Turn a PC Off or Leave It On?

All the PCs in my house get turned off or put on standby at night when the user goes to sleep, unless it's left to do something overnight. During the day, they get put on standby when the user will be gone for an extended period of time. No point in wasting energy/money.
 
The idea that leaving a computer on is good for the computer reminds me of the African practice of men with AIDS raping young girls to cure their AIDS. It's repulsive.

Leaving the computer on, raping the environment, does the computer no good. The mechanical parts are wearing out while the computer is on, and more dust is sucked into the computer. Heat is the enemy of the non-mechanical parts, and they're aging faster while they're on than while they're off.

Further, Windows works best when it's restarted now-and-then.
 
Computer is only on when i'm doing something with it. Otherwise it is off. The cable modem and router, OTOH, stay on 24/7, but they are not huge power hogs either.
 
I turn mine off. My startup time is under 10 seconds, so why the hell not? Saves me a little on my power bill.
 
Stone Cold said:
The idea that leaving a computer on is good for the computer reminds me of the African practice of men with AIDS raping young girls to cure their AIDS. It's repulsive.

Leaving the computer on, raping the environment, does the computer no good. The mechanical parts are wearing out while the computer is on, and more dust is sucked into the computer. Heat is the enemy of the non-mechanical parts, and they're aging faster while they're on than while they're off.

Further, Windows works best when it's restarted now-and-then.
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Wow. What the hell?
 
My Folders, Miners, and Server stay on 24/7. The laptop, netbooks, and tablets sleep.
 
13 inch MacBook. Always on, always crunching numbers. Others systems sleep or power themselves off.
 
I keep everything on 24/7 (fileserver, net/torrent/vnc server, second torrent "server" (headless laptop), main rigs).
 
YEARS ago (like 20) there was legitimate concern for hard drive longevity for leaving computers on all the time.

Now? The days where you sometimes had to hit your computer to get the heads to unstick from the media are LONG gone.

As an engineer with 14 years of experience in the hard drive industry I turn my systems on and off multiple times a day. The reasons that people used to leave systems on all the time no longer exist:

- HDD longevity is no longer a concern
- Suspend / Hibernate is actually reliable
- time to return from suspend / hibernate is WAY less than it used to be.

With tiered power in my area the computer power consumption for leaving machines on can be considered to be in the highest priced tier (currently 33 cents a kWh in my area), our electric bill dropped VERY significantly when we started hibernating our two machines.
 
Forgot to add that I use the main rigs so much, that they might as well be on 24/7 anyways.
The other machines have to stay on.

BTW : WTF? I can't edit my own post o_O
 
gesicht said:
i only keep my PC on in the winter. little folding = heat.
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+1 folding, +1 being useful as a calculator, for homework/other

That, is efficient. We should all just turn off heating during the winter and stay strictly with heater-computers. So much more cost effective and efficient. :D
 
Arcygenical said:
If your computer is legitimately idling there, doing nothing, there's a full 0% ROI on that quarter spent. 80$ a year, for literally - nothing at all - is a silly waste of money.
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It costs an extra $80 a year to keep your machine idle.
Assuming it takes one minute to boot your computer every day * 356 days, that's six hours of waiting for your computer to boot each year.
$80 / 6 hours means if you make more than $13 an hour at your day job, idling pays for itself.
 
I leave almost every PC on all the time, that includes: my main rig, file/domain server, pfsense box, media center, room mate's main rig. Really the only one that isn't on 24/7 is the PC under the bar in the basement. We both remote in to our main rigs throughout the day, and the server and pfsense boxes are necessary to accomplish that...
 
All computers except my server(its the internet gateway) gets shut off when not going to be used for more then 2 hours. Definitely shut off my tube amp I use on my desktop too whenever I walk away for more then a few minutes
 
I used to leave my PCs running 24/7, cause I didn't care about the electric bill. That is, until the recession started and then I started putting them into standby or hibernate. Whichever works. That's when the problems began.

Some PCs work have no problems in Standby, but had problems in Hibernate. Cant happen the other way around. Some of my older USB devices would stop working, and sometimes the PC just didn't want to wake up. One PC just doesn't like to have the video card working after resuming from standby.

I've worked out most of the issues, but man there's serious problems with either Windows or some motherboards with standby or Hibernate.
 
Stone Cold said:
The idea that leaving a computer on is good for the computer reminds me of the African practice of men with AIDS raping young girls to cure their AIDS. It's repulsive.

Leaving the computer on, raping the environment, does the computer no good. The mechanical parts are wearing out while the computer is on, and more dust is sucked into the computer. Heat is the enemy of the non-mechanical parts, and they're aging faster while they're on than while they're off.

Further, Windows works best when it's restarted now-and-then.
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You are one weird ass person. Your analogies leave me scratching my head more often then not.
 
I turn my system off whenever i'm officially done using it, but i leave it on overnight if im downloading a game or something.
 
dexvx said:
Is there seriously no sleep option?

Sleep takes less than 2 seconds to go into and out of.
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All you guys preaching the sleep thing....doesn't work for every situation....for example those of us with more complex HTPC configurations might have issues using sleep (myself included).

My workstation usually stays on most of the time, sometimes I shut it off if I know I will be out of the apartment for a day or two.

Server is always on 24/7.

Both HTPC's are powered off when not in use.

I have access to WoL from both inside and outside my network with both my Android devices as well as any PC I am on, so its not a big deal to cast a Magic Packet and wait 30 seconds for the PC to boot up if I need to access it.
 
Oh and you guys that are leaving your overclocked multiGPU rigs on 24/7 are burning through a LOT of money on power. Most Overclockers disable most of the power saving features, which makes idle power consumption very high.
 
