[Shiunbird]

Hi everyone,

A few years ago, I remember reading one of Apple's manuals, that mentioned that you should be careful about the choice of UPS, because some output square waves instead of pure sinusoid waves. I remember getting scared and never installing an UPS on my Mac Pro itself.

But my Octane sees some use, and I thought of protecting it against surge. But I can't spend gazillions to buy an UPS.


Is this a valid concern?

[Raion]

I use a line interactive UPS that outputs pure sine wave. Used it was about $240 and works even with the onyx2

[weblacky]

You could always just buy a line conditioner instead of a UPS. That way you get better regulation and boost and buck of voltage drops (plus surge) just no backup battery.

I have a family member using a triplite line conditioner on a 2012 Mac mini for about 5 years now.

No issues. However pure sine wave back ups are in fact a lot cheaper, as was just mentioned. My only problem with the ones I’ve used is that unless you get a very expensive model that has bypass in it the inverter and the batteries are always online and in line. So you end up burning through your batteries in roughly 3 years or so. For some reason the original batteries seem to last a little longer and replacements I buy keep going about every three or four years.

[Shiunbird]

I've always heard that online UPS are better because, exactly, for the small drop when you need to switch from the bypass to the battery.
I don't even know what I have but yes, perhaps I should check the batteries.

What about shape of output wave reducing the longevity of power supplies? Any clues?
It's for the Octane. I don't care too much about the rest.

[weblacky]

Well I can’t much speak for that. Certainly a square wave isn’t perfect. The octane was designed back in the days when UPS backups were all square wave.

My understanding is that consumer pure sine wave is a relatively new thing that wasn’t available in 1996 or 1998.

A line conditioner is still going to be more what you need if you don’t require battery back up. But of course all the Octane power supplies are old so any more additional work they have to perform may just make it fail sooner. But that’s a concern you’ll be experiencing all the time until you get a rebuilt PSU.

[Shiunbird]

Thanks!