Can a computer running WinXP (Home) be left on 24/7?

[JBT]

I ussualy shut mine down since my stupid PSU is so loud (Vantech Stealth) and the system is in my room. I also paythe ower billl now and i a poor college student so =( When I had a dorm it was going 24/7

 

[EeyoreX]

There are a couple of problems with leaving a PC on:

Power consumption: PCs consume quite a lot of power - a mid-range system could use as much as 150W excluding monitor. Leaving that base unit running 24/7 would cost me about £10/month (representing a near 40% increase in my electricity bill).

Wear: PCs contain mechanical parts such as hard-drives and fans. 'Consumer grade' hard drives such as would be found in a typical home PC are only designed for intermittant use (300 power-on hours/month is typical). Usage of such drives in a 24/7 system could shorten their life, which for consumer grade drives is often already short (3 years expected life-time - 1 year warranty). Other parts such as fans also have limited lives - this shouldn't be a problem for a Dell, but for cheaper PCs, with low-cost components, fans are prone to clogging with dust, or simply failing. Even the electronics wear out - certain components (particularly capacitors) are often running under high temperatures and electrical stresses and have a finite lifetime (10k - 20k hours)

In my opinion PCs should be switched off when not in use, or at least put into standby mode, so that the bulk of the components are powered down when not in use. You'll save energy, money and your PC will probably last longer.

There are a couple problems with this statement. I think all of them can really be summed up with one word: servers. Servers are not shut off. Servers run 24/7 for months and often years at a time. Granted, hard drives especially will likely be swapped and/or may be higher quality SCSI drives, but they still operate non-stop (depending on the servers role). Yes, use the power saving features of the computer. That's still leaving it on. As for wear, by the time the constant wear damages your hardware to the point of malfunction, you more likely than not will have long since replaced it. And incidentally, powering the components off and on repeatedly causes far more wear than just leaving them on. Similar to a light bulb. Notice how more often than not a bulb blows when you turn it on? Rarely do bulbs go bad when they are left on. Same basic deal with your hardware.

\Dan

 

[CTho9305]

Originally posted by: EeyoreX
As for wear, by the time the constant wear damages your hardware to the point of malfunction, you more likely than not will have long since replaced it. And incidentally, powering the components off and on repeatedly causes far more wear than just leaving them on. Similar to a light bulb. Notice how more often than not a bulb blows when you turn it on? Rarely do bulbs go bad when they are left on. Same basic deal with your hardware.

\Dan

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's true, but based on my understanding of what causes failure in processors, I don't think you'd have similar surges in processors like you do in lightbulbs. Bulb filaments go through HUGE temperature changes very quickly, CPUs heat up slower (if you use a heatsink ).

 

[drag]

Originally posted by: Mark R
There are a couple of problems with leaving a PC on:

Power consumption: PCs consume quite a lot of power - a mid-range system could use as much as 150W excluding monitor. Leaving that base unit running 24/7 would cost me about £10/month (representing a near 40% increase in my electricity bill).

Wear: PCs contain mechanical parts such as hard-drives and fans. 'Consumer grade' hard drives such as would be found in a typical home PC are only designed for intermittant use (300 power-on hours/month is typical). Usage of such drives in a 24/7 system could shorten their life, which for consumer grade drives is often already short (3 years expected life-time - 1 year warranty). Other parts such as fans also have limited lives - this shouldn't be a problem for a Dell, but for cheaper PCs, with low-cost components, fans are prone to clogging with dust, or simply failing. Even the electronics wear out - certain components (particularly capacitors) are often running under high temperatures and electrical stresses and have a finite lifetime (10k - 20k hours)

In my opinion PCs should be switched off when not in use, or at least put into standby mode, so that the bulk of the components are powered down when not in use. You'll save energy, money and your PC will probably last longer.

What a bunch of BS.

First off unless your running some distributed computing clients or a stupid screensaver (repeat after me: Screensavers are worthless and suck) you computer will use around the same power then a 60 watt bulb. Depending on your setup you can get much less then that if you use power-saving componates and are smart about your hardware choices.

(I've seen the articles that say: "a computer on average uses 125watts per hour so the 13 hundred billion thousand computers in the US use a average of 13,000 thousand billion volts and will kill us all with their AMD proccessors heating up the air... blah blah blah.)

Now if your running something like 8 drives with a overclocked CPU with peltiers and a water cooling setup, then you probably will be using around 150 watts at idle.

The monitor is the biggest thing, these wear out. You want power-save or put it to sleep or something like that, or just shut it off when not in use. They are NOT solid-state, and they use over 200watts easy to keep them running. Mine shut off about 5-10minutes of non-use of the keyboard/mouse.

