Is Leaving a Computer on all the time better or not?

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Lately I've been hearing from a lot of people in my family and from friends of theirs that leaving your computer on all the time, 24/7 is supposedly better and/or "healthier" for your computer than turning it on and off on a regular basis (regular basis = turning it off before going to bed or turning it on after getting up.)

However I find this VERY hard to believe because those who tell me this don't provide any real believable proof, instead they just state it's common knowledge of just flat-out retort to intimidation. Rather than drown my sorrows in "The Haven," I figured I should ask here since this is the thread for it. Is this actually true or shall I just do what I've been doing and treat it like a normal computer? (Turning it on or off)

I have a Windows 7 64-bit if that helps...

When I'm done with my computer at night I simply go to bed. The computer itself goes to sleep after 10 minutes of inactivity. I have an old school fear: turn off my computer then catch royal hell trying to get it back on. That's happened to me so many times in the past that it's ingrained in my own mental wiring. Another thing is my main HD is a SSD. I read in more than a few places that there is a limit to how many times you can cycle on & off a SSD. The number's relatively high; still, I'd rather not approach it. There is also the "turning on the light bulb" effect. A lot of energy is required to turn a bulb on. If the filament is weak that's when the bulb blows. This is why bulbs tend to blow very often just when you switch them on. I've seen that paradigm applied to turning on a computer. Those sensitive circuits get a jolt as they're being powered on and there's the risk of a blow out like a light bulb. Probably a myth but it doesn't hurt to just let the computer just sleep. It uses very little power in sleep mode anyway.

Last edited by redrobin62 on 19 Mar 2013, 8:58 pm, edited 2 times in total.

So long as you use either a proper "shutdown" or go into "sleep" mode, it'll be just fine.

Sometimes Windows even needs to be properly shut down and/or restarted just to keep running properly... Some programs have memory leaks, etc.

In my 25+ years of PC experience, I'd recommend shutting down over leaving it on. The only downside is the bootup time of about 1-2 minutes. I'm guessing mommy wants to use compy NOW!!

It all depends.

As far as the hardware is concerned, it depends on how often you use it; turning it on and off causes more wear than leaving it on, but leaving it on causes more wear than leaving it off. So ideally, you'd turn it off if you're not going to use it for quite a while... but if you'll need it again soon just leave it on. The main things that wear it out, either during startup/shutdown or while running, are heat and mechanical wear (fans, disks)... but temperature changes cause more wear than constant heat, and starting and stopping the moving parts wears them out more than steady movement.

Leaving it running also allows automatic maintenance such as disk defragmentation or installing updates to occur while you're not actively using it, as well, which is a good thing.

If it's not running too hot anyway, then it will probably last quite a long time either way, though... you'd likely replace it before it wears out.

The reason why i have heard to leave it on is that the power units will take damage over time.

* If you are a large corporation, this makes sense since it will save money on lots of hardware that will last a bit longer.
* If you are a private person with 1-3 computers, it wont make much difference in your wallet.

A lap top left on burns as much electricity as a 100 watt light bulb. See how much this costs you relative to your local electricity rates.

ruveyn

By proper shut down, do you mean the traditional "Go to Start -> click "Shut down" button?" My power settings has my computer go to sleep after 30 minutes of inactivity if that helps any.

Also do automatic updates "activate" while in sleep mode? That's usually the best (and true) excuse I have when shutting down my computer.

I always try to shut my compy down when it's not in use, which is when I'm asleep. It's always been the traditional way of running a computer...



Mine's a desktop, not a laptop

i've used microsoft-based puters since the early 90s and none of them would tolerate being left on for more than a day.

A laptop is probably a little under 100W, but your average desktop will be over 200W unless it's in "sleep" mode.

