BlueMax wrote:
Yeesh.... the only way to get around that would be to leave it not only ON, but also running at 100% load 24/7! Instead of a tiny bit of wear by the change of going from colt to hot or cold, it'll wear out by constant use. The benefit is so negligible, you're better off with the electricity savings. The money saved over 3 years would probably pay for the unlikely event of a CPU/mobo/RAM/HDD replacement, but you'd be upgrading by that time anyway...
Not necessarily 100% load, just a constant load.
But I would agree it's perfectly fine to turn it off, and that leaving it on will wear it out eventually too... I'll stand by what I recommended earlier, which is to turn it off if you're not going to use it soon and leave it on if you are. If you're turning it on and off a dozen times through the day, you're probably better off just leaving it on... but go ahead and turn it off if you're done with it for the night.
Power savings aren't always as big an issue as it seems, though... the wasted power ends up contributing to the heat in the house, at the same efficiency as an electric heater. If you have electric heat and it's cold outside, there's actually absolutely no power savings by turning it off (if you do, your heater will just run more instead). With gas heat, it makes a difference but (for the same reason) less than it may seem. If it's hot outside, it matters though.
23 Mar 2013, 1:46 am