If your cpu heats up, or needs to "cool off" then their is something wrong with your computer. This is not normal.

Harddrives get worn out FASTER by shutting them off and on.

Now SCSI's are noted for long life for continous use, but this is file sharing and proccessing stuff 24/7. A IDE drive doesn't get used or worn out just because it's on.

Now if your harddrive light is flashing away even 5 minutes after you stop using the computer, your computer has some serious problems. If you have a computer that is continously accessing the swap file, then don't leave it on.

PSU's get worn out FASTER by turning them off and on.

Dust isn't a issue for me. The case has positive are pressure so that it doesn't vacumm up crap thru openings and cracks in the case, and I use a filter.

The longest uptime I've had is around 8months. This is uptime, no reboots, no shutdowns, no nothing. The computer ran continously and with no issues with heat, harddrive failure or anything. It's commonplace that I will go 3 months with no reboots or shutdowns if I can help it. (I use Linux, but it shouldn't be any different with a healthy NT-based OS)

The only issue is the brown-out's which are unfortunatly fairly common in most places. Get a USP if that is a issue. (just for you computer, screw the monitor)

Computers, like most every other solid-state electronic device out their (like your stereo reciever) is perfectly happy left on.(lightbulb is NOT a good example . Lightbulb works continously when left on. Computers and stereos will use very little energy when not being used, if they are properly designed) The wear and tear only happen when you use/abuse them. Some cheap VCRS will use even MORE energy when turned off then when their running.

Hell I have a computer I use as a router that's probably close to 6 years old, and It's left on 24/7 for as long as I remember.

Now as long as everything is working and your computer isn't accessing swap continously their will be little-to-no issue.

It realy depends on your user habits. If you use the computer for 2 hours then you don't use it again till the next day... then shut it off.

If you randomly use the computer all day long and would normally have to turn it off and on, off and on thru the entire day, then keep it on.

If you have a family that is always on and off the computer, then leaving it on can actually save energy in some cases. Booting up and initializing everything all the time can suck some watts.

look here if you don't beleive me

Now with good design and good selection of parts these computers use 78 watts under normal use. A average computer I figure will run about 125-180watts under normal use, even 3.0ghz ones. And then between 40-100 at idle. If you can get power saving and acpi stuff working properly you can reduce that even buy quite a bit.

Those articles that state "a average computer uses 125watts per hour" don't specify anything about how they came about this number. Could be under normal use + idle times thruought the day then divided by the hours it was running. This number is fairly meaningless with out any sort of reference to even what they are talking about.

 

[EeyoreX]

As for wear, by the time the constant wear damages your hardware to the point of malfunction, you more likely than not will have long since replaced it. And incidentally, powering the components off and on repeatedly causes far more wear than just leaving them on. Similar to a light bulb. Notice how more often than not a bulb blows when you turn it on? Rarely do bulbs go bad when they are left on. Same basic deal with your hardware.

\Dan

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe it's true, but based on my understanding of what causes failure in processors, I don't think you'd have similar surges in processors like you do in lightbulbs. Bulb filaments go through HUGE temperature changes very quickly, CPUs heat up slower (if you use a heatsink ).

This was meant to be a more general comparison, not a side-by-side one. The bottom line is that turning on and off your components will damage them more than leaving them on (or off) constantly will. Also, the CPU is not the only component inside a PC.

\Dan

 

[Mark R]

Originally posted by: drag


What a bunch of BS.

First off unless your running some distributed computing clients or a stupid screensaver (repeat after me: Screensavers are worthless and suck) you computer will use around the same power then a 60 watt bulb. Depending on your setup you can get much less then that if you use power-saving componates and are smart about your hardware choices.

That would be a pretty unusual 60W bulb. My figures are not made up, they are based on my numerous measurements based on my PC configurations. Replace that G400 in the test system with a consumer-oriented gaming card, and the power consumption will be considerably higher. Replace a low-end P4 with a mid end Athlon and power consumption will skyrocket.

(I've seen the articles that say: "a computer on average uses 125watts per hour so the 13 hundred billion thousand computers in the US use a average of 13,000 thousand billion volts and will kill us all with their AMD proccessors heating up the air... blah blah blah.)

That's not a good estimate, most office PCs will use much less than that. Most enthusiasts PCs will use more. But if they are serving a useful function then it is reasonable to keep them running - if they are doing nothing, why pay?

Now if your running something like 8 drives with a overclocked CPU with peltiers and a water cooling setup, then you probably will be using around 150 watts at idle.

