Other Do any of you leave your computer on 24/7

[j4mi3]

Is this ok for the health of the computer? I guess stuff like fans just die earlier

not idling btw. Mine is usually constant at around 50% cpu doing various stuff

[srgtherasta]

Yes i leave mine on 24/7. powering up and down hdd's all the time is pretty much the worst thing you can do to them. Haven't had a hdd failure in years.

[chewbaccas_nan]

I don't personally think you should leave them on all day every day, I always turn mine off!

[Silent_Raider]

I always leave mine on. It probably does degrade the life of the fans and other components. But in today's PC world, upgrades are fairly common every 2-3 years anyway.

[mars-bar-man]

Was told at uni by a lecturer to leave PC's on 24/7, the cpnstant spinning up (on reboot) of the HDDs etc can cause issues with them. I've never done any research into it though.

I turn mine off as if I leave it on, I can see the power bill rise a little too much.

[Margon]

Originally Posted by srgtherasta

Yes i leave mine on 24/7. powering up and down hdd's all the time is pretty much the worst thing you can do to them. Haven't had a hdd failure in years.

^ dubious information. If that was the case, then power settings that by default power down your disks after x amount of time inactive would by your standards break the disk - unless you have your disks spinning away all the time (some do to lower seek times) then your disks are powering up and down all the time in your rig. Makes disks hot though having them spin all the time, and uses more juice.

I don't leave my pc on all the time. I have a home server that I leave on all the time.

I got a few machines here at work that have been on for years, and they were old machines to start with. Really if its well cooled etc. then there is no harm having your machine on all the time, it just uses more power etc.

If I left my pc and my server on in my room all the time, i could start selling space as a sauna! I have no heating in my room all year round and its always toasty. and the server creates a nice amount of white noise to aide sleeping......oh yeah its a huge pain sleeping with a server on!

[Krikkit]

It should be easy to calculate which is best for a drive, but it's not.

If the spec sheets still had MTBF on them, you could compare MTBF and the load/unload cycle count to see which one you would exceed first. Chances are a power up and down once a day over the lifetime of a drive won't have a huge significance.

[xTatic]

I leave mine on 24/7 but put it to sleep while at college / asleep.

As far as I know, leaving it on 24/7 won't do any harm as long as it is sufficiently cooled.

Things may die earlier time wise, but you should get the same usage out of them.
E.g. If something has a 3 year life span and you use it 24/7, it will last 3 years. If you only use it 12 hours every day, then it will still last 3 years, but it will take 6 years to reach 3 years of usage.

[Shirty]

Mine is only on when I'm playing a game or watching Youtube/browsing. So about 3 or 4 nights a week for between 2-4 hours at a time.

The Nexus 7 and Galaxy SII take the lion's share of the browsing duties in our house now.

[law99]

depends if I forget or not to turn it off basically. Sometimes, I don't go in the office for days. In which case... it's more like 24/3

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by j4mi3

Is this ok for the health of the computer? I guess stuff like fans just die earlier

not idling btw. Mine is usually constant at around 50% cpu doing various stuff

Consumer grade computers -> No. It will break at 3-4 years.
Business class systems -> Depends if it's a low-end or high-end, workstation or server or normal desktop PC

High-end gaming/workstation PC that we buy -> No problem.

Assuming you clean the dist out of your computer properly every 3 or so months (depends on the dust level where you are), quality fans should last you 5-6 years+. Quiet fans might get a bit noisier, but nothing much, unless you got crappy quiet fans. I know Noctua fans has a 6 year warranty on them. So I guess they know it won't get loud or break over time.

[Tangster]

Mine gets turned off for windows updates. That's about it.

[mansueto]

Mine is always in sleep mode. I'm either at it, or it's in sleep mode. I only restart when I need to.

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by mansueto

Mine is always in sleep mode. I'm either at it, or it's in sleep mode. I only restart when I need to.

Same here.

[rollo]

Depends what it's doing, if I've Brought stuff to download from steam Ect then its turned on, but if its doing nothing and I'm not going to be using it again it gets turned off.

iPad handles general web browsing duties in household. My phone works fine for me 90% of the time if I'm just browsing around.

Dou't it saves alot of electric in truth rig is bearly using 100watts at idle, our washing machine uses some insane 2kw/hr and is on pretty much all day.

Photo vid rig is shutdown if not in use.

[MSHunter]

never could get sleep mode to stay in sleep always randomly wakes up.

[GoodBytes]

Originally Posted by MSHunter

never could get sleep mode to stay in sleep always randomly wakes up.

Windows 7/8 has sleep diagnostic system.
- Open Command Prompt as true Admin.
- Type: cd C:\. Hit Enter
- Then, type: powercfg -energy. hit Enter
A report will be done and saved in your C:\ drive.

Usually culprit are:
-> Keyboard/Mouse
-> Bluetooth device
-> Network/Wireless wake-on LAN or/and magic packet
All of the above can be solved in their properties of Device Manager panel.

[PureSilver]

I will admit, I'm kind of horrified by the sheer wastefulness going on here. The hell is wrong with you people?

When I'm not using it, my computer's off, just like when I'm not in it, my shower's off, my bedroom lights are off, and my car is off. Anything else is just a colossal waste of energy. Your computer turns its disks off all the time by default anyway. I've been turning my computer on and off at least three times a day for the last ten years, and I've never had an HDD failure. I'm kind of stunned that you guys consider leaving a computer on 24/7 (at a guess, running at a draw of about say... 200W when it's running?) reasonable. I'm not sure what a unit of electricity costs on average in the UK at the moment - I think it's about £0.14/kWh - but at that price it's costing you £245 a year, and that's before you get into the cost of running a display. If you ran it when you were actually using it (say 4 hours a day) you'd save £204, or the cost of three SATAII 1TB drives every single year...

It may be that when you're saying "Oh, I leave it on 24/7" what you mean is "Oh, it's hibernated when I'm not using it" but that turns your drives off anyway. Why, if you know you're not going to be needing it to return to exactly where you left it for the next few hours (e.g., because you're asleep/at work/at school) would you not turn it off? This reminds me of the asshat in a water cooling thread who was saving money by not buying a radiator or a pump for his water cooling loop - he was running an open (that is, full loss) loop straight from the water mains, through his loop, and into the drains. His excuse was that he paid a flat rate for water. I hate people sometimes.

Originally Posted by MSHunter

never could get sleep mode to stay in sleep always randomly wakes up.

You got a sensitive mouse by any chance?

[GoodBytes]

200W? Nha.. unless you have people insist in setting Windows power plan to Higher Performance, instead of Balance. Oh well not my electric bill.

[Andersen]

Servers and workstation stay on 24/7. Only exception is power outage longer than two minutes.