For server, that is why you make a ultra efficient one (I am talking about home use), and no reason for workstation to stay on when not doing anything.
If you set it to 'Balance' in W7 at least, it turns your disks off after 20 minutes. What is the advantage of letting it run for another 20 minutes (after you've stopped using it) and then turning off? You're just running down the MBTF hours and getting exactly the same number of on/off cycles. That's a better idea if you really need to have remote access 24/7. An ultra-efficient no-moving-parts server can suck barely 5W.
My server is up 24/7. but I always turn my main rig off. OCed 3960X with 2x 670s on 24/7? Why would I want to do that to my electricity bill? The server is a undervolted, underclocked celeron... no problems there. I even schedule my NAS to shut down between 9 and 5 5days a week.
I turn mine off when not using it. I think all this stuff about powering on/off harming your HDDs is nonsense. I've had several builds over the past 6-7 years and I've recycled the same HDD in each of them and I've never had a problem with it despite powering on/off at least a couple times a day. It's really quite wasteful to be leaving your computer on 24/7. Not just in the sense that you're wasting money, but also in the sense that you're contributing to global warming and higher energy prices
HDD is not what consumes much power. Under Balance, it allows the CPU, chipset, and other components to reduce power usage. For HDD like the Western Digital Caviar Black series, the drives slows down to 5400RPM automatically when not in use, then Windows turn it off (assuming you leave the 20min default). The HDD is operable at 5400RPM and as it access data accelerates to 7200RPM. So this system helps reduce system noise and power.. even thought HDD doesn't consume much. Also, your GPU performance fluctuate based on work load. So depending on how powerful your GPU is, at idle and not moving a windows, make the GPU consume very little power (or yuo get my program, and now you do what you want and the GPU will stay stuck at minimum performance, even lower than normally set, to reduce further performance, and set it to OC or set it full speed based on what game/program are running. It works with the GPU power saving features. But it's for Nvidia GPUs.
I agree. If it fails, it's a coincidence. The HDD had a manufacture error. Not unless you use hydro-electricity like here in Quebec (hence why our electric bill are one of the cheapest around) . But in all seriousness, yes, you are right. When I used to work at a school in the IT department, a common problem, is that we have blown capacitor in our 3-4 year old PC's due of being it on 24/7 with Windows XP. Windows 7 solved all that with our new computers, as all XP issues with sleep are solved, and the system is extremely fast to wake up, and resume operation, and even connecting to the servers.
oh yeah I got a hypersensitive mouse but I though sleep was supposed to only wake on (enter) key press. Oh well. Goodbytes can I set win7 to only wake on enter key press. (was that hibernate, that did that?)
Device Manage you can block your mouse from waking up your computer. There is no specific key to turn on your computer form sleep or hibernate, unless it's BIOS/UEFI specific. Normally there is no key. Any key on the keyboard or power button will wake up the computer from sleep. A computer that was to hibernate can only awaken by the power button.
Used to run them 24/7 for years, but started putting it to s3 sleep every night two years ago - might as well save on electricity. It resumes to login screen in 3 seconds after powering it up so not a big deal. I leave it on overnight one day a week for it to run downloads, backup scripts, defrag, and a system image backup all set by a weekly task schedule.
Same story here. But even with hydro-electric being the main power source I like to save electricity when possible. The dams aren't exactly great for the environment, even though they're better than things like coal plants and at the very least it's a waste of money paying the bill for something I don't use. With power button to desktop start up time under a minute it's hard to justify leaving the PC on when I know I won't be using it for more than an hour.
Back in the days, my PC was running 24/7 with some crappy 120mm at full speed. I don't how I was able to sleep : / Now I turn it off when I go to sleep, even if my fans are quiet.
I had a system that ran for more than 8 hours a day, every day for almost ten years. Only the 40mm graphics card fan started failing. The bearings were still perfectly fine on all 80mm fans. +1. S4 (hibernate) during the night. My system pulls around 130W from the wall when idling on the desktop. The biggest culprit is likely my graphics card -- the power saving functions on my 4870 are inferior to those of newer cards. Reviews show that systems with a modern high performance graphics card pull around 50-100W on idle. Additionally, an 80 Plus Gold power supply would cut 10% off the power consumption compared to my current HX620, which I don't think is 80 Plus rated at all. As for Windows power profiles, I used to use Balanced. Then I found out that I wasn't getting full performance in certain applications. The CPU wasn't ramping up properly and the frame rate stuttered noticeably. I enabled the High Performance profile and the problem went away. Power consumption increased by a whole five watts on idle.
My work system is never turned off, home stuff normally is off as I have little use for it if im not there
Gotta say, it's pretty ridiculous to keep a rig up and running all day if you're not using it - what for exactly? My machine is off when I don't use it and on when I want it - simple.
I turn it off about once a week or when I need to restart it for some installation. Normally it's on sleep mode.
I used to sleep my PC's quite a lot, before I had an SSD, so that I could do whatever I needed to do relativley quickly. (With regards to boot time) I allways turn my system off when I'm not using it. I pay for my electricity, and keeping my PC on 24/7 is an expense I could do without. Anyway, my HDD doesn't even spool up when I start it, so the argument that it would wear out the drive is quite frankly, irrelevant.
