UPS for Mac Studio

[JSRinUK]

I’m aiming to do some LLM fine-tuning with my Mac Studio, which will likely require it to run 24/7 for several days. So I thought it’d be wise to look into getting a UPS.

I used UPSes many years back, but got disillusioned when the batteries died within 2-3 years without ever requiring them to fulfil their purpose.

Good to read that battery tech has improved since, and I ultimately decided on one of these:

The Anker Solix C1000.

Received it yesterday and tried it out last night. Works fine.

And it doubles as a battery backup in case we really have a power failure and desperately need to power something up.

These can be pretty pricey, but I don’t think they ever sell at the RRP (£999). The price seems to swing between £699 and £499. With 5% off for signing up, that made it £474. If it lasts the 10-years they claim, that makes it very affordable (about 91p/week).

I’m interested in what other people use, and what prompted you to want/need a UPS.

 

[maflynn]

I assume you're running your Studio through that (what about the monitor), and the Anker is plugged into the wall.

The only thing I'd worry about is the recharge cycles, these batteries have a finite recharge cycle and with the studio. constantly drawing from it, you'll be getting these micro-recharge cycles. I'm unsure how that impacts battery longevity.

I have one of these for when I go camping, it runs my heating blanket (I camp in the winter), lights, laptop etc. I love it

 

[JSRinUK]

These things are supposed to last 3,000 cycles. Yes, it’ll be plugged into the mains when the Mac is in use.

The monitors are not plugged into the Anker, but I have a 16” USB monitor plugged into the Mac for use when I just want to monitor its progress.

I think the technology in LiFePO4 batteries is pretty good for this kind of thing.

 

[edubfromktown]

My power goes offline for up to a half hour a few times per year during storms.

I was surprised that my ancient 650 VA UPS could not keep an M1 Studio powered up as it had with prior M1 and Intel Mini's.

I purchased an APC BX1500M "dumb" BackUPS unit (2 1/2 years ago for ~$160 USD).

It has no trouble keeping my Studio, 3 displays and assorted peripherals running uninterrupted.

Batteries typically last 4 years or more for me and they are easy and not super expensive to replace.

 

[xraydoc]

I just needed something to give me enough time to gracefully shut down my machine if the power goes out (or to protect from momentary blips), so I bought an APC brand UPS with a USB port -- I've got macOS set to shut itself down if it's been on battery power for 5 minutes. And I don't walk away without saving work, so I'm not too worried about it getting hung up on a Save/Quit dialog box or something like that. Got one for my WFH PC as well. Windows will do the same thing when it sees a USB-enabled UPS.

I have had a few go bad after a few years. One stopped providing actual battery backup and the other just up and turned itself off one day on its own, never to come back to life again. So I tend to buy units with smaller batteries (for reduced expense) since all I need it for is to buy enough time for the computer to turn itself off. I don't need it to continue to run for an extended period of time nor do I put power-hungry equipment onto the same ones used for the computers.

 

[JSRinUK]

I just needed something to give me enough time to gracefully shut down my machine if the power goes out (or to protect from momentary blips), so I bought an APC brand UPS with a USB port -- I've got macOS set to shut itself down if it's been on battery power for 5 minutes. And I don't walk away without saving work, so I'm not too worried about it getting hung up on a Save/Quit dialog box or something like that. Got one for my WFH PC as well. Windows will do the same thing when it sees a USB-enabled UPS.

The Anker doesn’t have a means to tell the Mac/PC to shut down when the battery is low, so that’s certainly something to be aware of for anyone who needs that facility. You can monitor it via its app, though.

Also, Anker only states “<20ms” for UPS use - which is fine for modern stuff like the Mac, but a true UPS (like yours, undoubtedly) will quote <10ms.

I also have a “backup” backup method in place. When I’m fine-tuning the LLM, the script saves the checkpoints every 30 mins so, should the Anker fail, or it’s just used for too long for the battery capacity, I should only lose 30 minutes of work. For anything else, like you, I frequently save everything (and important stuff goes either to the cloud, or GitHub).