Turn a PC Off or Leave It On?

I don't buy the 'better for the hardware to leave it on' argument. Silicon does not expand/contrast enough in the 50 F

It's not nearly as much the silicon as the solder, particularly lead free solder. I use 60/40 everytime.
 
Mine shut off after 30 min of inactivity. One Laptop, one gaming rig with i7. I also leave my Logitech Revue on full time, but it is an Atom proc and really sips the power.

During the winter though, Folding keeps mine going for heat 24/7.
 
I just turn it off when I am done. It will be replaced FAR before anything starts to fail from power on/off anyway.

Electricity costs money, turning off a PC does not.
 
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.
Your tv is one example of being in sleep mode, that is what gives you instant on and off mode, do you shut the power off at the wall, I don't know what you have in your house but their could be some other devices that are instant on or off, if saving power is what your looking for. Cheers
 
4 computers and a media center in the house - plus my laptop if I bring it home from work. They all go to sleep instead of shutting off. I'd rather they shut off but no matter how many times I tell the girls to shut off their friggin PC, they forget. I come home from work or whatever, and everyone's doing something else while their PC and monitor's on. Blah.

I enabled sleep mode on everyone's computer so it sleeps in 15 minutes of idle. It's better than nothing.
 
I just put mine to sleep unless I'm gone several days in which case it's off.

I have a hotkey setup and just takes 2 simultaneous keypresses from the keyboard to put it to sleep. And as someone mentioned earlier the shutdown on Windows Start can be set to sleep but I like using the hotkey, no fiddling with the mouse.
 
4 computers and a media center in the house - plus my laptop if I bring it home from work. They all go to sleep instead of shutting off. I'd rather they shut off but no matter how many times I tell the girls to shut off their friggin PC, they forget. I come home from work or whatever, and everyone's doing something else while their PC and monitor's on. Blah.

I enabled sleep mode on everyone's computer so it sleeps in 15 minutes of idle. It's better than nothing.

Oh yeah and my media center always go into sleep mode, not off - for obvious reasons. Would be a waste of Logitech Harmony One if I have to go to the PC to turn it on all the time.
 
I have mine set up to shut down every night at midnight and restart at 8am.
 
From now on, after reading these posts, I'm turning my home rig off.

I like the idea of cutting down on dust, which is a hassle.

I also like that I've moved at least some distance away from being called a 'planet rapist'.
 
My overclocked i7 machine has been running 24/7 for most of the past 6 years. I have another machine, a linux server which has been running 24/7 since 2003, still with the original hard disk. Some of the other hardware was replaced in 2008 (CPU, memory, mainboard).
 
only 8 of them gets turned off. the rest are radio stations/test boxes. So yeah my power bill sucks but hey money is like blood i make more of it every week. So there.

-ACiD
 
Hibernate on main rig, sleep on laptop (when not in use). Main rig doesn't work with sleep because of a required pin-mod on the PERC5/i RAID controller (SMBus conflict), but works fine with hibernate. Resume from hibernate is faster than cold boot.
 
My gaming rig is on 24/7, The server farm that I have is on 24/7.

Only thing that shuts off is the lappy's.
 
I don't turn my computers off nor leave them on.

I put them to sleep, which uses minimal power, and allows them to wake in a heartbeat. Its a no-brainer. :)
 
laptop is off whenever i'm not using it (minimal software, so it boots up quite fast even with HDD)

desktop is always on unless i have nothing to download overnight

i don't like using sleep mode.. some devices don't work well with it
 
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.
But I have a salary. I guess for others though, you can idle and work an extra minute every day.

I turn my computer off unless I forget to when I'm streaming some show. Great technique for not wasting as much time, press the power button, do something else thats important and takes about a minute, and come back and its even better than sleep mode. I call it light speed boot up. Also, be careful about those roundoff errors on the internal clock. It may screw up your fps meter.
 
I recently went on a 5 day vacation and turned off most of my computers. My power bill dropped $30! The biggest draw isn't my main box, but my file servers. I have been meaning to rebuild them using low power processors and drives, but this was the first time I realized it might save me a few dollars to do so.
 
Leaving my computer on 24/7 makes no sense to me whatsoever. Wastes juice, extra wear and tear for nothing. I might leave it on all night sometimes if I'm doing something like a download and I want to go to sleep. Other than that, when I sleep, my computer goes off. Don't use hibernation either. Either full on or full off. Only way I roll.
 
All off. My cell phone can handle minor browsing if I need to check something quickly.
No need to fire up or keep my PC on for that.
 
Off, when not in use. I have a little netbook and a BB to handle quick internet inquiries.
I have two main PC's, one working Laptop, and one HTPC.
 
Unless the tree hugger wants to start paying my electric bill, I think I'll do as I damn well please. Thank you. That is all.
 
PC always gets turned off at home, always gets left on at work so I can always RDP to it if needed.
 
Low power file server is in the basement and is never turned off. Main PC it depends on the season. If it's summer it is shut down whenever not in use and not overclocked. In the winter it folds 24/7 and is overclocked. During the colder months it's basically a space heater that can fold, play games, etc.
 
The author of that article is a moron. The planet doesn't give a $*** what I do with my computer.
 
Leave it off at night. I sleep in the same room as my PC, can't catch any rest with the fans humming.
 
I used to leave my PC on all the time, even if I was not folding or even doing anything productive on it.

But after awhile I realized how much money it was costing me to leave my computer on 24/7 so I started powering mine off.

Basically once I come home from work if I turn on my computer I leave it on till I am going to go to bed. So, there are some days where I don't turn my computer on for a couple of days because I don't have time to sit down and use it.


I was always in the camp of "leaving it on" so the computer parts wouldn't wear out. But lets be honest here, almost my whole computer is replaced before anything would wear out anyways. ;)
 
I leave the laptops in sleep mode, and tablets off when not in use. My main rig is also in sleep mode while not in use, but it turns on every morning around 4 am, SABNZBD grabs all my Sickbeard queued programs, and then it puts itself back in sleep.
 
I turn my computer off every night, and sometimes during the day depending what I am doing; if I'm mostly at home then I'll just leave it on until I go to bed regardless if I'm actually using it or not, but if I have to go to work/school/somewhere where I know I'll be away from the house for awhile then I'll turn it off.
 
I leave my computer on 24/7 because I'm constantly torrenting Linux distros. Also, mining. My girlfriend's computer goes off when not in use.
 
Laptops sleep, HTPC and Server are on 24/7/365. Wife wouldn't know what to do if things weren't just ready to go.
 
I put mine into W7 hybrid sleep mode. It takes 1 second to boot.

I reboot it... every couple months or when W7 update needs it.
 
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