PC on or off??

SpikeK6

SpikeK6

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My last pc only lasted around 18 months before it decided to cook itself, the one before that lasted around 2 years.

Now I used to leave them switched on permanently, except when away on holiday, so could this be the cause. Just wondering what you people do at a night when you are finished on here chatting and looking at pics??

Do you leave it on or do you switch it off????

spike
 
leaving it on 24/7 should not cause it to overheat. unless the cooling efficiency was restricted for some reason (failing fans, fans, vents and heatsinks clogged with dust etc)
 
Laptop gets switched off (why waste expensive electricity!) but office PC's stay on 24/7.
 
I always turn off computers and laptops when not using, why waste electricity?
 
snipsnap said:
Not too sure what I mean if I'm honest. I just know that the computer stays cooler and the hard disc kicks in less when it's not been on for large numbers of hours. (If you look at Task Manager) the lower bar chart is usually lower shortly after starting the pc as opposed to after a run of a few hours.

Just my experience!
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the temperature of a PC is normally determined by how much work it is doing. normally this heat comes from the main processor and sometimes the graphics processor (if video tasks are running etc). the hard drive should not generate much heat (unless poorly ventilated or faulty).

the machine at idle should sit at a reasonably cool temp and not rise, unless like i said there is an inefficiency with the cooling.
 
just looking back through my last build and for example my intel i7 box idles at a constant 30c or thereabouts (was warm day when last tested). it should never really fluctuate from that when sat doing nothing (background tasks kicking in aside).

maxed out at 100% CPU load it runs at 77c again or thereabouts but with efficient cooling it stays there and can do so for hours. it should never be able to have to perform at thermal shutdown, unless the cooling is substandard for whatever reason.
 
Always off when not using it, it's seems strange why anyone would leave it on it only takes a minute or two to boot up.

Work machine also gets shut down at night.

As it's been said why waste electricity!

Having said that my phone is always on and that's the way I access the web 90 percent of the time.
 
technically a PC power usage does spike significantly at boot, but i doubt that would outweigh it being on 24/7 :D

id hazard a slight stab in the dark at most home PC probably idling at around 70w?
 
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I switch mine off and on as I need it.
 
I dont think it makes any diff either way
 
I turn both the pc and laptops off when not in use.
 
The 'many years ago', PC advice was to leave on, as the constant heating and cooling ( expanding and contracting) of the component (or tiny connections, wires, solder) could become brittle and break.

Whether or not this is relevant within the average lifetime a pc remains to be proved in my experience. Some remained on 24/7, others were religiously shut down by operators each night yet no evidence of failure one way or t'other. Again in my experience, most pc's (home and office) typically lasted beyond component failure (1-4 yrs) before systems were replaced.

I've not been in the IT industry for a couple of years now so don't know if things have improved by that much.

Some reading....
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=...onepage&q=pc components thermal shock&f=false
 
Probably sucking in dusty air and clogging up. Cleaned mine out a while ago. Must have been half an inch of dust in there. That could clog your fan and overheat it. The more it runs, the more crap it drags in. Mine is switched off when not using it.
 
i put mine into hibernate, that way i can leave things open so i dont lose my place but can still power down, and i make a cuppa while i turn it on
 
Only shut my laptop down if I'm not using it for a day or so, otherwise it goes into sleep mode while I'm at work, out & about etc.
 
Mine are left on 24/7. They go to sleep if I don't use them. It's less bother to just unsleep and go back to where you are than have to restart the whole thing and start up the apps you want. Cost of the extra leccy is miniscule compared to the saved time.

Most of my pcs only last a couple of years before they died. Made little difference whether I left them on or switched them off. My Dad's is 15 and it is still working!
 
Desktop PC is on during the day, turn it off at night. My experience with sleep / hibernate etc is not positive - I was living in the 2nd bedroom / study for a while as I was redecorating my bedroom and it would sometimes spontaneously wake itself up in the middle of the night for no reason. As a poor sleeper, it would also wake me up (just the fans and hard drives whirring, the speakers were off)

Mailserver is on permenantly including when I'm on holiday and is UPS backed so Western Power Distribution can't reboot it for me by spiking the mains. Before I bought the UPS I had over 700 days continuous uptime without rebooting at one point on the previous server, running qmail on debian potato in 32MB of RAM.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Desktop PC is on during the day, turn it off at night. My experience with sleep / hibernate etc is not positive - I was living in the 2nd bedroom / study for a while as I was redecorating my bedroom and it would sometimes spontaneously wake itself up in the middle of the night for no reason. As a poor sleeper, it would also wake me up (just the fans and hard drives whirring, the speakers were off)

Mailserver is on permenantly including when I'm on holiday and is UPS backed so Western Power Distribution can't reboot it for me by spiking the mains. Before I bought the UPS I had over 700 days continuous uptime without rebooting at one point on the previous server, running qmail on debian potato in 32MB of RAM.
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doesnt take much to wake from sleep, wake on lan, background tasks etc. its pretty annoying :D

cant remember the last time i turned my NAS off though (UPS attached as well as network switch and router).
 
neil_g said:
doesnt take much to wake from sleep, wake on lan, background tasks etc. its pretty annoying :D

cant remember the last time i turned my NAS off though (UPS attached as well as network switch and router).
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Hi Neil did you forget to have a read of my thread?
 
neil_g said:
doesnt take much to wake from sleep, wake on lan, background tasks etc. its pretty annoying :D

cant remember the last time i turned my NAS off though (UPS attached as well as network switch and router).
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Most of my random computer waking was cat related I discovered! I don't leave a tea mug on the desk as one of them loves cold tea and ends up either sitting on the keyboard or playing with the mouse.

New machine is much quieter so even if it does stir it generally doesn't turn the screen on unless the keyboard has a key pressed so I don't notice it if it does decide to wake up a bit.
 
I used to leave mine on 24/7 except when there was an electrical storm around (common, and violent, in South Africa) because a friend who worked with computers told me this put less stress on the components than switching on/off all the time. I don't know if he was right or not, but he seemed to know what he was talking about and electricity was cheap then. I've started switching my PC and laptop off at night since I returned to the UK, because electricity certainly isn't cheap! Don't know what I'll do when I go home again.
 
Mine's usually on for 4-10hrs per day and I switch it off when not using it

It's coming up to 3 years old and it's never given me any trouble (used to be a PC engineer so this helps). I built it myself from 2nd hand bits and it's been overclocked from 2.5GHz to 3.8-4GHz since day 1. Ticks along nicely.
 
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I have 7 PCs left on 24/7. The house "idles" at 900W, with all PCs off, it idles at ~400W.
 
Thanks for all the reply's, I have decided to switch it off for the time being, no doubt as time goes on I will forget on night then another and so on and befroe I know it it will be 24/7 again lol.

spike
 
I left one of mine on when I went out a while ago, got a call from the wife to say all the power had gone off and she couldn't find the tripped switch on the main fuse board. I rushed home went straight into the garage, flipped the switch and everything came back on.

Fried the bloody psu and MB:thumbsdown: Bummerous maximus:'(
I turn them off all the time now, Andy did recommend a UPS which I intend to get one day but until then, they go off.
 
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