Turn PC off every night or leave it on 24/7? (Discussion)

[C1]

http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue21/hottopics21.htm

http://www.weibull.com/hotwire/issue22/hottopics22.htm

My guess is, because of the nature of this problem, people can see (conclude?) what they want to see. Some facts are that electronics experience early failure, wear out from use or can go bad just sitting unused on a shelf. In addition, most often their reliability is specified in terms of a mean-time-between-failure (MTBF) that assumes a constant failure rate over time with actual usage.

 

[bryanl]

does leaving the same power supply on those caps help or harm their longevity? Does cycling power thru those caps 2 or more times a day help or harm their longevity? I would be inclined to believe that not cycling power thru them would be best, but I have no actual evidence. Only anecdotal.

I could not find any evidence from capacitor manufacturers that electrolytic capacitors are helped significantly by leaving the equipment turned on, except maybe for the large 120 Hz capacitors, but even those are usually protected at turn-on with a current limiter (thermistor), and they don't fail as much as the capacitors that work at much higher frequencies.

It's far more important that the power supply contain quality brand capacitors.

 

[lukhie]

save environment/electricity, turn it off. unless u r using it as server

 

[thelastjuju]

Having to go from OFF to ON is the hardest thing for any piece of electronic equipment. Once its on, as long as its not going to overheat, you probably are better off leaving the parts on 24/7 for maximum longevity.. But I do think this applies more to a piece like a HDD as opposed to say a CPU_FAN.

I recently had a mobo dying on me, where it would take like 2-3 attempts just to boot.. a few days later, 4-5, and soon enough 7-8 times.. so for about three months, I simply left it on 24/7.. then one day, the power went out overnight and when I went to start the PC, the motherboard would completely fail to boot and finally died. So had I turned it off even one more time after I decided to leave it on 24/7, I wouldn't have gotten those three months of use out of it.

 

[SonicIce]

it's not like a cold diesel engine lol

 

[C1]

Why do people even bother turning out the lights?

 

[Murloc]

apart from energy savings:
by disconnecting your electronic stuff completely, you have a 0% risk of getting it burned by lighting or power outages/spikes.
By leaving it on 24/7, assuming proper temperatures, you spare a quantity of lifetime that is inferior to the calculated lifetime you spare by avoiding the risk of getting it burned by power spikes for 12 hours a day.
That's my opinion at least.
In my opinion, turning on/off computers doesn't do anything bad to them.
I turned off my stuff every night and it lasted like 10 years, then I had to change it because it was obsolete.

 

[SonicIce]

i think in general alot of people have way too much shit running at startup that they would rather just leave it on then wait for all the bloated bs programs to run

 

[pt610]

My friend and I have been debating on whether or not there are benefits to leaving your computer on as opposed to turning it off when you are finished using it for the day.

My stance is that I have always turned my computer, speakers, and monitor off after every session. If I am still in my house and just downstairs watching a movie, I will usually leave it running, but if I am going out, going to sleep, or just not using it for an elongated period of time, I shut it down.

Where do you stand on the subject? Please list/link any and all factual evidence to back your statement if at all possible. My friend states that there is no actual evidence on the matter and now I am curious to see if his argument holds any water.

It is right that temperature changes will brake parts even in a computer.

A computer can crash depending mostley on if it is exposed to rapid temperature changes.
* Metal will expand a tinybitt while heatin upp and shrink a little bitt while it is cooling down. A haddrive vill expand and shrink a tinybit, depending on the material it is built on. (Not SSD)

* Electronik parts can shourtcut and erode if they are exposed to an environment that will allow moisture. So if the computer is on 24/7 it will dry out the moist and the life spann of the computer will be longer. If you are indor and not exposed to this, then this is not a problem. And you can turne of the computer.

*A poor old power supply whith realy bad quality can cause electrical spikes and cause a lott of damage in the computer. If this is the case leave the computer on.

There are lots of good reasons for turning it off:

- Less energy used
- Many fewer hours on moving parts which includes fans/fan bearings
- Less dust accumulated internally because of fewer running hours; reduces cleaning maintenance
- Less exposure to the chance of a catastrophic event such as a line power failure or even an internal computer failure which might result in a fire (eg, unattended PSU blow out).

I agree with this.

I turned my off to save power, at home and work.

I use the shutdown command at night as a task schedule, so around 7-8pm, 1 hr after I leave work, it goes down. Sometimes I forget to power down so this will do it for me

I setup the BIOS power on from M-F for 7:30AM so when I walk in the door, its on and ready to go.

I stop leaving things on at home.. cost too much

But this is a way to go. And dont forget all these uppdates from all producers of programs different servicepack and stuff it takes time to install. Whay not let the computer start like a half an houre earlyer than usual and let it be installed and ready for u too use it when you nead it.

 

[Dude111]

Why do people even bother turning out the lights?

Exactly mate,they should leave them on 24/7!!

