Leaving Computer On?

[Gotham Dark Knight]

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.

[Tyler]

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

[lpxxfaintxx]

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.

[Napster]

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

[Jason425]

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.

[vicki2]

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!