It depends - my AMD 2500 system with Radeon 9700 and 2 drives with conventional cooling uses 180W at idle. Yet my celeron 766 system with integrated graphics uses less than 40W.

The monitor is the biggest thing, these wear out. You want power-save or put it to sleep or something like that, or just shut it off when not in use. They are NOT solid-state, and they use over 200watts easy to keep them running. Mine shut off about 5-10minutes of non-use of the keyboard/mouse.

Agreed.

If your cpu heats up, or needs to "cool off" then their is something wrong with your computer. This is not normal.

Your CPU does not need to cool off - however, if the heatsink gets clogged with dust then it may overheat. More power-on hours, means more dust, which means more heat. I've seen a number of PCs overheat due to dust clogging the CPU heatsink - if is a problem on cheap home PCs.

Harddrives get worn out FASTER by shutting them off and on.
Now SCSI's are noted for long life for continous use, but this is file sharing and proccessing stuff 24/7. A IDE drive doesn't get used or worn out just because it's on.

I don't get that impression from the manufactureres. E.g. Hitachi deskstar drives are designed to be used for 8-10 hours/day, and can be started/stopped about 50,000 times (about 50 times/day for 3 years).

With increasing pressure to meat price-points, compromises have had to be made in hard drive design and manufacture. Today, you now have an option of how much reliability you want. Hitachi have a seperate line of IDE drives for use in high-availability systems (rated for 24/7 usage and server type access). Maxtor have a special line of IDE drives designed for continuous power-on, but only infrequent access, as well as their server grade SCSI disks.
[/quote]

PSU's get worn out FASTER by turning them off and on.

Possibly, though that shouldn't be an issue with modern PSUs - the high voltage components stay powered all the time, so there should be minimal stress.

The longest uptime I've had is around 8months. This is uptime, no reboots, no shutdowns, no nothing. The computer ran continously and with no issues with heat, harddrive failure or anything. It's commonplace that I will go 3 months with no reboots or shutdowns if I can help it. (I use Linux, but it shouldn't be any different with a healthy NT-based OS)

Nothing wrong with doing that - I've managed several months on my NT based systems - needed to restart for other reasons, but I did have a few HD failures (under warranty) but nevertheless inconvenient.

Computers, like most every other solid-state electronic device out their (like your stereo reciever) is perfectly happy left on.(lightbulb is NOT a good example . Lightbulb works continously when left on. Computers and stereos will use very little energy when not being used, if they are properly designed) The wear and tear only happen when you use/abuse them. Some cheap VCRS will use even MORE energy when turned off then when their running.

Hell I have a computer I use as a router that's probably close to 6 years old, and It's left on 24/7 for as long as I remember.

Now as long as everything is working and your computer isn't accessing swap continously their will be little-to-no issue.

The problem is that computers are not fully solid-state, and that some parts run at high stresses where they do have a finite lifetime - just like lightbulbs. This should be of little consequence for most people - but I frequently see offices leaving their PCs on all night (when they start at 9am and close at 5pm) - you have to wonder whether they are shortening the lives of the PCs.

It realy depends on your user habits. If you use the computer for 2 hours then you don't use it again till the next day... then shut it off.

If you randomly use the computer all day long and would normally have to turn it off and on, off and on thru the entire day, then keep it on.

If you have a family that is always on and off the computer, then leaving it on can actually save energy in some cases. Booting up and initializing everything all the time can suck some watts.

look here if you don't beleive me

Now with good design and good selection of parts these computers use 78 watts under normal use. A average computer I figure will run about 125-180watts under normal use, even 3.0ghz ones. And then between 40-100 at idle. If you can get power saving and acpi stuff working properly you can reduce that even buy quite a bit.

Turning your PC on and off, needs to be determined by your habits. It's pointless keeping your PC on overnight if you're not going to be using it. During the day, well I'd probably turn it off or put it on standby if I was going for a coffee break or lunch. A simple rule is that if you would be annoyed by the bootup time, then it's probably too short a period to be turning off your PC.

I don't buy the increased boot-up power costs argument. I've seen the figures, but if you turn your PC off for 1 minute, then you've more than broken even.

 

[drag]

Dammit you make me want to go home and check out how much power my computer is using.


That's pretty big difference between a computer using 40watts for your celeron vs 180 for your athlon....

Is that mostly a difference in the cpus + video cards?

Say I had a pentium 4 with a chipset that supports frequency scaling could I lower the wattage used by lowering the frequancy of both the cpu and video card when I am not using it, or would that not make that big of a difference?

