alt Hacker NewsLiving in developing countries taught me to never plugin expensive computers without a surge protector UPS.
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Lightning can mess you up in every country lol. Had to replace a PSU because of that, thankfully it was just that and minor damage to GPU.
Honestly even in "developed countries" it's not worth blindly trusting that the power in your house/building is clean. It's cheap and easy enough to just put any expensive hardware on a UPS rather than speculating what's going on behind the walls.
Living in California taught me this
Do you still need a UPS if you have one of those household (Powerwall style) battery packs? Also Apple switched mode power supplies are pretty well built.
But then again there's horror stories like
https://www.reddit.com/r/applehelp/comments/1maegvb/i_burned...
Commercial uses layered surge protectors (Type I, II, and III), which is also recommended for other users but rarely followed.
In surge prone areas, at a minimum I would have good quality whole-house surge protector (eg Siemens 140 or Eaton 108), and a good quality surge protector strip for any computer/TV/phone charger.
I also put surge protectors in front of expensive white goods like the fridge, washer/dryer, dishwasher, and garage door opener. Besides being costly to replace these can contain "sparky" motors and this provides protection in the other direction too. Over time smaller surges can degrade the main surge protector for your computer.
Nothing (reasonable) can protect against direct lightning strikes, but for anything less it should provide decent protection.