the UPSMON software, and this proved to be a frustrating waste of time.  The disk provided with the UPS claims support for Windows and Linux, but the Linux software is severely lacking.  Not only is it designed for use with older UPSes featuring a serial connection instead of USB, the documentation and application text is just about the worst "Engrish" I have ever encountered.  The screenshot below is from the application as I tried to make it detect the UPS.

For those looking to use this unit on a Linux based system, be prepared to have no monitoring capabilities!  There doesn't appear to be any better software available online, and even when I found the actual manufacturer's website it was of no use in addressing this problem.