 

[EeyoreX]

The problem is that computers are not fully solid-state, and that some parts run at high stresses where they do have a finite lifetime - just like lightbulbs. This should be of little consequence for most people - but I frequently see offices leaving their PCs on all night (when they start at 9am and close at 5pm) - you have to wonder whether they are shortening the lives of the PCs.

The computer I am using right now to type this post is at my workplace. This desk is manned 24 hours a day. The computer is never off. It isn't always in use, but needs to be ready for use at all times. The computer is at least 3 years old (that's how long I've been here, and the PC was here before I was). There are no problems with the PC. It runs flawlessly. I'll bet it will continue to run flawlessly. It's loaded with consumer-level parts. My file server rig has 2 consumer-level Western Digital 13GB hard drives in it. They are at least 5 years old. Other than install or upgrade times, they have been in a machine that is on 24/7. Know why I haven't replaced the old slow drives? They still work. They are my oldest hardware of note. Everything else has been replaced, and most of it probably still works (much of my hardware was either passed on or is sitting in a box).

That reminds me that I forgot to mention something from your original post, about the "300 power-on hours/month" and drives going bad. IBM said this about some of it's drives. Consumers were outraged because they thought it would void the warranty to run the drives in 24/7 machines. IBM very quickly retracted the statement and made it clear the drives were more than able to perform properly while being powered on 24/7. They did suggest using server-level hardware, but made sure to note the drives were capable of the job, and pointed out the warranties would of course be honored. Other manufacturers agree. As far as wear, I still stand by my statement that by the time most parts will last a good long time, and will be replaced before they "wear out". Clean your case with canned air and run a properly/intellignetly filtered machine. Dust problem solved. As far as saving money, that is a seperate issue to the long-term effects on Windows XP Home's or the hardware's IMO ability to run in a 24/7 state.

\Dan

 

[Mem]

Harddrives get worn out FASTER by shutting them off and on.

Now SCSI's are noted for long life for continous use, but this is file sharing and proccessing stuff 24/7. A IDE drive doesn't get used or worn out just because it's on.

Now if your harddrive light is flashing away even 5 minutes after you stop using the computer, your computer has some serious problems. If you have a computer that is continously accessing the swap file, then don't leave it on.

PSU's get worn out FASTER by turning them off and on.

This argument will never end and you`ll get different replies from both sides,I always turn my PC off at night(so goes on and off once normally & maybe twice in any 24HR period,been doing this since 1994) and I have never had any hardware failure apart from a 6 week old faulty AMD CPU and 3 year old stick of Crucial ram that went faulty,I also had a 4 year old MSI motherboard die,now you can`t really say this was down to being turned on or off or wear and tear etc,hardware failures will happen whatever steps you take,some of us are luckier then others.

The fact is virtually every component has a life expectancy,wear and tear will come into play over very long periods of time,however having said that you can have two PCs on all the time and one will have for example a HD failure before the other,this can also go for PCs that are switched on and off as well.


I personally think both ways are fine and doesn`t matter what you do since hardware failure can & will happen sooner or later to most of us ,it`s the nature of PCs.

Can a computer running WinXP (Home) be left on 24/7?

I don`t see why not,just use common sense,have some sort of anti-surge protection and check for dust build up now and then and you should be fine,even with all the best steps ,when hardware components decide to die there`s nothing you can do about it .

One last thing I don`t recommend you turn your PC on and off EVERY 5 mins in a 24HR period :frown: .

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

HI

sorry for the noob question

but is it bad to restart your computer kind of alot?
After i play horizons or a FPS game i like to restart my computer because everything seems to lag. It takes a while to start programs and stuff.
I restart my computer and everything rans fast again.

IS this bad?

~RaNDoM

 

[Eug]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
I leave my PC on all the time and am running winxp pro on it. I have six HDs and all sorts of stuff and on the rare occasion I will wake up and notice that the PC has either locked up or has rebooted sometime during the night. Most of the time that this happens winxp reports something about the video drivers. I run an ATI 9500 pro and it can get extremely hot. This usually happens about once a week. Nothing major, just reboot and all is fine.

Sounds like your computer is pretty screwed up. Hardly "fine". In fact, I'd consider that completely unacceptable for my computer.

 

[Mem]

I leave my PC on all the time and am running winxp pro on it. I have six HDs and all sorts of stuff and on the rare occasion I will wake up and notice that the PC has either locked up or has rebooted sometime during the night. Most of the time that this happens winxp reports something about the video drivers. I run an ATI 9500 pro and it can get extremely hot. This usually happens about once a week. Nothing major, just reboot and all is fine.