 

[bigboxes]

Main rig: 24/7, always torrenting and it's nice to just be able to have the pc ready to go. Just turn the monitor on/off. No sleep or hibernation. Located in my office.

File server: 24/7, want access to any file at any time anywhere on the network. No sleep or hibernation. Located in my office.

HTPC: leave off unless I'm using it (which is rare).

Wife's (bedroom) PC: She turns it on/off at her discretion. I insist on turning it off when I go to bed.

All PCs and networking equipment are hooked up to UPS devices. Only gripe is that my file server's UPS (an APC unit) has a noisy fan that seems to be always going. I am so tempted to replace it with a quiet model. If it wasn't for it my office would be quiet.

 

[Stayfr0sty]

Better to leave it on. Let it go into sleep mode if you want to conserve power.
This is of course for those running platter drives. Turning PC on and off every day strains platter drives. I guess if your running SSD it should be ok to turn on and off though.

 

[Modelworks]

I could not find any evidence from capacitor manufacturers that electrolytic capacitors are helped significantly by leaving the equipment turned on, except maybe for the large 120 Hz capacitors, but even those are usually protected at turn-on with a current limiter (thermistor), and they don't fail as much as the capacitors that work at much higher frequencies.

It's far more important that the power supply contain quality brand capacitors.

Capacitors that are not regularly charged will lose their ability to maintain charge over time. That is the reason capacitors have a shelf life . When you purchase capacitors from distributors they can tell you when the capacitor was manufactured and how long it has been on the shelf. Charging capacitors periodically allows them to maintain their rating. To restore capacity the capacitor has to be charged for 4+ hours at the rated voltage and even then may not restore capacity.

Not sure how this applies to turning off pc every day as this applies to capacitors that are left on the shelf with no charge for 3 year + , but info for those that are interested.

 

[stuup1dmofo]

I turn my gaming rig off when I know I am done with it for the day. It saves energy and therefore money. I am not scared of computer components breaking...usually takes years to break and by that time it's outdated anyway. Gaming/computing is not an environmentally friendly hobby, shutting stuff down lets me enjoy it while mitigating some of the damage. That's why I'm gonna invest in whole house solar panels soon. Generating 80% of my own electricity needs will let me run whatever for however long without the guilt.

 

[rdsn]

I have no idea if I am wrong or right, but I think leaving my PC on helped kill my video card. The fan started wobbling so maybe constant motion loosened a screw or something. Also I notice that shutting down computers seem to clear the ram, but I guess that is not much of a problem for those with 8GB.

 

[tuffluck]

i live in texas, and it gets 100+ in the summer. in fact last summer it was 100+ for like 60 days in a row, skipped a day, and did it again for another 30 days. for $'s sake, we leave our thermostat at like 85 when we leave for work during the day. if i leave the PC on during that time, CPU idle increases quite a bit. they say heat kills components, so it just makes sense to keep it off when it will generate the most heat for me (besides when using it).

case in point i had a C2D system for 4 years that was on 24/7. about 2 years ago i OC'd it. did all the stress tests, everything ran fine. though before i built my 2500k system the OC had somehow reset itself to stock. i couldn't get it to stably OC more than 5% after that. something somewhere got weak and broke. i don't know if it was heat, age, or leaving it on 24/7. but i did at least deduce from that particular situation that turning it off when i wasn't using it--especially in hotter months--was a wise decision. also, i have an SSD and it is super fast booting into and out of windows.

 

[Vic Vega]

...

 

[pandemonium]

Who's fault was it to have a tesla coil farm in their living room, hmm?

 

[Throckmorton]

In the winter, just leave it on running some distributed computing program, because that way it contributes to heating your house.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

In the winter, just leave it on running some distributed computing program, because that way it contributes to heating your house.

The neat part about this is, if you wake up with ice cubes where your testicles should be (like I did one morning in IA), you know immediately that your bitcoin clients aren't running

 

[Shawn]

I put my computer into sleep mode whenever I'm not using it. It is never turned off. It also serves as my DVR and it just wakes up on its own to record then goes back to sleep when the recording is done.

 

[fatwalletuser]

I put mine to sleep. Too impatient to wait that extra few seconds to wait for it to boot up.

 

[Kev]

I recently had one of my raid 0 hd's fail on boot. So yeah that sucked.

I use to leave my computer on 24/7. Did that for about 10 years with no issues (current computer for about 3 years). Decided to start shutting it down for the night. The very next day my hd died.

I know, anecdotal evidence.

 

[destey]

I've heard fan coolers on hdd can cause the hdd to run too cool, as in the fluid bearing has trouble. Any truth to this? The room with my computer is usually in the low 60s.

 

[Remobz]

I have no idea if I am wrong or right, but I think leaving my PC on helped kill my video card. The fan started wobbling so maybe constant motion loosened a screw or something. Also I notice that shutting down computers seem to clear the ram, but I guess that is not much of a problem for those with 8GB.

Never good to leave it on 24/7

That is a silly thing to do.......