If a computer stays on most of its life, would less use and more idle time increase its lifespan?

[Naer]

Thoughts?

 

[VirtualLarry]

Nah, use it till it dies. The more that you make use of it, before it going into the landfill, the better. Not using it, before it becomes effectively obsolete, is a waste of it's useful lifespan.

If nothing else, run Distributed Computing in the background.

 

[ericlp]

second the DC option.

 

[ch33zw1z]

Hardware and software, and user practice's vary too much to determine longevity.

Use it as much as you can while you have it.

 

[Billb2]

Any computer will be decades past it's obsolescence no matter which you do.

 

[kirbyrj]

Wearable parts might last longer being idle than in use. Fans, HDD motors, etc. But I don't think anything else really makes a difference.

 

[Ratman6161]

You got the computer because you had some use for it, right? So use it for its intended purposes. Are you going to say "I've got a spare hour and I want to play a game but my computer will last longer if it sits there and idles instead?" What good is more time not using it?

 

[sdifox]

in your case, yes, it will shorten its life. so get off now.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

This is always a nagging question in the background of hardware troubleshooting and anxiety.

On the one hand, I lost a PSU for running a system in S3 Sleep-state for weeks at a time.

On the other, I have systems I prefer to keep running 24/7. For everything else, I try to arrange sleep after an hour or two of inactivity, followed by hibernation an hour after that. One system with an 850W Seasonic X-Series Gold PSU was on 24/7 with maybe a week's-worth of maintenance downtime over an entire year.

Using sleep and hibernation wisely shouldn't shorten a computer's life, and might even extend it -- can't be sure. But it will contribute to a lower power bill.

The 24/7 system mentioned above is being recycled for my old Moms. Good . . old Moms. It must sleep and hibernate reliably. It must be configured to wake up from the keyboard. After setting it up for 24/7 feeding my HDTV as a minor function, Sleep at first was tricky and then it was flakey. About 40% of the time, going through its daily cycle of waking, backing up, sleeping and hibernating again, it would fail to restore the RAM contents and throw a message about the hibernation failure and continuing boot without it. If left in that state instead, it would not be available to wake up nightly for backup to the server.

So after some six years of operation, the old 850 Gold X-series has to go. It could have continued usefulness if sleep is eliminated from the equation so that only hibernation and wake-up occurs. But then, what might be the next surprise from an old PSU? Don't need surprises. . . .

I think PSUs will run their life consistently with an expectation of dying across a statistical distribution and a left tail spanning the end of the warranty period. It also makes a difference if you use clean power from a UPS.

 

[FaaR]

Thoughts?

Heat ages the PSU's components, capacitors in particular from what I understand, but these things are built to last, and to be used. Don't worry about it.

The more that you make use of it, before it going into the landfill, the better.

DON'T throw electronics in household garbage. Turn it in for recycling.

Jesus, have some consideration for the planet we all live on!

 

[VirtualLarry]

I was using the phrase "going into the landfill", as meaning, "dispose of", which could be recycling. But a lot of what you "recycle" still goes into a landfill in India or China anyways... they can't recycle every little bit of electronics. They strip the metals, and junk the rest, mostly.

 

[snoopy7548]

At work in the lab we still have Windows 2000 machines chugging along that are on 24/7 (mostly just idling, not going into standby) and the fans show no sign of wear. Slow as hell for anything major, but works just fine for old data acquisition programs, HyperTerminal, and 1997 Excel spreadsheets. We had an older '98 SE machine that was replaced a couple of years ago.