I would check your case cooling,is it good enough and quality of the PSU will be important with 6 HDs and" all sorts of stuff" .

 

[Jeff7]

Sort of off topic here - how is a montior not a solid state device? The only things moving in it are magnetic fields and electrons.

 

[CTho9305]

I don't buy the claim that computers use much more power when powering up. Let's say the computer normally uses 100W, and when powering up, it uses 1,000W (just an insane worst case), and powerup lasts 1 minute (absurdly long). If you are going to be away for 10 minutes, you should turn it off. Let's drop our numbers to be more plausible - 200W for 15 seconds - that means that booting up is worth 30 seconds on on-time power.

I wish HD manufacturers would use better bearings so drives would stay quieter longer .

edit: go read some datasheets - you'll see that during spinup HDs dont usually use more than 20W, and fans spin up in under 2 seconds, and the electronics are powered up within a few milliseconds. We're not talking about an industrial motor/engine powering up, we're talking maybe 3 small motors, one bigger one, and some chips.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Originally posted by: RaNDoMMAI
HI

sorry for the noob question

but is it bad to restart your computer kind of alot?
After i play horizons or a FPS game i like to restart my computer because everything seems to lag. It takes a while to start programs and stuff.
I restart my computer and everything rans fast again.

IS this bad?

~RaNDoM

Sounds like you've just got some bad software configuration or a memory leak going on there. What OS are you using, and do you update it frequently?

- M4H

 

[RaNDoMMAI]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire


Sounds like you've just got some bad software configuration or a memory leak going on there. What OS are you using, and do you update it frequently?

- M4H

I have windows XP pro

it is kind of an old computer. i got it in 2000
compaq persario 7000
1.2ghz
512 ram

some other crap stuff

~RaNDoM

 

[Lvis]

As others have mentioned, computers don't use a heck of a lot of electricity. When not in use, they just sit there with a fan or two running, plus the harddrives. It is the monitor that would use the bulk of the power.

As I understand it, the constant turning on and off of a machine is really not good for it. The solder joints heat up, and cool off, expanding and contracting... not a good thing, rather like bending a piece of metal back and forth.. at some point it will break.



Not to brag, but I had a windows 3.1 machine that ran 24/7. I won't B.S. and say it was on for months at a time, but it would often go a week without a reboot. Obviously xp, can do at least as well.

 

[Oyeve]

Originally posted by: Eug

Originally posted by: Oyeve
I leave my PC on all the time and am running winxp pro on it. I have six HDs and all sorts of stuff and on the rare occasion I will wake up and notice that the PC has either locked up or has rebooted sometime during the night. Most of the time that this happens winxp reports something about the video drivers. I run an ATI 9500 pro and it can get extremely hot. This usually happens about once a week. Nothing major, just reboot and all is fine.

Sounds like your computer is pretty screwed up. Hardly "fine". In fact, I'd consider that completely unacceptable for my computer.

I have proper cooling, never goes above 47c. I forgot to add that when I do get the occasional crash due to the vid card it is usually when I am doing some intensive vid compiling in the background or dvd compression recording.

 

[Gunnar]

I think it depends on what you do. My Dell Dimension workstation running Win2k needs to be rebooted all the time. Visual Studio does a number on this machine, and I cant tell you how many times I crash explorer in a single day.

If you have a web browsing machine running XP behind a firewall, you could leave it on if you had the energy to burn (think of the trees!).

My personal experience is that Windows needs to be rebooted eventually. It slows down, copying files gets slower, and application quit unexpectedly. I have experienced this with every operating system though, in Unix eventually you get relegated to the command line, since the gui components dont act nice.

 

[ViciouS]

Dude, you?re getting a dell? What?s wrong with you build it yourself. I built a computer and it cost me 1300.00 on dell they where asking for 2000.00 for almost the same exact computer. It's easy to do, and you don?t get any bone yard parts that bomb out on you in 6 months. If you choose the right mother board you can control what you upgrade, with a dell they discourage upgrades. I do home Tec support for people I've worked on Dell's, Gateways, and Sony's all of them have a ton of problems when you install new hardware. They don?t want you to upgrade its all about buying a whole new system. When you build your own the possibilities are endless.... DELL GATEWAY SONY ALIENWARE they are gonna try and control you.


Oh buy your monitor from dell FREE SHIPPING and pretty good costs.

 

[Tom]

what ? you mean you don't build your own monitor too ?

 

[ViciouS]

I tried to but my girlfriend snorted up all the liquid crystals.