Question about powering off.

[phatride69]

This might be a stupid question but I'm new at all of this. When I power my computer down from windows, everything shuts off, except for my motherboard which keeps getting power from the power supply cause the switch in the back is still turned on. The indicator LED, LAN light, and optical mouse stay powered until I flip the switch off on the back of the computer. My question is, what is the best thing for my computer? Just to shut down the computer through windows and leave the back switch on?? or Power down through windows and then click the switch in the back off also??? Thanks.....sorry if this is a stupid question.

 

[corkyg]

It won't hurt anything to leave it in the "warm" ready-to-go mode. But - the best thing is to connect to a UPS and then when all is dark - switch the UPS off.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: phatride69
This might be a stupid question but I'm new at all of this. When I power my computer down from windows, everything shuts off, except for my motherboard which keeps getting power from the power supply cause the switch in the back is still turned on. The indicator LED, LAN light, and optical mouse stay powered until I flip the switch off on the back of the computer. My question is, what is the best thing for my computer? Just to shut down the computer through windows and leave the back switch on?? or Power down through windows and then click the switch in the back off also??? Thanks.....sorry if this is a stupid question.

You computer maintains power (as well as a 10baseT LAN connection if you are on a hub) to provide powers for such features like Wake-On-Lan, etc. Not to mention the ATX spec is a soft-switch type on, meaning that the motherboard itself turns the power supply on and off, instead of the switch directly controlling the PSU.

There is no need to kill power (switch on the psu) unless you are doing maintenance inside the computer, or transporting or something.

 

[phatride69]

Alright, just wanted to make sure that this wasn't "bad" for the motherboard. Thanks