Power cycling

[TC91]

When overclocking and tweaking to find the ideal (lowest) voltages and timings for a good overclock, it seems that I have to do lots of trial and error, which means a ton of rebooting. Is there a big effect on power cycling on the lifespan of your components, particularly the motherboard?


Thanks.

 

[Modelworks]

Only harm comes from rapidly cycling power.
There is a slight surge/dip when you cycle power on things like hard drives, power supplies.
Just wait a few seconds before turning on a pc you just turned off.

 

[mindless1]

You won't be power cycling anywhere near frequently enough for it to matter.

I tend to feel the opposite of Modelworks, that you're better off not waiting to turn it back on because if you wait that means you are letting the parts cool down more, then heat up more/more-rapidly. Waiting doesn't decrease the surge or dip, if anything it would increase it since the longer you wait the more likely you have completely drained the capacitors, more likely the drives have completely spun down, though really these things will happen even with any very short power off period versus just a crash reboot or pressing the reset switch.

Either way, it's still not likely you'd be doing it often enough to make a difference, there are plenty of systems out there that get booted from cold-off a couple times a day for 10 years so suppose you powered off and on again 700 times before you were finished tweaking... then maybe you only have 9.x years left? Depends on the extent of overclock too, if you push it to the point where the parts are running really hot, then you have even more expansion and contraction every time the system is allowed to cool down from a more lengthly off cycle, but still only in extreme cases should that ever matter (or if you happened to have certain nVidia mobile video chipsets with solder bump issues?).

 

[Comdrpopnfresh]

The only thing I see cycling harming is harddrives. Even then, the effect is negligible unless it is rapid- much like others have mentioned
If I'm tweaking and get a freezeup w/o a restart or blue screen, I tend to flip the psu switch and let the capacitors on the mobo drain. I don't have any reason specifically why, it's just something I've done.

 

[Modelworks]

Here is probably the best explanation of why you should wait a few seconds on powering up a pc you just turned off, pages 3 & 4
http://techtrain.microchip.com...PSADVTopics_090506.pdf

 

[mindless1]

Originally posted by: Modelworks
Here is probably the best explanation of why you should wait a few seconds on powering up a pc you just turned off, pages 3 & 4
http://techtrain.microchip.com...PSADVTopics_090506.pdf

That would be applicable if an AT PSU, -OR- an ATX switched off on the rear PSU switch or a multi-outlet strip switch, but not turning system off with front case switch. The primary side PSU capacitor is already charged, and ATX guidelines limit powered part capacitance, so while there is possibly a slight addt'l current from beginning to charge downstream system parts' caps, the impedance of the rest of the supply and wiring limits that. If it were a continual event in the operation of the supply it would be more significant.

 

[TC91]

thanks for the replies. I was just curious since my old motherboard recently died on me (~1.5 years old) and according to everest it logged over 1000 reboots... i dunno how it got that high, but was just curious to see if it could have been what caused the earlier than expected failure.