I recently got my new rig for christmas you might of seen my other threads but my question is how often should I turn off my computer? I can't see how its good for it to stay on all day and night so when should i turn it off? I usually do at night before I go to bed unless im staying up later. but just in case you need my specs for whatever reason here you go. 550watt antec PSU 4GB ddr3 RAM EVGA gtx 460 1gb AMD athlon II x4 640 1TB HDD
In simple terms, don't worry about it. Whenever you want, or whenever you don't want. To be honest, it makes sense to turn off at night, but I just sleep it
I generally turn mine off at night or when I am going out. If I am going to be in another room for more than 30 minutes I generally sleep it, it takes seconds to wake back up. In previous versions of windows I would have left it on through fear of it not waking, but windows 7 seems to have sleeping down to a fine art But I agree with lamboman, don't worry about it, turn it off whenever you feel like it. I think a lot of the fear of turning on and off is due to components, usually hard drives seemingly dying when the system is turned back on. But the act of turning it on and off is unlikely to have killed the drive.
pc's tend to get used to how they are treated in terms of on/off. my pc is left on 24/7, the wifes was also left on 24/7 until we went on holiday, we turned hers off, when we came back, hd decided to fail, there was no suggestion that it might fail, whilst it was on 24/7. a few years ago it was suggested that turning a machine on and off may cause harm, due to temperature changes, causing movement of components as they expand and contract, whilst leaving the machine on would keep the temps at a constant. there is no scientific evidence that suggests leaving on or turning on/off wears a machine out any quicker.
Other than possible hardware failure, are there any other issues / considerations in using "sleep" mode?
I'll leave it on all day or all night if i'm downloading something but it uses too much electric to just leave it on for nothing. When it is on I like it to be working, so if i'm going out i'll start it downloading a large file or run a scan.
The likeliness of failure will increase when a computer is turned on and or regularly because of temperature fluctuations. However, the capacitors in a computer will most likely fail faster if the computer is left on 24/7 due to heat (they dry out). This, of course, is based on statistics so it won't be accurate in the real world. People believe that components always fail at power on, but this is simply because a system could run with a pretty serious fault. At power on there is a greater load and more system checks which will uncover problems. If I were you I wouldn't worry about it. What you should consider tough is the risk of fire. If you leave the house/room for a longer period, shut down. Edit: The cost of electricity should also be considered.
whilst i agree with the cost of electric, there is no more risk of fire than there is with leaving a fridge/freezer switched on, or your pvr for that matter. it just makes good senese to make sure dust and papers dont build up on your equipment. obviously if your not using your computer, turn off the screen, and speakers etc. the machine could be put to use for folding or seti.
Just set your computer to sleep after 30min idle or something. That is what I do. I get instant on, I save power, and I don't have it on all the time. It's perfectly fine to leave your computer turned on 24/7 for 7 years. Your computer (assuming you are using Vista/Win7) have all it needs (every component) to automatically control your processors speed to reduce heat and save power when you don't need the performance.
That's true, but the risk is there, and the more equipment you have switched on, the higher the risk. Besides, fires in computers are far more likely than in a fridge.
knowing the average bit-tech user, id say most of out computer heatsinks are far cleaner than our fridge condenser coils...making a fridge fire far more likely... but neither would keep me up at night
ACER T120 Desktop XPpro + sp3. My machine is on all day every day. It goes on in the morning & off when I go to bed. Whilst I do use it every day, I don't use it all day. but: every now and then, the thing freezes whilst not in use. I have to ctrl-alt-del & re-boot. I'll start a new post & ask for advice on this. RN
Mine goes off whenever the room gets too hot, I won't be using it, or the thing locks up from over-heating.
This is about right, we had someone bring in a dead machine built by IBM when I was working in basic support, he'd left it on 24/7 for 8 years, but doing the maths, had he stuck to 9-5 office hours and shut it down, it would have lasted another 18 months. I leave my machine on for large downloads overnight eg Steam games, but that's where I draw the line.
