PC Tech Thread

Anything really.

I'd stick to something from a known brand. I had an APC many years ago which was fine for at least a decade, just put an Eaton unit in front of the new computer.

What will it be backing up?

Many (most) cheapo UPS units aren't really worth it. The inverters are usually shit modified-sine type which can cause issues with sensitive PSUs and the cheap lead-acid batteries inside degrade almost immediately, so a false economy imo.

I'd spend the extra on a pure-sine UPS from a decent brand like Riello/Eaton, ideally 'on-line' type as opposed to 'line-interactive', although this last bit isn't as important. APC is the gold-standard, but they're spenny.

I thought the home nerd standard was to buy an ancient APC with dud battery and put new LiOn (?) ones in

Cheers for the thoughts.

It's for home server (generally draws about 30W, rarely more than 50W), router/wifi, modem and a raspberry Pi.

Not expecting anything to keep it going for ages, just 5 minutes whilst I either flip the power back on again or log on to shut stuff down.

It's in a loft so not fussed about the size but no bodges that may set on fire!

I did look at APC ones on ebay but there are loads of options and battery packs seem pretty expensive.

The Eaton one suggested by tester looks pretty neat, although I was hoping for something under £100 or so as it's a very dull purchase.

The cheapo 650VA APC BACK-UPS I have was rated at 5.4 minutes at full load (650W).

So even if it only has 10% of capacity it should cover 5 minutes at 50W. (My requirements are to cover ~150W for a few seconds at most.)

Given the comments from above I'd qualify my "anything really" to be "anything from scan.co.uk really" as I'd trust all of the brands they stock as reliable and not some random shit that will self combust.

hoping for something under £100

I got the 700VA one for £99 from some guy in a South American rainforest, the 550VA version is currently £80 along the banks of the same river

Cheers. They were coming up at £140 when I looked. Time to look again.

Could go in Epic WTF but it's a bit niche...

https://youtu.be/5QhU-RGvPlY

They do look very nice.

I predict that by 2025 all the ply in @Soul 's home will have at least one of these attached.

Question your life choices if you need that many stupid little fans scattered around your house.

I have a question about, what's it called, oh yes, memory. I have 110 GB on my C drive and I am down to only 10 free. I don't know where it goes. I have removed everything I can to an external hard drive, done disc cleanups but it has got lower and lower over the weeks and months. I don't have any malware, as far as I can tell. Googling hasn't helped - any thoughts, anyone?

what's it called, oh yes, memory

It's disk[sic] storage, not memory. I think 100GB for the OS and your applications is just what modern machines seem to want, and your long term fix is a new, bigger, C: drive.

There are a couple of things which will win you a little space at the expense of performance/convenience, such as disabling Hibernation and reducing the size of the paging file

As ^, 100GB does just tend to vanish with OS and a few apps now.

If you don't want to spend the time combing through files then spend ~£40 on a 512GB NVMe, do a fresh install of the OS and apps and then copy over any data you need that isn't in the cloud.

Thanks, that's way beyond my technical know how though. What I wonder is why, when I am not adding anything to my PC, the storage keeps decreasing though?

In my experience this is what takes up a lot of the ever increasing space
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/manufacture/desktop/clean-up-the-winsxs-folder?view=windows-11

What I wonder is why, when I am not adding anything to my PC, the storage keeps decreasing though?

Every time you apply an update, the previous condition is kept as a restore point. You can delete these if you're sure you will never want to revert any updates.

Thanks, but again, way beyond my understanding. Try imagining someone who doesn't know what a bottom bracket is, or even a tyre lever, or how a quick release on a wheel works.

You're presumably using Windows. Microsoft keep sending updates to Windows, which take up space on your C: drive.

These updates are some combination of bug & security fixes, which you probably want, and "new features" (like embedded advertising) that you might not.

Whenever you restart (or let Windows restart itself if it's been nagging you), the updates it downloaded in the background are applied, but the old version (of whatever was updated) is kept around in case the update breaks something.

Will, I'm pretty local to you. Send me a PM if you want me to upgrade your drive for you. I have all the stuff needed and it'd be a clone of your drive onto a new one, so exactly the same except for more disk space

That's very, very kind. I might well take you up on that in a week or two.

Thanks, but again, way beyond my understanding. Try imagining someone who doesn't know what a bottom bracket is, or even a tyre lever, or how a quick release on a wheel works.

He has a name you know... it's @ChainBreaker

Run a disk space analyser like WinDirStat or TreeSize (I think that's the name). They will tell you exactly where all the drive space has been used up. You can drill into the highest usage folders and see what's taking all the space.

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Or just bite the bullet and delete some of your porn.

That's not untrue

They will tell you exactly where all the drive space has been used up.

Not true, as it can count a file multiple times if has multiple paths (hardlinks).