Computer on or off for best results..

Each night I spend about an hour or so on line and after each time I always shut off my computer completly.The following day I have to manually turn it on however it is very fast and takes no time at all to do this.My question is this...I see many that just leave their system on for days or even weeks.Is this done for convenience or is it somehow better for the computer?
I was thinking that the less time it spent running the less wear and tear it would develope however now I think it may actually receive most of its wear on actual startup...Can anyone tell me what is best for my home computer?...Leave it on always or shut it down each night...thanks

i would turn it off every time like you are doing. its better that way. you start with a clean slate wen you boot up. thats always good.

It really boils down to personal preference.

Most people shut down their machines at the end of the day without ill results. Pluses - consume less power, generate less heat, subject the machine to less electrical grid noise, frequent reboots (helpful for the most popular desktop OS). Downside - most wear and tear is from cold startup.

I was kind of thinking along the lines of a car engine for comparison here.Seems like most of the wear on a motor comes from the start up however heat will kill a motor quick.Seems like it is a give and take with a computer also.The longer it is left on the more heat however several cold start ups weekly could also wear it.I am on at least once every day so that is at least one cold start each day.I have noticed no problems as of yet and have no noise on startup or when running.My system is a Dell 4300 home system and is about 2.5 yrs old.What kind of life span will one generally get from a system if it is taken care of?

I use mobil one synthetic in my computer
very little cold start wear

my mom's old 600 mhz p3 is powered on and off many times per day with no problems I think it was made in 1998

I read an article about this just the other day (wish I could remember where), which basically said that computers are reliable enough now that restarting one every day should not affect its lifespan at all. and leaving it off when not in use will save you a little bit of money on your electric bill.

Of course I'm too lazy to turn my computer off when not in use. My P2 300 has been on non-stop (except for stupid power outages) since August 1998. That's what, six years now? It sucks to think of all the wasted electricity though.

I turn my system off with the exeption of my work station, thats left on 24/7 but it's used more then half of that time. at work We have an old IBM XT thats now only used a few times a week but it's going on 20 some years old and still runs. If you do run 24/7 atlest shut the monitor off or set it to shut off(Most newer monitors do this when there is no input). The CRT has a set life span. Home computers tend to also use cheap fans and they also wear out fast if left on all the time.
A rule of thumb that I go by with My home system is if I am going to be on it more then a few times on a weekend I will just leave it on till I goto bed. Turning it on and off 3 or 4 times a day would be a pain.
Another option is to put the computer in sleep mode or stand by but that still runs the fans and your computer quickly becomes a home for dust bunnies.

I go back to the days of punch cards (I told you I'm old -er) ("Where's the ANY key?").

Of course, almost as important for keeping things faster is to regularly clean out the temp files, and once in a while defrag the hard drive. You all probably are well aware of this but to find these maintenance tools, look under START, All Programs, Accessories, then System Tools.

And we're all updating the antivirus program very,very often, right? Them little buggers will really crap up the system speed.

-(a different) Craig

I never turn off my computer. I just put it to "sleep" and everything is fine. The only time it ever gets rebooted is when a software update requires that I do a reboot. Thats the joy of owning a Mac running OSX /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

I leave mine on 24/7 except for the monitors.
Once a week or so, I'll do a warm reset (using the "Restart" button on the power-off menu) on this computer.

I hardly ever actually turn it off so I have to do a cold restart. The last time I did that was perhaps a month ago when I needed to check the motherboard itself for an ISA slot; before that I honestly don't remember.

I did the same thing on my lab computer the same morning - turned it all the way off so I could check inside for an ISA slot. Before that, the last time I actually turned the lab computer off was probably in late 2001 when I installed the ProMetric beam profile analyser.

So, in short, my computers are on all the time, except for the monitors which I turn off at night - except when I'm running a battery discharge analysis on something.

I normally dont turn mine off at nights, but have latly just since I dont trust my computer due to some tests I have been doing. I kinda grew up thinking that the sudden charge of electricity constantly hurts the computer parts, thus less lifetime. Although I think that still, I am sure that with the new technology out nowadays, it really makes parts more durable. But still, its more conveinient to have it on when I wake up in the morning rather than having to turn it on,
Cameron

There are definitely two schools of thought on this and I don't think it is possible to reach a difinitive answer. I turn mine off every day, but only after the last time that I use it that day (on/off once per day). I don't know for sure if that is better or worse for the hardware, but I do know that it saves electricity and helps protect the computer from power surges.

