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QUestion about keeping computer on

NikolaeVarius

NikolaeVarius

Lifer
Is it okay to leave your computer on for days at a time?Or is it better to turn it off and on every night?

I'masking this because I have a habit of leaving my computer on for 3 days at a time to let torrents download and want to know if this could destroy my hardware (Mainly my HDD)
 
no, in the long run, unnoticable. HDDs will fail in about 5-7 years, so replace them sometimes..
 
I just back mine up and don't worry if they die, as for how long ur pc stays on mine are on 24/7...


Will G.
 
As long as you have good ventilation and cooling, it's fine to leave your PC on 24/7. I would turn the monitor off when you leave for the day to save some energy, though. Clean any dust out of the inside of the case every few months, don't block the front or rear vents, and make sure your fans are all working...you'll be fine.
 
My wife has kept her (home-built and periodically updated) PC turned on 24/7/365 for 20 years now. Her first AT power supply lasted for about 13 years before she had to go to an ATX supply. We had one fan fail at nine years.

Because I'm in the IT support business, I keep my desktop turned on 24/7. The current PC has been on for about five years now. I just had the CPU fan fail, but, otherwise, I've never had any part failures on any of these PCs.

It seems like it's my OTHER PCs, that aren't kept on, that fail. I have a "multimedia" PC that I hadn't turned on in 1.5 years. I wanted to put Vista on it. I hit the power button and It refused to power up. Completely dead power supply. After replacing that, I found that the DVD writer was no longer working. And the NIC wasn't working right. Maybe it's like cars: They are better off being driven periodically.
 
My wife has kept her (home-built and periodically updated) PC turned on 24/7/365 for 20 years now. Her first AT power supply lasted for about 13 years before she had to go to an ATX supply. We had one fan fail at nine years.
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Dude, you gotta treat her better than that. 🙂
 
I believe it's actually harder on your Computer to shut it off and turn it on everyday. Leaving it on is less streeful on your componentes in the long run.
 
When I build a machine I usually suggest leaving it on. My machine stays on 24/7 and only gets reset for Windows updates and/or new drivers.

Enabling power saving features like Cool n' Quiet and Intel's Speed Step, along with hard drive spin down and monitor shut down would make things easier on your hardware and and energy bill however.
 
I leave mine on a fair bit as well but I do shut down when I'm not going to be using it for 18 hours or more.

Remember to clean the computer out though periodically, b/c leaving it on will result in it sucking in a lot more dust - and in the long run the dusk can be harmful.

 
All my computers are on 24/7, including my laptops (which are only turned off when i'm travelling with them).
 
Mine has been on 24/7 since I last cloned my HDD - only off briefly last month to clone the main drive.

Effect on the energy bill is insignificant compared to wifie's clothes drying. 🙂

But - in that mode, it sould be on a decent UPS. It auto updates things at night while I'm sleeping. I like that.
 
I must say that Intel Viiv is pretty awesome.

I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.
 
Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I must say that Intel Viiv is pretty awesome.

I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.
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lol "about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day." thats funny since i just watched "an inconvenient truth" which was an awesome and informative movie by the way :thumbsup:
 
The 5 pounds may not seem like much but you have to multiply that by the # of PCs that idle most of their lives and for "no good reason". And that's just CO2; the generation of electricity creates other pollutants as well.

As for your car, a vehicle that gets 20mpg releases about a pound of CO2 per mile driven. So, roughly, if you run your PC 24/7 it's like driving another 1500-2500 miles annually; of course there are many other variables but the main point is that idling PCs are a recognized source of pollution.
 
There is absolutely no difference in leaving you machine on all the time or turning it on and off as part of regular use. In fact, one could argue that leaving a machine on 24/7 could be worse in the long run is power management settings are not taken into consideration. Ie; hard drives actually spinning 24/7 with out suspending will actually create an issue. IBM did a great report on this and long term affects. Long term meaning days and not years. In their report, they said that drives should be allowed to be spun down for a minumum of 10 minutes every 24 hour period of constant use. That's valid for all makes of drives, as this report was dealing with failures on not only Hitachi, but also Maxtor and Seagate.

That aside, I think the real question about 24/7 use is the power consumption. Different areas of the country have different rates bill per KW hour, so what seems subtle to you may be a much bigger bill to another. Lastly, I find it funny that the younger generation that is mostly environmentaly concerned is also the generation most likely to leave their PC's on 24/7 without putting the wntire machien in a suspended state. I'm not trying to start a flame war here, as I know many run grid type folding apps.

At the end of the say, it's just plain better to turn them off in my opinion. I use a NAS to serve up multimedia files around the house and data, so that uses hardly any power compared to a pc.
 
My home PC is on 24/7 I only do a complete shut-down once every week or two to release crap from the memory etc.
My work PCs are on 24/7/365, only shut down when I get an upgrade.
Bottom line, if you're not concerned with power consumption/noise/whatever leaving your PC on 24/7 isn't a problem.
 
This discussion comes up every so often and there are always 2 sides. One group says that it's better to leave your system on because the initial power surge associated with powering the system on is harder on the electrical components, not to mention the hard drives spinning up/down and expansion on components caused by thermal changes that occur when the system goes from off to on and vice versa. The other group argues that it's better to turn your system off when not using since, over the course of a few years, this makes for significantly less time that electricity is running through your CPU/mobo/gfx card and less time that the moving parts in your hard drive(s) are actually moving.

I usually run my systems 24/7. I'm a network admin and I've seen far more hard drives fail in systems that get powered on and off than those that are left running all the time. The other components don't concern me too much, since the rated lifespan of any CPU or graphics card is probably several years longer than I'll be using it anyway. That's just my personal experience, though.
 
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