Keep computer on or turn it off?

[bremstrahlung]

Is it better to turn off the computer when not in use or just keep it on?

[shakes]

you can turn your computer off!!?? :eek:

[AnonyPuss]

Originally posted by bremstrahlung
Is it better to turn off the computer when not in use or just keep it on?

That depends on if your running Windows. If yes, then turn it off, you'll save yourself the daily reboot that way.

Most other operating systems can stay running for years with proper configuration and maintainence.

Seriously, from my experience, it's better on your hardware to leave it on, with the exception of the monitor, just make sure to atleast have a screensaver enabled.

[sharth]

do your parents yell at you when you leave the computer on? if so, join the club! and learn the power of shutdown -h now.

[hlrguy]

Originally posted by AnonyPuss
Most other operating systems can stay running for years with proper configuration and maintainence.

We just go an award from one of our customers, we run on Solaris 2.6 as of right now. 3 years, 75% cpu 24x7, uptime 3years.

That said, unless you are a web server, you might as well shut it off. The choise is entirely up to you.

Pro
- Save's power.
- Saves wear and tear on the fans

Con
- Maybe hot, cooldown, hot, cooldown over a few years can shorten Silicon life.
- Instant on, since it is never off. :)

I turn mine off at night, leave it on when on customer support, so as you can see, I am wishy washing on the subject.

hlrguy

[Fryguy8]

I leave my computer running for months at a time. I have faith in doing that do because I have a pretty extreme cooling system. I leave my monitor on power control so it goes in to suspend about 5 minutes after screen blanking.

[Wallex]

Personally I wouldn't mind leaving my computer on for eternity... but those damn spinning fans don't let me sleep! therefore, I shut it down whenever I need a good night's rest. Maybe someday I'll get a more silent cooling system... and then things will change.

[raid517]

Well if you give a hoot about the environment you should switch it off when not in use. Why waste enegy and muck up the environment when you have no requirement for it?

Q

[Penrich]

Don't waste those CPU cycles: FOLD@HOME (folding.stanford.edu). I leave my home machines on running F@H. At work I turn it off because 1. I have Win2K, so it needs it anyway ;) and 2. I can't run F@H at work (firewall issues).

There was a thread a while ago about this, and the concensus then seemed to be that you put less stress on the innards of the machine if you leave it on. I use power management to shut down the monitor.

[AidanMyste]

Originally posted by Wallex
Personally I wouldn't mind leaving my computer on for eternity... but those damn spinning fans don't let me sleep! therefore, I shut it down whenever I need a good night's rest. Maybe someday I'll get a more silent cooling system... and then things will change.

Nice. I find I can't sleep without the computer on. I fall asleep to the sounds of the hard drive being accessed (as I run the Virus scan and defrag on windows during the night, when I leave myself logged into windows, prob after playing TSO) and the fans. When it's off, I find it's way too silent in the room to get some decent sleep :D

Causes some problems when I sleep at other peoples houses though.

[wguy00]

Be careful about running a defrag everynight. I've heard horror stories that running defrag too often will corrupt your HD. I don't know if this is true or not. I do it once a week, personally.

[bosox79]

Originally posted by bremstrahlung
Is it better to turn off the computer when not in use or just keep it on?

I leave my box running 24/7 I just make sure that I I have my monitor set to power off after like an hour of non activity:D the reason I leave my box on all the time is because I download a lot of large files while I am sleeping or away from my machine. ( I have cable net access BTW) I also leave it on because it makes it more convenient for my to surf the net I just open up a browser window & start surfing:D

Like others have said their are some drawbacks
1 my box outputs a lot of heat
2. my fans are nosily thankfully my system is not in my bedroom it is on the other side of the house
3. my electric bill can get expensive at certain times of the year i'e during the summer when I run the AC as well

I have run one of my win 98 boxes for like four years 24/7 & it's still going strong. (it's not connected to the net
)
so the choice of whether or not to shutoff your box is totally up to you:cool:

[TreeHugger]

Leaving a computer running for a whole year costs $100 approximately, depending on how much your electricity costs.

[Beneath]

Leave it on all the time (if you're running a stable OS, like linux :)).

From my experience, it greatly extends the life of a computer. I have had people telling me that things have a 'lifespan', and the less it's on the longer it will last. These peoples' computers have ended up having to have components replaced after a couple of years :)
Well... yes, these things have a lifespan i guess, but you shorten it by turning it on and off. I leave my stuff on all the time and i haven't had anything break yet.
Like was said above, the heating up and cooling down of components can all of a sudden mean you have a dry joint on one of your boards and the computer will refuse to boot.
There is also probably issues with the initial power surge doing something to the components, although this is just wild speculation on my part.

