Leaving Computer On?
 

Does leaving your computer on (overnight instead of turning it off ) really reduce the amount of thermal stress that the components experience from heating and cooling all that much? Is there any data on the lifecycles of a baisc PC that validates this?

It really depends on the operating conditions versus the ambient conditions. If you are running hot and have a well cooled environment, this can cuase some damage. The types of questions you need to ask yourself are things like, how long do intend to keep this equipment. If only two years or so, it's not likely that these stresses will build up enough to break components in that time period. So, maybe you'll save on electricity bills than replacing components. The equation changes over time, of course. Speaking from personal experience, I've never had hardware failure occur while running, only during boot up. So, there's some anecdotal evidence about the issue.

Yeah I don't think many people will keep hardware around long enough to notice the effects of thermal stress.

I've been wondering the same thing. Would leaving your computer on save or waste more money, via the electric bill?

The energy cost for keeping a computer running for a year far outweighs replacement equipment costs for equipment breakdown suffering from thermal stress.

If anything a cpu will go, or a random part that you will replace. It's likely that you'll replace the entire computer by obsolescence according to Moore's law outpacing thermal wear by a long shot.

Overall I'd say the energy cost is extremely more weighted in importance, compound that in California.

If your not using it turn it off. Unless it is unhealthy to restart a system multiple times, which I am unsure of myself.

yea, for environmental reasons, i strongly urge people to turn off their computers when not in use. Even in standby the electricity consumption is massive. I leave a server on 24/7, but then, it's serving files. I do have the harddrives set to aggressively shut down when not in use. Unfortunately, that's basically only 1 or 2 drives out of 5 due to the nature of the server. The only other equipment that I own that stays on 24/7 is my cell.

Think of those numbers in the US ... *shudder**

As another piece of anecdotal information, when i switched from running an x86 machine for my router to a wrt54g, my electricity bill dropped something like US$10 /month. That's serious savings. Here at techwarelabs, we promote environmentally friendly use of technology ;P

w00t for greenpeace power strategies!

My work is nuts... every computer on 24/7.... You'd think Bush ran the place ;)

greenpeace is a bunch of idiots now adays. The people who founded it were smart people, but there's a reason they've all abandoned it. The anti-science people have taken over and they're pretty much irrational these days.

I turn mine off every night late ...not so much because of power usage but all the temp files get dumped out which I forget to do if I just leave it on!

Power issues aside, I don't want to sleep with the noise.

i leave both of mine running. one is my server, hosting my sites and my church's site. my pc, i just dont feel like waiting for it to boot up when i want to use it.

/me is lazy.

later

Cool ...thanks...though I am always late to upgrade my system...still probably a few years is reasonable,,,

Hard drive start/stop cycles are pretty stressful too, and hard drives are fairly prone to failure (comparatively) (not to mention so painful to lose all your data). Fans are also prone to not spin up after having been spinning constantly for years. I've heard stories of servers running for several years straight, and then being shut down finally for some reason or another, and the hard drives just won't spin up again. I've seen a computer that was running for about a year straight get shut down, and the CPU fan wouldn't spin up any more.

I personally leave four computers running 24/7. The only time they're actually OFF is if I have to move (I've been moving about one to two times per year, for the past few years), and I only reboot them maybe once every three months. I disable hard drives from spinning down, because of the spin up/down stress mentioned above.

I've also heard mention that if you have crappy power coming to your home/building, you might still be better off turning the computer off when not in use, as the dirty power can do more harm that the power cycles. That said, this could presumably be solved by a nice UPS with automatic voltage regulation/pure sine-wave output guaranteed.

Let's see... i'm raid 0, turn comp off every night..

It's lose data time! :P

I always leave my PC on and have for a very long time. For one thermal stress can be an issue over the longer term and I tend to keep components for a long time in one capacity or another.

I think back to one time when I had a pc that was always on a UPS. It ran for years and years. One day it was moved and it was powered down for the first time in like 4 years. The hard drive would not spin back up. It was quite amusing. As long as it kept running it was fine, but once it cooled down it was done. We did manage to get most of the data off though.

Another factor for me is convience. It takes way too long for my PC to bootup. I reboot it every few weeks, because I hate waiting for it to boot up. I use my computer all the time, and when I want to do something I want to get right to it, not wait 5 minutes for the computer to show up.

laziness is going to be the death of this planet...

In the past, leaving a computer ON all the time was never a good idea, but now with the way everything is built, it's quite common and sometimes benefical for a computer to always be ON. Another thing worth mentionning is that, the other extreme, turning your computer ON for brief minutes and turning it back OFF is not that good of an idea either.

it's the same principle as operating a vehicle to me... Have it on when you need it on, then turn it off.
Sure, it's hard to turn it on, but leaving it on is a waste of resources.

That is so true.

or just schedule your computer to turn on a few minutes before you normally would use it. you can also utilize the wake on feature if your motherboard supports it.

or you can get gigabyte's iRAM and boot instantly:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...9&q=i-mesh+ram

Guilty as charged - my computers run 24/7 with occasional reboots - but then, a couple of them are used as servers so need to be on 24/7. I can tell you that my computers run for years without problems. My roommate, who turns his off whenever he's not using it, has to replace his hard drive a whole lot more often.

that iram video is sick... that thing must be a screamer.

I leave my comp on for a week at a time, heh it will start slowing down by then! :)

what are you running?

are you saying with the hard drive thing that it's due to him turning off the computer more often?

I don't see how this is the case since your computers probably aren't actively using the disk spun up all the time (though maybe more than his).