I turn mine off mainly because I hate for an electrical device to be on in a house that no one is using. My wife will vouch for my persistence. Like other people have stated, with an SSD, wait time is greatly diminished. Usually by the time I hit the PC power button, power on my speakers, pull out my chair, take the crap out of my pockets, and sit down, the system is waiting for me.
 
Stone Cold said:
The idea that leaving a computer on is good for the computer reminds me of the African practice of men with AIDS raping young girls to cure their AIDS. It's repulsive.

Leaving the computer on, raping the environment, does the computer no good. The mechanical parts are wearing out while the computer is on, and more dust is sucked into the computer. Heat is the enemy of the non-mechanical parts, and they're aging faster while they're on than while they're off.

Further, Windows works best when it's restarted now-and-then.
Click to expand...

BROKEN COMPUTER = AIDS
 
ScottSwing said:
It costs an extra $80 a year to keep your machine idle.
Assuming it takes one minute to boot your computer every day * 356 days, that's six hours of waiting for your computer to boot each year.
$80 / 6 hours means if you make more than $13 an hour at your day job, idling pays for itself.
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That logic doesn't really pan out, unfortunately. Equating 6 hours of yearly waiting to 6 hours of paid work doesn't make sense.

My non-working hours are compensated at a rate of 0$/hour. Regardless of whether I'm waiting for my machine to boot or not. 100% of my computer usage is during non-working leisure hours.

Also, resuming from standby, which I was arguing for, takes about 3 seconds with an SSD, shrinking that 6 hour figure 20 fold.

Granted, if I was using a shitty old work computer, that would take 5+ minutes to boot, and I was paid hourly, you can be damned sure i'd be turning it off and on each day :)
 
This i7 (between 3.2 - 3.8) & 5870 (970mhz no ov) have been on & running for almost 2 years continuously. Boinc projects & bitmining mostly, so have been running flat out 100% oc'd. Cleaned once a month.

Inbetween there I use it sometimes. :cool:
 
Stone Cold said:
The idea that leaving a computer on is good for the computer reminds me of the African practice of men with AIDS raping young girls to cure their AIDS. It's repulsive.

Leaving the computer on, raping the environment, does the computer no good. The mechanical parts are wearing out while the computer is on, and more dust is sucked into the computer. Heat is the enemy of the non-mechanical parts, and they're aging faster while they're on than while they're off.

Further, Windows works best when it's restarted now-and-then.
Click to expand...
I leave my computer on just to spite you.
 
Zarathustra[H];1037788609 said:
I was also taught this back in the day, but I always believed it to be true only for CRT monitors and components with moving parts (like hard drives). With LCD's and SSD's I don't think this is really the case anymore...
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That is true, but I'm still running 1 TB Sata 3 hard drives in my computers. Until large capacity SSD drives become available and affordable, I'm still running the Sata drives.
 
Shooter308 said:
That is true, but I'm still running 1 TB Sata 3 hard drives in my computers. Until large capacity SSD drives become available and affordable, I'm still running the Sata drives.
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Yeah, I have 10TB of drives hooked up to my NAS in my closet out of earshot (1x 3TB, 3x 2TB, 1x 1TB), but I keep them out of my local machine, so its nice and quiet and my case is cooler.

In addition to those benefits I can share my storage across all my machines.

Right now my main rig only has one drive in it, my 120GB SSD.

The storage is in the closet, and my optical drive is in an external eSATA enclosure on my desk (so I don't have to bend over to open it) and it stays off most of them time, as I rarely use it other than to install OS:es.
 
I leave my PC running all the time. Various reasons.

* Gives all my hard drives time to do their defragmentation, garbage collection, and other routine stuff the OS likes to do with a computer is idle.
* Let my torrent client run and improve my sharing ratios.
* I like to remote desktop into my computer when away. WOL for some reason doesn't seem to work well on this Gigabyte P45 board. And if I shut the computer off or sleep/hibernate it at night, then am in a rush the next morning I may forget to turn it back on and not be able to remote into it later.
 
I used to just keep my main computer on 24/7. But nowdays, I put mine to sleep if I know I wont be using it for awhile, and have it set to go to sleep after being idle for a couple hours.
 
WasntMe said:
Another comment... that was the most pointless article ever. No facts, baseless comments, and absolutely no "Answers" from the "Answer Line".

"And it's probably bad for the computer."
"I have seen occasional arguments that shutting down a computer, then starting it up cold, cause more wear and tear than leaving it on for 12 hours. I just don't buy them."
"All computers potentially suffer from heat problems, and one that never gets a chance to cool down will suffer from more of them."
"a computer that's off is a computer that can't be infected with malware or behave under orders from afar if it's already infected."
"you should probably shut it down at least once a week to clear those cobwebs."

Nice... :rolleyes:
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Well, it is pcmag. I just leave mine on if it's doing something, minor but still something.
 
I turn mine off most of the time, but I sometimes do just use sleep mode as I just want it to wake up and not go through the long process of booting up. If you get a new computer you do want to leave that computer on for 24hrs not only to test it, but to burn in the CPU silicon and thermal grease.
 
Everything gets turned off around here, even the media 'server'. Thing HTPC gets suspended so it's only like 4 seconds till it's ready to go, about the same amount of time for the TV to warm up completely. The media server has a wake on alarm set in it's BIOS so it's usually up and running when we're needing it, if not the HTPC sends a wake on lan signal to it everytime it starts / wakes from suspend for those few other times. Works for us, keeps the bills lower and the rooms cooler.
 
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