As for power concerns... a computer eats hardly any power at all while idle. Monitors do, and so i turn them off, but the actual box is very low on power usage.
I also find when i have two computers on in my small room all day, i don't have to turn on the heater, so i save power :)

The noise doesn't bother me... infact i like it, heh.
If you really can't sleep with the noise, turn it on once at the beginning of the day, and turn it off when you go to bed - turning it on and off really doesn't help at all.

[ECartman]

well, i don't pay for my electricity, so i leave all of mine on all the time (except my laptop - have you ever seen a laptop keyboard melt right over the proccesor? :)). It depends on how you use it, you gotta wieght thermal shock (cooling and heating of components) with electricity costs. I run SETI@home as well, so that is another reason to leave it on :D

if you are a conservationist you should probably leave it off all the time and go live in a tree. :P

[tankinan]

I can't sleep well at all without some sort of noise. So i leave my old beater 166 on constantly. My nice computer? I have to reboot it at least 3 times a day whenever it uses windows anyways, so I just play it by ear. In linux, it stays on as long as possibile. But it is better to leave it on constantly if possibile. It reduces stress.

[calandryll]

leave it on all the way...i don't have many problems when running windows, the max i've had going it 7 days but finally had to restart...unfortunately explorer will become a resource hog after awhile...which i don't understand...linux on the other hand i leave on all the time...even when doing normal computer use i'm crunching for Seti...ET is more important than folding proteins :p

[Penrich]

Originally posted by calandryll
leave it on all the way...i don't have many problems when running windows, the max i've had going it 7 days but finally had to restart...unfortunately explorer will become a resource hog after awhile...which i don't understand...linux on the other hand i leave on all the time...even when doing normal computer use i'm crunching for Seti...ET is more important than folding proteins :p
I dunno - I guess i feel that ET will find us before we find him, however, we will not find a cure for Alzheimers or cancer if we don't even look :D (But I'm biased - I'm a protein scientist :) )

[calandryll]

Originally posted by Penrich
I dunno - I guess i feel that ET will find us before we find him, however, we will not find a cure for Alzheimers or cancer if we don't even look :D (But I'm biased - I'm a protein scientist :) )

hehehe cool...always nice to meet a fellow scientist, i was joking about the proteins....don't know much about the folding@home stuff...i'll have to check it out...but forget about your proteins bow to the algae man:D

[mumiemonstret]

After an uptime of 245 days, the HD in my server had block reading errors. I find it strange that none of the replies above mention the stress on the HD. Imagine that it has to withstand 4 billion rpy (revolutions per year). Give it a break if you can!

Another issue is that it's complete nonsense to run a computer you don't use and an AC simultaneously. This gives double stress on the electricity bill and the environment just because you don't have time to wait a minute for the computer to boot.

Here in Sweden the computer heat is desirable almost all year round, and it doesn't matter if the heat is generated by 200W computer or 200W radiator.

[mdwatts]

I turn my main home pc off when not in use since it has a 400w power supply and I pay the hydro bills.

At work I leave 2 of my Linux pc's on 24/7 and the other (my main pc) I turn off at the end of the day. My NT4 workstation at the office is also on 24/7.

[carlywarly]

Don't forget, all the capacitors on your m/board and in your psu only have a lifetime measured in a few thousands of hours before they are expected to fail.

[blind0wl]

I leave mine on 24/7, for most of the reasons stated above...generally the ease of just sitting down and web browsing straight away. Im kinda on off with Linux atm until I get another hdd, I'm not anti Microsoft and prefer Linux (trying to bring it into a windows shop at work and have got 4 machines so far doing different things), ie, MRTG (Multi Router Traffic Graph), Squid Proxy, another MRTG/Cricket/Netsaint box and a testing server so other ppl can see how Samba and Linux actually can benefit us.

Ppl seem to talk alot about having to reboot their machines when running windows...as I said before I run mine 24/7 on XP and have never come home to a blue screen in the 9-10 months I've been running windows xp. Its actually been solid as a rock to be honest....I do however remember the Win95/98/ME days but I kinda jumped into NT4 and 2000 when that was occuring and never really suffered the same consequences as the 95/98 generation.

[AidanMyste]

Yes. Xp has been good to me. But lately, and I think it's because of a bad driver or something, when I play games, it reboots once in awhile. SO frustrating. I'm trying to examine the minidumps to see fi i can find where the problem is. I'm thinking it might be the new HD though, since that was the last hardware I installed when it started. Grrrr-ish.

