QUestion about keeping computer on

[Bonesdad]

Originally posted by: tenshodo13
5 Pounds is inconsequential. You probably do more harm to the environment by Driving a car to your local Gas station.

5 pounds times the number of ppl that in this forum alone have said they leave their comps on all day is more and then consider all the businesses out there that leave their PC's on all day and you have a major problem.

5 pounds is a big deal. Turn it off when you can.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I must say that Intel Viiv is pretty awesome.

I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.

Don't know what Intel Viiv is. I completely shut down my PC when I'm not going to use it for 2+ hours. That generally includes flipping off the powerstrip, which also de-powers the wall warts that run this and that. I have taken to leaving my DSL modem and wireless network router on 24/7, however, since setting up my wireless network. That's basically so I can use my laptop without having to turn on the network components. I too am concerned about energy consumption. So far, I'm unaware of any downside. Never had a HD failure, can't remember any significant component failures, honestly and I've had computers for around 15 years. I'll also flip off my LCD monitor if I'm not going to use it for 15+ minutes. I figure it will last longer with less hours on it. Haven't been aware of any negative effects of doing that either and, of course, it keeps the energy bill down.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: WackyDan I use a NAS to serve up multimedia files around the house and data, so that uses hardly any power compared to a pc.

What kind of arrangement is that? I'd like to do something like that so I could access the same data with my PC and my laptop (the laptop, wirelessly), but the power considerations with 24/7 service had me doubtful. How can I have that data accessible to all my systems without running a PC?

 

[RyanGrob]

Whoever says it kills your hard drives keeping the computer on is lying. I had 4 hard drives fail within 2 years by turning off and on my PC daily (these hard drives were less than 3 years old). Ever since I have been keeping it on, no problems since Not one of my parts have died from keeping it on 24/7.

 

[Smartazz]

Does this mean that Distributing Computing is a bad idea?

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: RyanGrob
Whoever says it kills your hard drives keeping the computer on is lying. I had 4 hard drives fail within 2 years by turning off and on my PC daily (these hard drives were less than 3 years old). Ever since I have been keeping it on, no problems since Not one of my parts have died from keeping it on 24/7.

I'd rather believe IBM engineers investigating why we had a number of machines all tasked for the same purpose failing due to drive issues than casual commentary from others on a tech forum... ....I've got the report, not sure I could release it into the wild, but it was amazing the data it held and the aspect of just what happens inside the drive from a heat, and internal airflow (drive), and the affects off built up zones of air pressure inside the drive itself.

 

[WoodButcher]

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.

OK....
I have 3 pcs, on 24/7/365,,,
I use the sleep feature on all the pcs,,,
5 pounds of sh** a day,,,,
multiply by 3,,,,
by 365
WOW! That's a lot of Shi*!!!
Pass the ex-lax

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: WackyDan I use a NAS to serve up multimedia files around the house and data, so that uses hardly any power compared to a pc.

What kind of arrangement is that? I'd like to do something like that so I could access the same data with my PC and my laptop (the laptop, wirelessly), but the power considerations with 24/7 service had me doubtful. How can I have that data accessible to all my systems without running a PC?

I have one of these:
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellit...name=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

I'm ordering one of these:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=509

The dlink fits my needs better as it spins the drives down when idle, and will only require one power cord vs the three that my Linksys needs due to the external drives.

Thecus makes a nice single and dual drive setup as well.

Some would advocate using an old pc, and I would too if your doing so as an experiment, or need more customized functions..... But still the power consideration.

These two drive NAS units from Dlink and Thecus are nice just because they are small, consume little power and you can mirror one drive to the other for redundancy.

You can find further discussion on these in the networking forum.

 

[WackyDan]

Originally posted by: Smartazz
Does this mean that Distributing Computing is a bad idea?

I don't know. Has anyone seen where folding apps have actually contributed to actual research? ie; actual results that have contributed to new medicines/treatments due to a better understanding of a disease?

I'm not knocking that category of apps.... if that's why you leave the machine on 24/7 - AT LEAST it is doing something.

 

[mithrandir2001]

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I must say that Intel Viiv is pretty awesome.

I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.

Don't know what Intel Viiv is.

In a nutshell it's a technology targeted for HTPCs but it is useful for regular desktops as well. The Viiv feature allows a sleep state that requires virtually no power but saves state and wakes up quickly. It's almost like breaking out of screen saver mode.

What's really neat about it is that you can have your PC set to record TV shows and the PC will wake itself automatically out of sleep mode when the programmed time arrives. The PC looks like it is completely off during sleep mode but it is quietly watching the clock and jumps into action at the right time.

So if you want to record a program at like 4AM in the morning, you don't have to leave it on overnight to make sure programming starts. Put it in 1 watt sleep mode and the PC will wake up at 4AM automatically. I guess this is technology is related to the "Wake on LAN" feature.

 

[mithrandir2001]

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: Smartazz
Does this mean that Distributing Computing is a bad idea?

I don't know. Has anyone seen where folding apps have actually contributed to actual research? ie; actual results that have contributed to new medicines/treatments due to a better understanding of a disease?

I'm not knocking that category of apps.... if that's why you leave the machine on 24/7 - AT LEAST it is doing something.

