Do you turn off your PC?

[TrIbAlNuT]

I was wondering if it does any harm in leaving your PC on for a week or so. I have a pretty high-end system, P4 3.6 2GB RAM, Asus Mobo, Geforce8600XT OC and am concerned about it overheating or causing some hardware damage by leaving it on. My Asus utility has never reported an overheat and I have found that my system is more stable and gives me higher performance if I don't keep turning it on and off everyday

Any thoughts, suggestions?

TrIbAlNuT

 

[lobo]

I used to leave my system on all the time (weeks and weeks at at time) but generally, Windows will like a reboot every now and then AND these days, paying the hydro bill for that PC staying on actually hurts a bit. You'd be surprised how much power these suckers chew up.

Lobo

 

[xopus]

if i'm downloading, i'll leave it running for a couple days in a row. If not, i'll usually turn it off at night, or if i'm not going to be around it for a day or so. I used to run my systems 24/7, with uptimes that would approach 6-8 weeks. While windows does often need reboots, you can just log out and back in and most problems will be fixed. The power thing is a definite concern though.

 

[veteze]

my system has been on for about 2 years straight now... it was even on while i was away for 10 months... i reboot it about once a week or so.

 

[Sleepy Giant]

Maybe I'll start turning it off.

I wonder how much power I'll save.

 

[Liquidity]

i turn mine off as well. this also includes the printer. i tend to leave the external hard drive on, though.

i'm not sure why i do it at work, but i do.

 

[CIRCE (Sir C)]

To my understanding, the pennies you'll save in power consumption won't make up for the loss in life span of your hardware. The worst thing for your "physical" computer is the whole heat up (expand) cool down (contract) process ie. turning it on and off...oh, and pouring water on it isn't good either

 

[deep]

A: Nope

 

[Aerius Zension]

To my understanding, the pennies you'll save in power consumption won't make up for the loss in life span of your hardware. The worst thing for your "physical" computer is the whole heat up (expand) cool down (contract) process ie. turning it on and off...oh, and pouring water on it isn't good either

I agree. Most CPU's aren't made to be turned on/off all the time. It's best to keep it on for as long as possible, rebooting every now and again.

 

[deevah]

work one never goes off
home one only goes off when i'm on vacation for 1wk+
XP has been pretty stable for me and if it wasn't for the boy needing to reboot in order to compact his poker dbs, i wouldn't need to reboot for wks either

 

[Flashy_McFlash]

I'm going to start turning off my laptop. It's pretty loud and I actually had to turn up that piece of shit Memoirs of a Geisha last night to drown it out because apparently Japanese people don't know how to fucking speak up.

 

[Ditto Much]

Mine gets reboot every few months for the rest I always keep it on.

 

[Stan]

To my understanding, the pennies you'll save in power consumption won't make up for the loss in life span of your hardware.

That's an urban myth. Turning your PC on and off doesn't affect the lifespan of the hardware in any significant way in comparison to leaving it on continuously. Turning off the computer when you don't use it has two important benefits:

Less dust gets in the computer
Less power consumption

 

[mutslaster]

what about laptops?

i turn mine off at night and unplug the adapter b/c i'm worried the constant charging will wear out my battery. is this useful?

 

[green_souljah]

I turn my comp off nightly unless I'm into some heavy torrents.

Im running a Pentium 4, 2 gigger, and have yet to have problems.

I just can't justify leaving electronics running if Im not using them.
Windows gets cranky if you leave it running for to long.

I have never had a piece of hardware fail on me in my 10+ years of computing.

 

[ndrwrld]

a monitor uses wayyy more juice than a PC tower.
my puter is usually on for weeks...i reboot maybe once every 2 weeks.
i turn my puter off maybe once every 2 months, to clean out the lola fluffers.

 

[randyval]

nay!

 

[Humanjava]

Actually if your machines are running or updated proper leaving them on can allow many background tasks to do their job. Also the whole on off does not really help semi-conducters because little spike voltages wear them downas the power supplies stablize. Either way most people in a few years will just upgrade their machines so you may as well save the power. Notebooks take up much less power BTW unless its a full P4 workstation CPU.

As for the battery I was under the impression that a constant steady voltage is the best thing for a battery, better than the repeated charge/discharge cycle. I could be wrong though.

 

[Puma]

what about laptops?

i turn mine off at night and unplug the adapter b/c i'm worried the constant charging will wear out my battery. is this useful?

yep if you leave your ac adapter pluged in at all time it could fuck up your Laptop screen it could fuck up your battery and your adapter..

one of our clients buys shit loads of laptops from us and they are mostly used by middle aged women who don't want to understand that you can not leave your ac adapter pluged in at all times. We keep teling them not to do this but they don't give a fuck. We have major problems due to this couse they leave it plugged in for months.

 

[Dialog]

What about the MTBF for hard drives? Isn't it partially rated for amount of time operational? I did have a hard drive failure (IBM Deskstar 40gig -- fault prone? dunno) in a machine that was on for long stretches of time, used heavily.

 

[xtcfreak]

yep if you leave your ac adapter pluged in at all time it could fuck up your Laptop screen it could fuck up your battery and your adapter..

one of our clients buys shit loads of laptops from us and they are mostly used by middle aged women who don't want to understand that you can not leave your ac adapter pluged in at all times. We keep teling them not to do this but they don't give a fuck. We have major problems due to this couse they leave it plugged in for months.

How can it mess the screen up? Also, if you remove the battery and just have it plugged in would that be better? Can you even do that?

Jay

 

[KodiaK]

no i dont turn off my computer....

something is up with my power supply, if i leave it off for a while sometimes the power wont kick in for up to 30 minutes!

crazy stuff.

 

[swenard]

I used to leave mine on for ever with the occasional reboot. But I tried turning it off to see if it would help with the electricity bill (aquarium uses tonnes too) and sure enough it made a sizeable difference. So now I have it go into standy-by after twenty minutes. As a side benefit, I do not need to blow the dust out of the computer nearly as much.

 

[oh toro]

What about the MTBF for hard drives? Isn't it partially rated for amount of time operational? I did have a hard drive failure (IBM Deskstar 40gig -- fault prone? dunno) in a machine that was on for long stretches of time, used heavily.

most ata/ide/sata hard drives, except for those specifically designated for server/enterprise, are not rated for 24/7 operations, have a lower MTBF and shorter warranty. hitachi and wd are the only two companies i know of that have enterprise grade sata drives.

 

[alcid]

(IBM Deskstar 40gig -- fault prone? dunno)

I had one of them fail on me a couple of years ago as well. Apparently it was pretty common.