Also, even though I have a surge protecter and all that my phone line (for ADSL) and all my stuff is plugged into, I still turn it off when there is the slightest hint of a possible power outage (like a heavy snowstorm, or tail end of a hurrican, or l&t storm. Our power cuts out easily. And we're in the city too. And usually near the end of the list for restoration in city :mad: )

But other then that, it's on. Just put the monitor to go to idle,a nd the HD to go to idle after x mins. Just put it in standby, or sometimes hibernate. Blegh.

[tankinan]

Originally posted by carlywarly
Don't forget, all the capacitors on your m/board and in your psu only have a lifetime measured in a few thousands of hours before they are expected to fail.

True that. And they also need time to drain the excess stored energy before restarting the PC (30 seconds supposedly) to prevent damage.

[ECartman]

Originally posted by carlywarly
Don't forget, all the capacitors on your m/board and in your psu only have a lifetime measured in a few thousands of hours before they are expected to fail.


hmmm...i did not know that. then I am running on borrowed time on my my slackware 8.1 machine :).

Just to support the Windows XP "solid as a rock" people, I too have had good luck with it (but it is based on NT so...). The longest i have kept my XP machine on is probably about a month b4 having to shutdown for other reasons. My 98 machine I have actually had running for about 2 weeks before having to shut down :D (now THAT'S an achievement).

[Beneath]

Re: post by mdwatts.
No matter what rating your PSU has, be it 400w or 200w, as far as i know, with the same devices attatched, it consumes the same amount of power. It doesn't constantly eat 400w of power, it just means it's *capable* of that if you have enough devices attatched :)
Most people will be using quite a bit less than 200w whatever PSU they have.

[Penrich]

Originally posted by calandryll
hehehe cool...always nice to meet a fellow scientist, i was joking about the proteins....don't know much about the folding@home stuff...i'll have to check it out...but forget about your proteins bow to the algae man:D
And of course, algae don't have proteins do they? ;) Mammals, plants, bacteria, algae - its all protein to me! (Or fat. Or DNA...)

This thread (http://www.linuxnewbie.org/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=74030) got me started on the F@H stuff. He's got some links in there if you are interested :)

[Stween]

Originally posted by bremstrahlung
Is it better to turn off the computer when not in use or just keep it on?

Turn it off. What's the point in leaving the thing on if you're not using it? It wastes power and creates noise pollution.

Yes, daily turning on and off will possibly shorten the lifespan of your computer. But my old p200 was power cycled at least once a day for 3 years (often more than once), and much since then, and is still going strong. It'd have lasted less time if I'd left it on, because the dust in the room would stick to the fans when they were moving (which being paranoid I would often clean off).

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by Beneath
Re: post by mdwatts.
No matter what rating your PSU has, be it 400w or 200w, as far as i know, with the same devices attatched, it consumes the same amount of power. It doesn't constantly eat 400w of power, it just means it's *capable* of that if you have enough devices attatched :)
Most people will be using quite a bit less than 200w whatever PSU they have.

Thanks as I do know about the 'capable' power rating, but I have 3 HD's, 2 CD, 12 fans etc. and even if it only uses 250w, I still need to pay the bills. :)

[TreeHugger]

12 fans!!!! Wow. I've got 2. The noise bugs me. Plus I'm trying to reduce the power my PC uses. I bought a quiet power supply and a zalman heatsink with a quiet fan, which makes it all quieter, but sadly it didn't cut down the juice it consumes. I've got a meter on the plug socket.

[lsm]

the thing is when heat up they expand, now when up keep turning your pc on your motherbroad get big when turn on and small when turned off, so it is best to keep it on, as mother boards can crack and twist, this will be more ture will AMD then Intel because of the heat that is made for AMD, but do have it on for long times not being used (more then 2 hours) because energy will be wasted!

[bremstrahlung]

Wow, many thanks for all the replies :)

The current solution to the question I posted is to turn the home pc off since I do not use it everyday. I spend more time at work (astronomy graduate research -- so I'm in the SETI corner, albeit for different reasons) and this machine stays on 24/7. It certainly helps to be running linux (RH unfortunately, I love the debian on my home PC) as it has never required rebooting in well over six months (new machine).

The main reason I asked was that I think the constant on/off processes performed on my last home PC killed the PSU. Of course, the machine was a cheap-o one but now that I have a homemade PC which I adore, its lifespan is of major concern to me.

Anyway, thanks for all the responses!

P.S. mdwatts: twelve fans! The room must sound like an airplane/helicopter hangar :p

[mdwatts]

Originally posted by bremstrahlung

P.S. mdwatts: twelve fans! The room must sound like an airplane/helicopter hangar :p

I've got it strapped down and bolted to the floor.

If I go wireless and get a remote control, I may be able to fly it around the room. :D