But the issue is that a PC with its CPU at 100% is drawing more power than one idling at 0%. Just think of all those NetBurst CPUs out there that suck 100W under full load. Scary.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: RyanGrob
Whoever says it kills your hard drives keeping the computer on is lying. I had 4 hard drives fail within 2 years by turning off and on my PC daily (these hard drives were less than 3 years old). Ever since I have been keeping it on, no problems since Not one of my parts have died from keeping it on 24/7.

I've been turning my PC's on and off daily (sometimes multiple times) for 15 years and never lost a HD. Must have been 15 or so HDs by now. I used to do spinup/spindown on my machines, too.

I'm not saying HD death isn't an issue. It sure is, and I try to compute as though I'm always seconds away from a crash (save work, back up). Saving work is easy. Backing up takes some time, and I don't back up as often as I should. Still, if I had a crash right now, there's not a whole hell of a lot I would lose. A little yes, but almost all of the stuff I care about is at the very least on 2 HDs, much of it in different machines and most all of it is on DVD too.

The best reason to keep machines on is so you don't have to wait for them to boot and so you have stuff accessible -- e.g. the sites you are checking out, threads, etc. The best reason to shut them down is to save energy (money in your pocket) and reduce pollution (interrelated, of course). I'm not at all clear on the issues of component failure vis a vis keeping on or turning off.

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: WackyDan

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: WackyDan I use a NAS to serve up multimedia files around the house and data, so that uses hardly any power compared to a pc.

What kind of arrangement is that? I'd like to do something like that so I could access the same data with my PC and my laptop (the laptop, wirelessly), but the power considerations with 24/7 service had me doubtful. How can I have that data accessible to all my systems without running a PC?

I have one of these:
http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Satellit...name=Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWrapper

I'm ordering one of these:
http://www.dlink.com/products/?sec=1&pid=509

The dlink fits my needs better as it spins the drives down when idle, and will only require one power cord vs the three that my Linksys needs due to the external drives.

Thecus makes a nice single and dual drive setup as well.

Some would advocate using an old pc, and I would too if your doing so as an experiment, or need more customized functions..... But still the power consideration.

These two drive NAS units from Dlink and Thecus are nice just because they are small, consume little power and you can mirror one drive to the other for redundancy.

You can find further discussion on these in the networking forum.

That's really interesting. Do you have any figures for the power consumption of these?

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001

Originally posted by: Muse

Originally posted by: mithrandir2001
I must say that Intel Viiv is pretty awesome.

I have my PC set to go to sleep after 1 hour of inactivity. When sleeping the PC draws 1 watt or less of power (I have a Kill-a-Watt meter), but a shake of the mouse wakes it up and it is ready to use in about 5 seconds. So I can "leave it on" all the time without power consumption concerns. Without the sleeping ability I would turn it off. A typical idling PC may suck down 100 watts; that's about $7 a month in wasted electricity and about 5 pounds of CO2 pollution a day.

Don't know what Intel Viiv is.

In a nutshell it's a technology targeted for HTPCs but it is useful for regular desktops as well. The Viiv feature allows a sleep state that requires virtually no power but saves state and wakes up quickly. It's almost like breaking out of screen saver mode.

What's really neat about it is that you can have your PC set to record TV shows and the PC will wake itself automatically out of sleep mode when the programmed time arrives. The PC looks like it is completely off during sleep mode but it is quietly watching the clock and jumps into action at the right time.

So if you want to record a program at like 4AM in the morning, you don't have to leave it on overnight to make sure programming starts. Put it in 1 watt sleep mode and the PC will wake up at 4AM automatically. I guess this is technology is related to the "Wake on LAN" feature.

So, what do you need to support this? Is it OS, MB, CPU, software, or a combination?

I do something like this but my configuration is this:

1. I turn off my PC entirely.
2. I have my MB BIOS configured to turn on the machine daily at 11:52 PM.
3. I have a program (Total Recorder) that's configured to record audio starting at 11:58 PM, 6 days a week.
4. I use Poweroff (freebie) to turn off the PC after the recording's done.

There's a midnight radio program I record regularly. On nights I don't want to record it, I just turn off the powerstrip that the computer is plugged into.

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: RyanGrob
Whoever says it kills your hard drives keeping the computer on is lying. I had 4 hard drives fail within 2 years by turning off and on my PC daily (these hard drives were less than 3 years old). Ever since I have been keeping it on, no problems since Not one of my parts have died from keeping it on 24/7.

I leave my 3 computers running 24/7 for the sake of file sharing (1 shares the files, 2 of them are servers), and I too have never had a hard drive failure.

On the flip side of things, I go through video cards very quickly. Dust collects in video card fans until the fans stop working, then games start showing a lot of artifacts due to overheating. If you have a gaming computer with an expensive video card, you may want to turn it off at night.

 

[frostedflakes]

As others have pointed out, it may actually be better for your components to leave the PC on 24/7. Same basic idea as an incandescent bulb according to what I've read. When the filament is cold and you first turn it on, resistance is very low, causing a large amount of current to run through it before warming up. Supposedly this is where most of the stress comes from. I don't think I've ever seen a lightbulb burn out while it was already warm, it's always when you turn it on that it breaks.

So as long as power consumption isn't an issue, I see no problem keeping it on. Definitely enable CoolnQuiet if it isn't already, though. Or if you don't like CnQ, use software to manually set your processor to a lower clockspeed and voltage while it's just sitting there downloading. You could even consider building a cheap low power system (based on Via C3, C7, or something similar) intended for only downloading.