Peripherals
Thinking inside the box to refresh the parts other tips can’t reach
You don’t need an expensive UPS
QHow can I protect my new iMac from blackouts in our mains power supply?
AEvery desktop Mac should be provided with mains power delivered through an uninterruptible power supply (UPS). That not only filters out potentially damaging spikes but lets your Mac shut down in an orderly fashion when the power fails altogether. Laptop Macs will still benefit when connected to a filtered supply, but automatically switch to their own battery power, so don’t need backup from a UPS.
To work out the required battery capacity for your Mac, look up its power consumption in Apple’s support page for that model or Mactracker (Free, from mactracker.ca). If it needs an external display or other essential peripherals, add those in to arrive at the total power requirement in watts. This can vary widely: an iMac 27-inch can draw as much as 300W, and idles at 74W, while an M1 Mac mini peaks at only 39W and idles at less than 7W, although you’ll have to add its display to those, which might be another 150W or so.
Use those figures with an online calculator and product selector, such as APC’s at bit.ly/ mac372upsselect. When your UPS is connected to your Mac via a USB cable – an essential requirement – the Energy Saver pane lets you set how long it will run on UPS power before it starts to shut down automatically. That need only be a couple of minutes, letting you choose a UPS perhaps around £120 rather than not being able to afford a model with greater battery capacity. It’s more important to have a UPS which needs to shut down earlier, than none at all.
> Recent Intel Macs support external GPUs (eGPU) containing graphics accelerators to connect to a compatible display, or simply for power and speed. A Blackmagic eGPU connected to a Thunderbolt 3 port provides a Radeon Pro 580 with 8GB of memory for £600.