Probably a silly question to most on here, but I really don't know. Just bought a new computer and want to protect the investment, I followed advice from this board and am running MSE, MalewarBytes, and CC Cleaner. My question is on the computer itself, do most folks turn it off every night or just let it run? Is it bad to just leave it on? Thanks in advance.

If you're asking if there is a security risk or if you will shorten the life of the computer components by leaving it on all the time, the answer is no.

You'll probably save on electricity bills slightly, but really an idle computer doesn't draw all that much power anyways.

Personally, I leave mine on overnight and that's when virus scans, defrag, windows update, etc are scheduled to run.

[This message has been edited by benMath08 (edited 7/7/2010 3:52p).]

The two schools of thought are...

1) If you leave it on, you're putting more time on the motherboard, so it will wear out faster

OR

2) The initial surge of power through the circuits etc. when you start up each day "ages" the motherboard more than just leaving it on for a longer period of time would.

After observing thousands of computers over the past twenty years, I have no evidence that leaving them on all the time shortens their life, so that is what I do, and what I recommend to my clients. Like Ben, I have all automated updates and virus scans etc. run in the middle of the night. Nothing sucks more than booting up and having a virus scan kick off first thing right when one is trying to get started with work for the day.

Edit, to add...if you want to protect your investment get a HIGH QUALITY power strip with good surge protection, or even better a small UPS to maintain constant, quality power. And plug your router/cable or DSL modem into it too.

[This message has been edited by Tailgate88 (edited 7/7/2010 3:59p).]

if you're going to be using every day, leave it on.

The lifetime of modern computers is much longer than anyone keeps them, so the argument of "what's better for it" is moot. That being said, I believe that leaving them on is better EXCEPT you can save a significant amount of money by turning them off at night. Not only the power used (which varies by sleep/hibernation modes and how much updating and virus scans and stuff are going on) but also the heat load on your AC. I'm cheap and like saving all the money I can, so we turn them off. It may not be much per computer, but multiply by dozens (or hundreds) of computers and it can be significant.

Thank you all, it seems that I'm not going to hurt a thing by leaving it on, and it does get used quite a bit, so it's a pain to turn it off and back on every day. I think I'll leave it on. Thanks again.

I've always left mine on when I know it's going to get frequent use from day to day, but since I work relatively long hours, I tend to turn it off after my days off since it's use is much more inconsistent.

I also assume we're talking desktops here? My wife leaves her laptop on all the time, but she has a bad habit of leaving it places where it cannot breathe very well, i.e. the bed or on the carpet. If you are leaving a laptop on all the time, I'd leave it on a hard, flat surface.

Leave it on, just restart it every once in a while. Usually I have stuff downloading while I sleep or am at work, so mine stays on most of the time.

you do need to keep in mind that fans/hard drives/etc are rated for a certain amount of hours/usage. most fans have a life of 10,000 hours, so they'll need to be replaced if you leave it on 24/7/365

Thanks, yep I was talking desktop.

It should also have some sort of low power state you can put it in at the end of the day.

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It should also have some sort of low power state you can put it in at the end of the day.

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This.

There are power settings that all but turn off everything after a certain period of inactivity. The only power consumed (if set properly) is power required to maintain RAM state and periodically checks for things like scheduled virus scans,updates, etc.

Power is still consumed, but it's significantly less than what's used when the computer is active.

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you do need to keep in mind that fans/hard drives/etc are rated for a certain amount of hours/usage. most fans have a life of 10,000 hours, so they'll need to be replaced if you leave it on 24/7/365

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Fans are cheap, hard drives can be set to spin down after a certain amount of time of inactivity.

I put mine into hibernate when I go to sleep. Mostly because I have a crappy zalman heatsink on it and something is wrong with the pwm speed controller on my motherboard so it runs a bit loud.

There is a finite number of times the power supply is going to turn on and off. With that said, I wouldn't turn it off but for an act of God.

I have literally seen DOZENS of computers that ran perfectly, non-stop, but as soon as you power it down and then back up, they crater.

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you do need to keep in mind that fans/hard drives/etc are rated for a certain amount of hours/usage. most fans have a life of 10,000 hours, so they'll need to be replaced if you leave it on 24/7/365

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I think you understate fan life by a factor of five.

Sleeve bearing fans are less durable than ball bearing fans, but even sleeve bearing fans will last far longer than 10,000 hours. One year of 365x25 = 8760 hours.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_fan

Modern hard drives are rated for 300,000 hours MTBF (mean time between failures). Some claims of 1.5M hours have been thrown out as BS.

I have three desktop computers in my house, two laptops, and a Windows Home Server. I have the desktops power settings set to idle the monitor after 30 mins and spin down the hard drives after one hour. I never power down the computers.

I'll second the recommendation about a good surge protector. UPS is nice too.

