Mutt Daeng

I am now in a position to purchase a UPS (Most likely APC or Zircon). Thanks to all who took the trouble to respond to my post(s). Mods please close.

TBH it's to protect me from the ever increasing number of brownouts and 1-5 second blackouts that i have experienced recently, so I don't really need a belt & braces solution, but I appreciate the advice. Thanks

I've done a bit of research on the power meter plugs and measuring power on small AC devices. This is my source: https://brian-candler.medium.com/rediscovering-the-power-factor-9dbf4187c311 Power = Voltage x Current works for Direct Current (DC). But as it turns out, it doesn’t necessarily work for Alternating Current (AC). For AC, the real formula is: Power = Voltage x Current x Power Factor. So, with my PC, TV, USB Hub plugged into a 4 gang socket connected to the mains via the power meter plug: Voltage reading (fluctuating) = 222V Current Reading (Fluctuating) = 551mA Power Factor (Fluctuating) = 0.714 Power reading Fluctuating) = 88.04W Calculated power = V * A * PF = 87.34 W Only a difference of 0.7 watts between calculated power and the reading from the meter. That's good enough for me.

Thanks for the advice @pasathai.

Thanks for your reply @OneMoreFarang.

Thanks for your reply @JetsetBkk.

Measuring a bulb of known wattage is exactly what I am going to do. Thanks for your help.

I think the monitor can display voltage, current and power. That's a job for tomorrow as my degree of compos mentisness is currently disadvantaged by the number of Changs that I've swallowed so far today. Thanks for your assistance so far.

I haven't bought a multimeter. This is what I bought. It plugs into the mains and my 4 gang power strip plugs into the universal socket shown in the image.

I was expecting more than 100 watts. I contacted the shop where I bought all the components for the pc and they said I would need to have a UPS capable of supplying more than 650 watts (the psu I chose to install was 650 watts). I didn't think that was correct, so I bought the power meter plug to do some investigating of my own.

I'm looking for advice/guidance/comments to determine the specification of a UPS to protect my (oldish) main desktop pc. It has an i5-7400 cpu, 1 M.2 SSD on the M/B, 1 sata3 SSD and 1 mechanical sata3 HDD. Intel UHD graphics on the cpu. O/S is Win 11 pro 64 bit. It has a 650 watt Thermaltake PSU. It connects to a 40inch Skyworth TV. I just bought a power meter plug from Lazada to see what power was being used. I plugged the PC , TV, external USB HDD and an 8 port USB hub into a 4-gang power strip, which was plugged into the mains via the power meter plug. I then played a video on the pc, started word, excel and outlook. The power meter showed that less than 100 watts was being used. Does this seem right?

Killer

Looks pretty tasty to me

All of the above look very appetising.

I ditto that ref: Mini PC's. I've had great luck with mine, which is a Voyo brand. In other words, an off brand. Bought it for my GF's father who was living in a retirement home with minimal space for a PC. He kept it in a drawer and plugged it into the HDMI of his big screen TV when he used it. It worked great for him for years, and for us since he passed about a year ago. But if money's tight, I'd look into a 2nd hand PC from one of the IT malls like Fortune Town, the old Pantip Plaza (is it still there?) and some in Chinatown. I'm sure every city in Thailand has one... For less than half the price of a new one, with specs that more than match today's entry level PC's. For example, an 8th generation I7 will match a 13th generation I3 for benchmark speed. Then you just need to make sure it'll take the desired OS. For example, my 8 year old Asus won't take Win11, but the more I read about Win11, the less sad that makes me. It's still plenty fast and very stable. Caveat: Don't go too old lest you end up with serial ports and old timey video instead of HDMI. Unless, like me, you have a real old printer or plotter that needs a serial or parallel port. In my case, a cutting plotter. I'm also a fan of mini-pcs. I bought a low spec intel NUC (Celeron) and upgraded the Ram to 16GB the M2 SSD to 512GB from 256GB. It came with Win 11 Pro pre-installed, which I removed and put Ubuntu on instead. The reason being is that QBittorrent (the main application) runs much better under Ubuntu than Windows IMHO. It's plugged into my main TV. I use it to find & download & play media, as well as general web browsing and music. It works very well. If my main pc (self assembled) ever dies I will have no hesitation in buying another NUC with a higher spec than my existing NUC to replace it.

I normally buy the pork Cumberland (thick/thin) sausages from Nookie and they are really good. He has quite a few varieties on offer. Here is an extract of his price list:

I've just watched Land of Bad and it was good IMHO. It was brought to my attention by @earlinclaifornia. I got it from TGx. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt19864802/

Masters of the Air complete season 1 is now available on TGx. It's already been mentioned on this forum. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2640044/

Zoo

Thanks for all your hard work Mike. Due to your (and a couple of other posters) fine efforts, I now feel I have the knowledge and confidence to deal with the Thai RD when the time comes. Thanks again.

Since changing browser from Brave to Iron browser, I no longer get the error. Mods, please close this topic.

Isosceles

Earlier in the week, I watched season 1 of Hit & Miss. It was good and worth a look IMHO. I got it from TheRARBG. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2232345/

I've just watched The Promised Land (Bastarden) and it was very good and well worth a look IMHO. It was recommended by @Seppius and mentioned by a few other posters earlier in this topic. I got it from TGx. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt20561198/

Free - Wishing Well