DescentBB

Hi everyone.

I'm about to buy a voltage regulator but I would like to know which one would be better for me and my use.
I'm planning to connect my computer (it has a 600w PSU), two audio mini components, and perhaps some powered usb devices (a hub and a external HDD case) and/or a musical digital keyboard.

Would a 1000w voltage regulator be enough for that? O should I go for 2000w, although it costs a bit more?

I'm not exactly sure what you need a voltage regulator for with that hardware, pretty much any PC PSU made in the last decade will work fine on anything from 90-230v for instance. However, you need to look at the peak power consumption numbers listed on everything you want to plug into this regulator and total them up. The important math to remember is very simple: Watts = Volts * Amps. If you have any two it is really easy to calculate the third (Eg: Amps = Watts / Volts or Volts = Watts / Amps), and in North America the standard voltage is 115-120.

Granted things can get slightly more complicated if you also have to account for the power factor, since most voltage regulators are going to describe their output capacity in power factor corrected Volt-Ampere instead of real Watts. To calculate the VAs, divide Watts by the power factor of the device; for example an 800w load with a 0.85 power factor requires 941 VAs.

I would like a regulator mainly as an extra protection for some heavy power fluctuations that happen ocasionally where I live, mainly due to repairs on the neighbourhood or weather issues.

They are rare, and I usually unplug or turn completely off (from the power strip) all my devices when this happen.
However, on one of those days after a storm and some repairs, power was fluctuating really bad, and a cheap PSU I had got damaged because I was out of home and couldn't get in time to unplug it (even if the computer was turned off).
Thankfully now I have a decent and certified PSU, but still, better be safe than sorry.

Will check the peak consumption numbers on my devices to follow your tip, thanks once more Krom!

A line interactive UPS unit may be a better choice then, because a voltage regulator is subject to the same limitations as a PC PSU. If you get a brownout that damages a cheap PSU it would just as likely damage the voltage regulator, otherwise it will probably just cause the voltage regulator to trip its protection circuits and outright disconnect everything on it.

As the voltage goes down, in order to maintain output the regulator has to draw more amps, eventually if the voltage gets low enough the wires inside and outside would melt down from the amperage required (or more realistically, the breaker would trip). One of the weird things about electricity is that amperage melts wires but voltage doesn't. So if you take the wiring in your house that is rated for 15 amps and draw 30 amps through it, the wire would get warm and eventually burn up, regardless of it it was at 12 volts or 120 volts. This is also why electric transmission lines run into the hundreds of thousands of volts, the more volts you have, the more watts you can transmit while not exceeding the amperage tolerance of the wire. Meaning a wire that can tolerate 50 amps can safely transmit either up to 6,000 watts at 120 volts or up to 25,000,000 watts at 500,000 volts.

The cyberpower FPCLCD ups units I have on my network and all the computers can do voltage regulation down to like 90 volts without draining the battery and then they just kick over to battery. A good sized one can keep a PC running for 10-20 minutes depending on what you are doing, and they can automatically shut down the PC as the battery gets low. Although I have a whole house generator that kicks in automatically whenever there is an outage so my batteries only have to run everything for the ~30 seconds it takes for the generator to take over.