PCA Forums

Not sure if this has been answered before, but is it best to shut down computers when not in use, or leave them running? It would be useful if someone could answer this or provide a link to a thread on it.

ive heard both
but i say leave them on
hard disk rotors can fail if started and stopped too often
though they may have corrected this issue a while ago
i know it was true in the days of the 245meg hdd

this is sorta like which came first, the chicken or the egg? My thoughts would be that if you use the computer, like every couple hours to check email, leave it on, but if you are not going to be on it for like 12 hour stretches, turn it off. The heating and cooling cycle of electronics is what wears them out, causes connections, (like PCI cards), to come loose, and electronic components to "wear out". But, usually we trade up for newer models by the time this comes to pass. I'm sure more peeps will have something to say on this subject

sethpa

with old computers like the old pentiums and 486 .. it is better to leave them on becaus ethe silicon on them boards would heat up and cool down and could possibly crack from doing that to much .. but now adays with the new boards and stuff you can turn them on and off as much as you want lol it wont hurt it .. hope that helps ya out

I keep a PC on 24/7 if it's used often but have the PC setup to go into sleep mode (turning off HDDs, monitor, etc) when it's not used for over an hour.
If it's a PC that I don't use very often, like maybe more than a couple days or so then I turn it off as it's just wasting power otherwise.

All 3 systems in my house (my workstation, wife's computer & server) run 24/7. Only time they get powered down is if there's a thunderstorm.

I like being able to sit down and getting right to work without waiting for boot up.

At my old job we found reliability went WAY up once we started telling our operators to leave the computers running 24/7.

I tell all my clients to go ahead and leave them on all the time if they want to.

The only wear and tear is on the fan bearings which are inexpensive to replace and even cheapie fans last years nowadays, and hard drive spindle motor & bearing which is pretty much designed to run 24/7 for years as well on any decent drive.

And if you're concerned about wear and tear on the drive just set the drive to spin down after a couple of hours.


My personal opinion - and this is from long experience - has always been that computers (like light bulbs) usually fail during power up. It's the most streesful time for them: you create a mini power surge when you turn it on, some power supplies take a few seconds to stablilize voltage (I've yet to hear of a mobo popping capacitors while running - it's always during power up when the voltage briefly spikes), and for a brief moment until they start to spin up, the electric motor in the hard drive spindle is actually presenting a VERY high current draw - nearly a total short.

Another issue is that parts expand and contract due to the temperature change. Nothing exemplified this more dramatically than Commodore PET computer in the early days of home computing (circa 1979) PETs used have a problem with the RAM and ROM chips creeping up out of the very cheap sockets they used, due to temperature contraction and expansion. You had to open it up once a month to push the chips back down into their sockets (I AM NOT KIDDING!). Simplest solution was to run it 24/7.

All these factors lead to an acculation of wear and tear each time you power up.


As far as power consumption: with the monitor off and hard drives spun down, power draw on a modern system - especially if it's running WinME/XP/2K which uses active cooling - is minimal. Just don't run any 3D screen savers (never understood that - WHY would you want to run your 3D card at MAX stress and HOT all night while you're not using it).

My comments are as follows:

The only wear and tear is on the fan bearings which are inexpensive to replace and even cheapie fans last years nowadays, and hard drive spindle motor & bearing which is pretty much designed to run 24/7 for years as well on any decent drive.

And if you're concerned about wear and tear on the drive just set the drive to spin down after a couple of hours.

My personal opinion - and this is from long experience - has always been that computers (like light bulbs) usually fail during power up. It's the most streesful time for them: you create a mini power surge when you turn it on, some power supplies take a few seconds to stablilize voltage (I've yet to hear of a mobo popping capacitors while running - it's always during power up when the voltage briefly spikes), and for a brief moment until they start to spin up, the electric motor in the hard drive spindle is actually presenting a VERY high current draw - nearly a total short.

Another issue is that parts expand and contract due to the temperature change. Nothing exemplified this more dramatically than Commodore PET computer in the early days of home computing (circa 1979) PETs used have a problem with the RAM and ROM chips creeping up out of the very cheap sockets they used, due to temperature contraction and expansion. You had to open it up once a month to push the chips back down into their sockets (I AM NOT KIDDING!). Simplest solution was to run it 24/7.

All these factors lead to an acculation of wear and tear each time you power up.


As far as power consumption: with the monitor off and hard drives spun down, power draw on a modern system - especially if it's running WinME/XP/2K which uses active cooling - is minimal. Just don't run any 3D screen savers (never understood that - WHY would you want to run your 3D card at MAX stress and HOT all night while you're not using it).

Well to save time I copy and paste
But I totally agree with FP on this one....
1. Most failure is during startup (just avoid it)
2. Most modern computers go to sleep enough that they dont take much power anymore
3. I DONT WANT TO WAIT FOR A BOOT WHEN I SIT DOWN TO USE MY COMPUTER