UPSs are now cheap enough that every device you wouldn't want to lose needs one (something I figured out AFTER lightning strike are year ago... )

There's really no correct answer to this. In fact, really, the truest answer for modern computers is "it doesn't matter either way"

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And plug your router/cable or DSL modem into it too.

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This is really good advice, and something you may not have considered. I have a whole house surge protector.

Might as well throw one on the ol DVR too. Don't wanna miss anything.

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365x25

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where do you find your extra time? i want some!

My typing skills today seem to match the rest of my day's work!

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I'm cheap and like saving all the money I can

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Says the guy with an iPad. That's a scream.

it is possible that i missed a 0 on my factoid. Moral of the story, things will eventually break

Make CERTAIN it goes into a low power state. Modern power supplies can eat up a crapload of electricity.

As for the poster worrying about failure from turning them back on, don't listen. Yes, if a power supply has a problem it can manifest when its turned on. That doesn't mean turning it on caused it. You should get years out of all your components regardless of how you use them.

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Says the guy with an iPad. That's a scream.

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Yeah, well I am also of the philosophy that you can always get one more use out of a tube of toothpaste!

FWIW my $900 iPad replaced the $1,100 gps/sat radio deck I was gonna put in my vehicle.

yall must not torrent or 3d draft much.

i have been through 4 hard drives in three years.

if you are just checking email and web surfing then sure leave it on but after a hard day of design drafting heating up my comp, then a night of uploading and downloading torrents you bet your cookies these hard drives wear quickly. people have told me many times "leave it on there is not problem with having it running and it does not diminish your hard drive life"

I say bull crap; i actually use mine to the full extent at over clocked heat capacity and more heat means less life, thus leaving it on creates more heat.

Scottimus - there is a wealth of data that shows heat doesn't have that much impact on hard drive life.

Search "hard drive mtbf" and read the study done by Google, who tracks hard drive reliability in its massive data centers.

I don't see how torrent'ing is especially hard use of a hard drive. Nor drafting.

I think you have been unlucky to have had that many failures. Or else your computer is VERY hot. If that's the case - you should address that. Or you were using some of Seagate's early 1 Tb drives - which had a high failure rate.

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2) The initial surge of power through the circuits etc. when you start up each day "ages" the motherboard more than just leaving it on for a longer period of time would.

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I've heard this from several sources. It is analogous (I suppose) to a light bulb. Think of when a bulb "pops". It's usually when it's turned on, right? Now having said that, I have no idea if that's accurate or not, it's one of those things that makes sense on the face. To me, at any rate.

I'm by no means an expert, but we leave the desktop on most of the time, turning it off only if we're going to be gone for a while. My laptop gets powered down more frequently, mainly because I'm not comfortable carrying out of the house while it's on, even if hibernating.

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My wife leaves her laptop on all the time, but she has a bad habit of leaving it places where it cannot breathe very well, i.e. the bed or on the carpet. If you are leaving a laptop on all the time, I'd leave it on a hard, flat surface.

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This +100.

My wife really wanted a tablet PC. Badly. Now, we's po folk at Casa Longstreet, so I searched on eBay and found her a nice little Fujitsu tablet, a few years old, Windows 2000, but in spotless condition. A cute little machine, I gave it to her as an early Christmas present, she was thrilled.

She had it on the bed, plugged in because the battery was low, looking over Christmas lists while wrapping presents. A kid came in the room, and she threw the spread over the presents to hide them, inadvertently covering the tablet as well. The phone rang, visitors dropped by, several hours passed. Someone noticed a very hot electrical smell, and after a bit of investigating...

We found out that one can, quite literally, melt a motherboard. Little tablet looked like some one had baked it in the oven for an hour or so.

I've gotten quite anal about making sure my laptop has LOTS of room to breathe.

All our laptops, DVRs and game consoles sit on laptop coolers. It's especially important for the DVRs

I prefer people turn off their PCs at night unless they need after hours access.

I like to have PCs rebooted at least every few days to make sure the network connections do not go "stale".

I have a UPS on every PC, I have a Smart UPS for every server. I keep one of every battery type on hand also.

I had a dell optiplex that ran as our file & print server with a Pentium Pro processor and Windows Server 2000. It stayed on for up to 6 months at a time with no problems. It was finally retired after about 8-10 years when replacement parts were more of a hassle than a nice new server. Probably the most reliable PC I have ever dealt with. I have also seen a brand new PC go up in smoke on the President of the company's desk - right out of the box.

When someone calls asking about their PC acting weird, the first question I ask is, "when was the last time you rebooted?" and call me if there is still a problem. 50+% of the time I
do not hear back from them.

My PCs stay on, but 80% reboot every morning.

I don't think it matters as much as before the days of a UPS for every PC.

I've trained my users to reboot before they even call for help, because that's gonna always be the first question anyway!