[mschuster91]

The arcs have nothing to do with tripping the RCD part of your breaker. The RCD part only trips on a substantial current (>30 mA, or less for specialty devices, or more for upstream RCDs) between hot and ground, it doesn't care at all about the current flowing between hot and neutral.

That inrush current however, given sufficiently large buffer capacitors, can be enough to trip the overcurrent protection that most if not all RCDs also have - and that one tends to get more sensitive as they age, it's a common issue with old breakers.

(Another device that could trip is an arc-fault detection device, but AFDDs are fairly new and not required by many electrical codes. Nevertheless, it's a good idea to upgrade your distribution boxes with them, if you have the budget. These things save lives.)

[scq]

That is not how an RCD works. It doesn't even look at ground.

An RCD will trip when the difference between the current going down the live and neutral conductors exceeds a certain value -- in normal operation they are opposite and cancel each other out.

If it operated how you describe, it could never detect someone touching a live conductor, because the current would not return through the ground prong.

[sdflhasjd]

The Mac Studio has a 3-pin earthed C5 connector. I presumed it's not overcurrent as it trips a 32A type C RCBO in an instant.

Either way, it's certainly a problem with the computer - I've far more demanding equipment that has never done this, and have yet to find a circuit it won't *pop*.