4 reasons a UPS should be the next investment in your home lab

If you thought gaming was an expensive hobby, you’d be surprised by all the cool (and expensive) products you can add to your home lab. From low-power, budget-friendly SBCs and mini-PCs to server rigs, enterprise-grade switches, and NAS enclosures, there’s a battalion of useful devices in the tinkering landscape.
However, Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) units remain some of the most criminally underrated products in the computing space. If you’re on the fence about investing in a UPS, this article will convince you to give these neat devices a shot.
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4 Protection from brownouts and power surges
An extra layer of security for your devices
Depending on where you live, brownouts may range anywhere between uncommon to extremely rare. Unfortunately, random bursts of low voltage can have some damaging consequences on your home lab equipment – and the same can be said for sudden power spikes. If you’re particularly unlucky, an untimely voltage surge could end up frying your circuit boards and melting the delicate components.
Thankfully, UPS units feature built-in surge protectors, which safeguard the devices plugged into them from sudden spikes. Likewise, your UPS should be able to supply emergency power to your devices during brownouts, preventing them from the ill-effects of operating under under-voltage conditions.
3 Clean power supply
You’ll need a good-quality UPS for this one
Although brownouts and power surges are extreme conditions, distorted power supply, is not. While it’s not as damaging to your home lab hardware as a major spike in voltage, constantly subjecting your minor spikes and dips can have a negative impact on your devices in the long run.
But if you’ve got a double conversion UPS, you can rest easy knowing that it will filter out the fluctuations and deliver clean power to your home lab. The only caveat is that dual-conversion UPS units are a lot more expensive than their line-interactive counterparts.
2 No more data loss from outages
Essential for hardcore NAS setups
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Unlike your average gaming PC, single outages are a lot more damaging to home servers, especially when you’re using local SAN/NAS configuration 24/7. Not only do you have to deal with sudden disruptions in your synchronization and backup operations, but there’s always the possibility of data corruption rearing its ugly head.
That’s where a UPS comes in handy, as it prevents your storage server from turning off mid-operation and grants you some extra time to safely shut it down. And that’s before you include the U in the UPS…
1 Uninterrupted operations
Especially if you’re running low-power devices in your home lab
Contrary to popular belief, not all devices in home labs are power-hungry behemoths. Workstations comprising SBCs, mini-PCs, and all-SSD NAS enclosures are known for their low power consumption, making them especially useful for home labs armed with decent UPS.
While budget-friendly, low-capacity UPS units may be too weak to run server-grade Xeon systems, SBCs are an entirely different story. With a modestly powerful UPS, you can run some mini-PCs, SBCs, and a handful of network devices for hours on end!
Making your home lab more foolproof (power-proof?) with a UPS
While there are plenty of good UPS units out there, choosing the ideal one for your home lab involves a lot of planning. For example, a high-end UPS can easily exceed your typical 15A residential circuit, and you’ll likely trip the breaker if you attempt to use it to power your home lab. Then there’s the issue of calculating the UPS capacity you’d need for your projects. Finally, you’ll have to contend with the spike in the energy bills caused by the UPS, especially if you plan to use a double-conversion unit.