I have a laptop, and three desktops. One desktop is on all the time. The laptop is in suspend. One desktop is off almost all the time. The third desktop isn't even plugged in.

I leave the one on all the time because I use it a lot and it's usually downloading something large in size while I sleep.

There's the school of thought that the thermal cycling of the components from off to full temperature and then off again is bad, that it stresses and fatigues the metals. To a certain extent this is true.

On the other hand, there's the school that says that leaving the hard drive on and the mobo powered up stresses the components, both from wear on the bearings and from drying out of the electrolytic capacitors from heat. This is also true. I have yet to see a definitive answer on which approach is better, and the two camps are constantly arguing because, to a certain extent, both sides have valid points. It's just a question of who's side is "more" valid!

I belong to the second school of thought, and my better half belongs to the first. Makes for some spirited discussions around here.
/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

I turn mine off for several reasons.

One of the things people don't think about is all those fans spinning around. Besides the amazing ability to electostatically clean all the air in my house (Texas dustbowl) it also gets them dirty, contaminate the bearings and eventually burns them out. Ever see a CPU that had it's fan stop? /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/eek.gif Smoked motherboard and CPU. Most computers now will shut down if the CPU hits 70C (see your BIOS settings) so it is not that big of a worry.

Now that swanky $400 video card has that little dust buster fan on it to keep it alive. They have the great ability to die after about a year or two forcing you to upgrade.

The thing that royally bites is when the power supply fan dies. Nothing like having the box fry itself and take out everything with it. Power supplies are a pain to clean all the dust bunnies out of, might as well not have it gulping in the dust 24/7.

My computer has an auto reboot feature, it is called Windows XP... you might of heard of it. Works great!

The folks that are for not turning the computer on and off are thinking of thermal stress and "shocking" the chips with the on/off cycles. OK... yeah... I can see that but! Your car has a lot of electronics in it, gets turned on and off several times a day, gets hit with severe thermal stresses of winter and summer and still works after 10 years.

Will you still have your computer in 10 years?

[ QUOTE ]
BentHeadTX said:
Will you still have your computer in 10 years?

[/ QUOTE ]
I have several computers that are around 20 years old, and they still work. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif
Granted, I haven't used them much since around 1998 or thereabouts, but prior to that, I did keep them on 24/7. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

[ QUOTE ]
BentHeadTX said:
Will you still have your computer in 10 years?

[/ QUOTE ]

Good points in the whole post.

On the other side of the argument (the one that I don't subscribe to myself), I have seen rashes of intermittent connectors on electronic devices once the air conditioning has failed. Hard to say whether it was metal fatigue, corrosion from condensation (once the A/C was fixed) or a little bit of both, but it was noticeable. We went through a lot of replacement connectors. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/jpshakehead.gif

I was suprised to see so many views and opinions on this as I never realized there was any debate over this.I just assumed that on was better as most places I see leave their systems on always.I have always cut mine off and I guess I will continue doing this as it has worked so far.This entire idea came to me when I was test driving a new Infinity G35 last week.When I first started the car the air was on high but it was barely blowing.Within a few seconds it slowly increased until it was at full power.It may be a sales pitch but the salesman said most new Infinities do this as it will always start up the accessories gradually and go to full power slow to avoid wear....got me to thinking about all those start ups on my system.

It's a mixed bag.

Dirt is a real problem for 24/7 boxes. Since off the shelf boxes run in a partial vacuum they literally suck junk in through every tiny hole -- not just through the fans. I built a box with a slight positive air pressure and all incoming air is filtered.

As previously mentioned, running 24/7 can reduce thermal stress on all circuit boards present. Thermal stress can damage any circuit board after hundreds of on-off cycles. The condition usually manifests it self as a very nearly impossible to diagnose, spooky, intermittent problem as the board heats up and a broken trace moves out of contact. Everything seems fine for 90 minutes or so and then quirky things go wrong. I've seen this happen to circuit boards in other types of electronics.

