Turn PC off every night or leave it on 24/7? (Discussion)

[Stg-Flame]

My friend and I have been debating on whether or not there are benefits to leaving your computer on as opposed to turning it off when you are finished using it for the day.

My stance is that I have always turned my computer, speakers, and monitor off after every session. If I am still in my house and just downstairs watching a movie, I will usually leave it running, but if I am going out, going to sleep, or just not using it for an elongated period of time, I shut it down.

Where do you stand on the subject? Please list/link any and all factual evidence to back your statement if at all possible. My friend states that there is no actual evidence on the matter and now I am curious to see if his argument holds any water.

 

[Gillbot]

i shut off everything but my server which runs 24/7

 

[TuxDave]

My friend and I have been debating on whether or not there are benefits to leaving your computer on as opposed to turning it off when you are finished using it for the day.

My stance is that I have always turned my computer, speakers, and monitor off after every session. If I am still in my house and just downstairs watching a movie, I will usually leave it running, but if I am going out, going to sleep, or just not using it for an elongated period of time, I shut it down.

Where do you stand on the subject? Please list/link any and all factual evidence to back your statement if at all possible. My friend states that there is no actual evidence on the matter and now I am curious to see if his argument holds any water.

No evidence of what? If you leave it on, you gain whatever 24/7 functionality you have on it at the cost of energy/$$$. Where's the debate?

 

[Mr. Pedantic]

Power's expensive here, and my computer's in my bedroom, so I turn it off when I sleep or go out. It also produces a lot of heat, even on idle, so in the Summer I tend to turn it off more, and less in the Winter.

No evidence of what? If you leave it on, you gain whatever 24/7 functionality you have on it at the cost of energy/$$$. Where's the debate?

He means whether the act of turning it off has any inherent deleterious effect to the hardware relative to leaving it on.

 

[A5]

He means whether the act of turning it off has any inherent deleterious effect to the hardware relative to leaving it on.

If there is something, it would not have a noticeable effect on the life of the hardware. In fact, it is probably worse to leave it on all the time just due to the effects of heat.

At a minimum, you should put your computer in sleep mode every time you walk away from it.

 

[Stg-Flame]

No evidence of what? If you leave it on, you gain whatever 24/7 functionality you have on it at the cost of energy/$$$. Where's the debate?

His comparison argument was burning out the filaments inside a light bulb from turning the lights off and on to damaging your computer by turning it off and on. He stated that since he goes to a tech school that his comparison remained valid whereas I attempted to reason with him that light bulbs are not electrically wired like a computer's power supply.

 

[C1]

There are lots of good reasons for turning it off:

- Less energy used
- Many fewer hours on moving parts which includes fans/fan bearings
- Less dust accumulated internally because of fewer running hours; reduces cleaning maintenance
- Less exposure to the chance of a catastrophic event such as a line power failure or even an internal computer failure which might result in a fire (eg, unattended PSU blow out).

 

[IdBuRnS]

I leave my desktop and server on 24/7 unless we're going out of town for a weekend or longer.

 

[JAG87]

His comparison argument was burning out the filaments inside a light bulb from turning the lights off and on to damaging your computer by turning it off and on. He stated that since he goes to a tech school that his comparison remained valid whereas I attempted to reason with him that light bulbs are not electrically wired like a computer's power supply.

Your friend is right in theory, temperature cycles are not good for any kind of material, however temperatures don't get anywhere near high enough inside a computer for this to be a serious problem. His light bulb example is pointless, he's comparing something that heats up to 3000C vs. <100C. The only argument he can make is that moving components such as HDD are better off running 24/7, because there is less chance of a mechanical failure when something is in perpetually in motion rather than if it comes to a halt frequently. But that's not enough to justify leaving your computer on though. The amount of money in power savings over the years can buy you more than a replacement HDD. And this argument is also moot if you have SSDs.

Plus there's a whole bunch of other good reasons:

There are lots of good reasons for turning it off:

- Less energy used
- Many fewer hours on moving parts which includes fans/fan bearings
- Less dust accumulated internally because of fewer running hours; reduces cleaning maintenance
- Less exposure to the chance of a catastrophic event such as a line power failure or even an internal computer failure which might result in a fire (eg, unattended PSU blow out).

Having said that, my desktop goes to sleep every night, but my atom server runs 24/7, and all the HDD's spin 24/7.

 

[dkozloski]

How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

 

[Biftheunderstudy]

Didn't Mythbusters do the turning on/off the light vs. lifetime myth? And busted it?

Now, the argument for CFL's may be valid, I believe it says on the packaging they last longest if left on for long periods.

The reasons stated by C1 I think are valid, in addition, the obvious benefit of energy costs. My machine is overclocked so having it off really saves on power, it also has an SSD with the BIOS optimized for boot up speed.

My HTPC is set up to sleep unless its downloading, and I have WOL setup if I need SSH access.

One benefit is missing though, security. If you computer is off, it's not being remotely controlled...

 

[Remobz]

I turn off my computer and monitor every night before sleeping.

Its only left on when I am in my house for an extended period of time.

 

[rsutoratosu]

I turned my off to save power, at home and work.

I use the shutdown command at night as a task schedule, so around 7-8pm, 1 hr after I leave work, it goes down. Sometimes I forget to power down so this will do it for me

I setup the BIOS power on from M-F for 7:30AM so when I walk in the door, its on and ready to go.

I stop leaving things on at home.. cost too much

 

[Jeff7]

Didn't Mythbusters do the turning on/off the light vs. lifetime myth? And busted it?

Now, the argument for CFL's may be valid, I believe it says on the packaging they last longest if left on for long periods.

