Leave it running or not?

[toptec]

As a follow on from my previous thread about a cruddy/dusty failing to start PC.

Is it advisable to always turn a PC off when not in use or is it fine, as I do, to leave it running permanently? What's the consensus?

Interestingly I set up a minor experiment with one of those electricity monitors attached to my PC and it costs me 26p a week to run it permanently on!!

TT

 

[EddieM]

Leave it running.

 

[joinerjohn]

Make sure you have it plugged into an anti surge extension cable though. Mine wasn't and now has just been returned to me , complete with a new PSU, motherboard, processor and ram.
Now plugged in via an anti surge extension costing £12.50p
Repairs to my computer were well over £130.

 

[EddieM]

Good advice, happens, but v rare.

 

[tapir]

why not set it to hibernate after 2 hours of inactivity? Then it's drawing hardly any power, you're not needlessly spinning fans, hard drives are powered down, and the temperature of your PC case drops significantly. The longer you run PC hardware, the sooner you're going to have to replace it

 

[Monkeh]

why not set it to hibernate after 2 hours of inactivity? Then it's drawing hardly any power, you're not needlessly spinning fans, hard drives are powered down, and the temperature of your PC case drops significantly. The longer you run PC hardware, the sooner you're going to have to replace it

Because repeated start/stop cycles are much more wearing on the HDD than constant operation. A modern PC does not consume much power at idle, is very quiet, and doesn't exactly run hot.

 

[EddieM]

why not set it to hibernate after 2 hours of inactivity? Then it's drawing hardly any power, you're not needlessly spinning fans, hard drives are powered down, and the temperature of your PC case drops significantly. The longer you run PC hardware, the sooner you're going to have to replace it

Because repeated start/stop cycles are much more wearing on the HDD than constant operation. A modern PC does not consume much power at idle, is very quiet, and doesn't exactly run hot.

Concurr, winding up the HDD is the most common cause of failure.

 

[Aulus]

My home grown PC is about 4 years old, & is daily on & off. Am now tempted to leave it on, albeit a tad noisy when it's been on a whlte.

But 26p per week? Really??

 

[toptec]

Yeah, really.

My PC goes dormant after a while of non use and is very very quiet. There are some fallacies about some electrical items using a lot of power.

For example: I was always told that a tumble dryer uses s"1t loads of lekky. When I tested mine it used 0.4p per cycle!!

TT

 

[Synapse]

I leave my machine on all the time, I have done for every computer I have owned (excluding the Atari ST520 I owned when I was younger) and I haven't really had any major hardware failures with any of those systems.

I would agree that mechanical parts would have a tendency to fail especially hard drives with motors being started and stopped all the time. I would also hazard a guess that other factors would be the initial voltage surges when turning on from a cold state, and of course there's the fact that repeatedly heating things up and cooling them down causes expansion and contraction which certainly can't be good for hardware.

Of course then again it's no good leaving your machine on if it lacks adequate cooling, I quite often make sure that fans are kept clean to keep airflow going.

Most hardware is designed to work 24x7 so I would say keep it on all the time.

 

[holmslaw]

I've always kept mine on 24/7, but make sure the monitor goes on standby. Just got a new monitor, when lit uses 40watt, on standby 1 watt.

 

[Monkeh]

Just got a new monitor, when lit uses 40watt, on standby 1 watt.

Or so they claim. The real numbers when lit are likely to be rather different, and will vary greatly depending on monitor settings and what it's displaying.

 

[joinerjohn]

Just checked my HP 17" flat screen monitor. If I turn it off, electrickery consumption goes down by around 40 - 50 watts.
Mind you the missus has just put the kettle on and consumption has rocketed to the point where I may need to declare myself bankrupt within the next few minutes.

 

[Aulus]

My PC goes dormant after a while of non use and is very very quiet. There are some fallacies about some electrical items using a lot of power.
TT

Toptec, what do you mean by dormant? I can only make mine go to standby or hibernate, both stop the hard disk. I have Speedfan slowing the fans when not in use but that's about it.

 

[timtheenchanter]

Hmmm, still not convinced about leaving it on, for a start my machine pulls 100W just ticking over.
2nd never had a harware failure on any machine caused by powering on/off, and my machine get hard daily use.

OK, so a compnent is More Likly to fail at start up than anything else, but IMO, for the majority of users, unless the machine it used for 16 hrs a day anyway, leaving it on just increases the number of hours its been running causing wear and tear when not in use.

My last 2 machines were 6 years old when I upgraded, my celeron 800 is still running today (albet it is now on 24hrs a day because its a print server)