Aside from cyclical thermal shock, consider what happens to your CPU when you power down. In probably the majority of machines when all of the fans stop ( including the CPU fan ) the CPU temperature will actually rise to a level higher than at any other point in its operation even though it is powered down, and not fall for a few minutes. If you shut it down often it's nice to use an OS that allows you to HALT the CPU and wait five minutes before powering down, to avoid this temperature rise.

If you run 24/7 you must expect more AC line events and worse yet, more phone line/cable/dsl spikes.

If you are going to run a machine 12-15 times longer each day than it was designed for you will eventually have some kind of problems. To run 24/7 IMO you should build it with that in mind. Don't forget a heavy duty power supply. In addition to a filtered positive air pressure I also built in about three times the CPFs I needed and then I can throttle back each fan with rheostats so it is more quiet than a stock box. I use big Paniflos and replace them all every two years. I had one fan fail around the time we were moving and I didn't have time to replace it. I just DCd it, slapped a piece of contact paper over the hole and was still able to pressurize the system by re-tuning the remaining fans with the rheostats.

If you run a standard box 24/7 the inside should probably be cleaned every 1-3 months, depending on your environment. This can also damage your box. Off the shelf boxes also collect dirt and fuzz in critical places that you can't see -- like in your CPU heatsink.

I run mine 24/7 -- have for years. I shut off the CRT whenever I get up. Of course there are pros and cons to each approach. Different strokes...

[ QUOTE ]
Sub_Umbra said:
It's a mixed bag.

Dirt is a real problem for 24/7 boxes. Since off the shelf boxes run in a partial vacuum they literally suck junk in through every tiny hole -- not just through the fans. I built a box with a slight positive air pressure and all incoming air is filtered.

As previously mentioned, running 24/7 can reduce thermal stress on all circuit boards present. Thermal stress can damage any circuit board after hundreds of on-off cycles. The condition usually manifests it self as a very nearly impossible to diagnose, spooky, intermittent problem as the board heats up and a broken trace moves out of contact. Everything seems fine for 90 minutes or so and then quirky things go wrong. I've seen this happen to circuit boards in other types of electronics.

Aside from cyclical thermal shock, consider what happens to your CPU when you power down. In probably the majority of machines when all of the fans stop ( including the CPU fan ) the CPU temperature will actually rise to a level higher than at any other point in its operation even though it is powered down, and not fall for a few minutes. If you shut it down often it's nice to use an OS that allows you to HALT the CPU and wait five minutes before powering down, to avoid this temperature rise.

If you run 24/7 you must expect more AC line events and worse yet, more phone line/cable/dsl spikes.

If you are going to run a machine 12-15 times longer each day than it was designed for you will eventually have some kind of problems. To run 24/7 IMO you should build it with that in mind. Don't forget a heavy duty power supply. In addition to a filtered positive air pressure I also built in about three times the CPFs I needed and then I can throttle back each fan with rheostats so it is more quiet than a stock box. I use big Paniflos and replace them all every two years. I had one fan fail around the time we were moving and I didn't have time to replace it. I just DCd it, slapped a piece of contact paper over the hole and was still able to pressurize the system by re-tuning the remaining fans with the rheostats.

If you run a standard box 24/7 the inside should probably be cleaned every 1-3 months, depending on your environment. This can also damage your box. Off the shelf boxes also collect dirt and fuzz in critical places that you can't see -- like in your CPU heatsink.

I run mine 24/7 -- have for years. I shut off the CRT whenever I get up. Of course there are pros and cons to each approach. Different strokes...

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, dirt/dust is a REAL problem for 24/7 running. Easy solution is to get the darn thing off the floor. After that, yearly cleanings are likely fine.

I have to take exception on the cpu temp thing. The cpu core generates the heat, it is also the most temp sensitive part of the chip (as a whole), the rest of the chip being circuit board, connector pins and a copper/metal slug.

Right after power off, the core transfers heat to the slug which rises in temp. But this part doesn't matter. By the time the slug temp rises, the core has dropped (from its steady state temp) and we have no issues. Besides, core/chip temps run cooler than they have to anyway. At no time does the core temp rise above what it was while the pc was running.