Fluorescents will definitely suffer from repeated on/off cycles. Looking at data from Philips on their lights (30k hours at 12hrs per turn-on, and 10k hours at 4hrs per turn-on), and my own testing with a CFL on a relay (something I had to do for a project at work, proving something to someone), each turn-on will remove 30-60 minutes of life from a fluorescent tube. This will be a bit different for different startup types. Instant-start is the harshest, because it needs to apply a higher voltage to the electrodes to strike an arc quickly; each time damages the electrodes a tiny bit. Slower startup methods, or else the newer programmed-start ballasts, can give longer tube lifespans.


Incandescents may also experience some depleted life from the thermal cycling of repeated on/off cycles, but I don't have the data here to say how bad it is. There was something done at work where we needed to slowly flash large numbers of halogen incandescent lamps. It was found that keeping them slightly powered during the "off" portion of the flashing would help increase the bulb life, versus allowing them to completely turn off between flashes.
But we're talking maybe 30-60 power cycles every minute, against a 750-1000hr total lifespan. A household light isn't going see that kind of cycle:on-time ratio.

The reasons stated by C1 I think are valid, in addition, the obvious benefit of energy costs. My machine is overclocked so having it off really saves on power, it also has an SSD with the BIOS optimized for boot up speed.

My HTPC is set up to sleep unless its downloading, and I have WOL setup if I need SSH access.

One benefit is missing though, security. If you computer is off, it's not being remotely controlled...

I'd say to turn it off if you're heading off to bed. If you really want it ready for you in the morning, set the RTC alarm in the BIOS for it to turn on at a set time each morning. If the PC's not doing anything useful at night, it's just sitting there feeding money to the electric company. If you've got a distributed computing project going, that's something else, though you should still be mindful that that's going to pull a good bit more power to keep the processor busy, though it will at least be doing something productive.


While there will be some stresses developed from thermal cycling, I would also not expect them to be substantial. The big problems you start to see are things in outdoor environments, where the electronics can drop well below freezing, and then back up above 140°F.

 

[lord_emperor]

Hard drive manufaturers used to publish mean time before failure and start/stop numbers for hard drives. As far as I can tell they don't any more, having replaced it with average yearly failures.

Anyway, the point is at the time both these figures were available, turning the computer on & off once per day resulted in about the same expected lifespan for the hard drive vs. 24/7 operation.

There's possibly some issue with the newer ROHS solder that might impact the lifespan of other components, but more than likely the computer will be obsolete and replaced twice over before that's an issue.

 

[Binky]

My 24/7 systems have always been (or seemed) more reliable than systems that are turned on/off a lot. The majority of my household computers tend to stay on.

 

[imagoon]

Incandescents may also experience some depleted life from the thermal cycling of repeated on/off cycles, but I don't have the data here to say how bad it is. There was something done at work where we needed to slowly flash large numbers of halogen incandescent lamps. It was found that keeping them slightly powered during the "off" portion of the flashing would help increase the bulb life, versus allowing them to completely turn off between flashes.

This is exactly what is done in the stage / movie industry. Any stage lights that might be needed even for a few seconds are "hot off" during the production. We were warned before we did anything to the lighting to unplug the light from the control side before doing anything inside because the lamps are typically 10-15% powered even when they look off.

 

[Modelworks]

I leave mine on but not because of reliability. I leave it on because it does all the file maintenance, updates for applications, downloading of large files , etc around 1am . In the morning when I go to the pc I don't have to worry about being interrupted by a virus scan, downloads ,etc.

On the hard drive question I can't say for sure, but on my computers that I keep powered on I can't recall ever having to change out a hard drive , the ones that I power off and on seem to be the ones that fail. I don't allow windows to sleep the drives either because I hate waiting for a drive to spin up when I want something off of it.

filament based lights do burn out faster with repeated on/off cycles. Filaments are made from tungsten and like any metal with repeated heating and cooling will break.

 

[ViviTheMage]

I shut everything off, except 24/7 server/htpc that sits in a corner with oodles of disk.

I leave my monitors on, but they go into standby/sleep. I don't want to have to turn on 4 monitors every time, haha.

 

[alkemyst]

sleep/hibernation FTMFW

 

[Sunny129]

all 3 of my rigs (2 at home, 1 at work) run all the time without sleep or hibernation b/c they participate in distributed computing projects 24/7...that is, unless thunderstorms are on the horizon (i live in Sarasota, FL, the lightning capital of the world...lucky me )

 

[epidemis]

Sleep - takes 6 seconds to resume and it uses around 1 watt in sleep.

 

[Matt1970]

We used to do the monitor and pc repair for the 911 center. Those machines were never turned off. The list parts that may last longer due to not bieng cycled on and off is always smaller than the list of parts that fail due to being on all the time.
Either sleep or shut it off.

 

[C1]

Face it, the reliabilities of the active components of a PC are specified predominantly in terms of MTBF. So keeping the number of operational hours off electronics and moving mechanical parts is important. A mitigating circumstance might be the duty cycle. So if I only use a computer once or twice for half hour at a time per day, it is probably best to turn it off. If I use it during either huge blocks of time or very frequently for shorter durations, then it is best to leave it running.

 

[Lemon law]

Maybe I have a different take on the matter, but maybe I am crazy and paranoid about Thor the Thunder GOD.

It somewhat dates back to one month in July in 2003 where I lost 3 modem surge suppressors and one modem when my computer was off. Or maybe in 1996 when ole Thor destroyed my computer.

So now I shut down the computer, shut off the modem surge suppressor and any wires connected to the computer. Have not had any damage since.

But if need be, I can operate my lap top under battery power and get internet access through a wireless modem even if Thor is having a field day at the time. Otherwise I shut down my desk tops and disconnect anything hard wired to AC current at first hint of thunder. I am not afraid of loud noises, but zillion volt electrical surges are another thing. They will use any hard wired route to fry your computer.