Many updates require restarts, so if you don't shut down and prefer to let it go into sleep mode on its own (and that's okay) just be sure to give it the occasional restart when prompted or if performance seems odd or sluggish. Don't forget you can change the Power Settings to make it automatically sleep in a longer or shorter period of time, or immediately choose "sleep" from the start menu's shutdown list when you know you're done for the day.
I don't think it'll make ANY difference to the longevity of the processor, motherboard, power supply, RAM or any other part in the PC. If anything, the hard drive would benefit from being either powered off or in sleep sooner, as it would stop the motor from spinning the platters.



Exactly what I was referring to earlier... some programs (or even the OS itself!) becomes corrupt... Windows ME is a notorious example, where the OS itself would just "leak" memory and become slower and slower, eventually crashing horribly until a simple reset was performed. I've noticed the same problem with the latest Firefox under Win7. I'm disappointed.

My mom, on the other hand, has used the same boot of Vista for 1-2 months before needing a reset, but the only program she EVER uses is some IE9 then it's back to sleep.

I used to use a computer in the 1970s that required far more repairs when the power was cycled on and off regularly than when it was left on all of the time. That computer cost something like $40,000 and required frequent repairs.

Today's computers are far more reliable. If you have good, clean electrical power, I suspect it probably doesn't make much difference. If there are lots of fluctuations in the power or power outages, it might be wise to turn it off when not in use.

Those are pretty high estimates... laptops these days often have a power supply rated less than 100W, and that's meant to be enough to run the laptop fully powered and loaded, plus more for charging batteries. As for desktops, they vary a lot depending on what's in them... but when idle many of them can draw under 100W. Some of the smaller pre-built ones have power supplies rated under 200W, but those are low-end machines with no room for upgrades. When you bring out the low power CPUs and chipsets like Atom or Geode LX, power requirements can drop to a few tens of watts or less, even fully powered.

Sorry that I didn't mention this too, I also pay for the electricity in our house. However lately it's been flickering like those of a Brown-out fashion (By lately I mean once or twice a week in the past few months.) Plus because our area has been affected by a major flood in 2011, it's has a reputation of having sub-par electricity from what I'm told. You can only imagine my frustration of not knowing how much I'm paying while everyone in my family is constantly running their computers 24/7...

Mostly everyone in my family use a Windows XP whereas I'm the only one who uses a Windows 7, and I too use Firefox as my primary Internet access and I notice that I computer acts sluggish after a few days of constantly leaving it on all the time. While my computer does go into sleep mode, I still prefer to shut it down when I'm done with it for the day. Lately I've been rather "paranoid" about showing up when I least should to re-access my computer as about a week ago, I happened to get back on just as sleep mode was activating and as a result, lost access to my mouse and keyboard and couldn't re-access my computer until I turned it off and back on, as well as re-plugging my mouse and keyboard back in.

That's another thing that upsets me about this conflict of leaving my computer on all the time or turning it off regularly... The Hard Drive. Back in August 2012, my Windows 7 Hard Drive went bad and thus I had replaced it with a 500 gb Hard Drive which I'm currently using now. Which is starting to worry me since I make movies for a hobby and would like to make more space, but would still like to keep all my programs without having to re-install them (more specifically Sony Vegas 7) and the worst part of it is that I don't know how to replace a Hard Drive and my brother does, and he is the last person I want to ask for anything about my computer since it would only give him more incentive.

With that being said, another additional question I have to ask is, Which is the better option for my hard drive? Leaving my computer on, or turning it on and off regularly?

We could go all night on technical details... processors range from those frugal Atoms to the power-guzzling space heaters that were the PentiumD 8xx series and several AMD chips! Over 100W difference between the two. Video cards range even more!

Fortunately, sleep mode usually only involves 10W or less...

I don't recommend leaving a laptop on... leaving it plugged in all the time tends to wear down the lifespan of the battery faster. Closing the lid and sleeping uses very little power, but even 1W is more than zero when shut down.


The original argument was about "shutting it off wears it out faster" and I just don't agree with that AT ALL.



If you've got "dirty" power and brownouts, I really recommend even the smallest, cheapest uninterruptible power supply (UPS) which should charge the battery and send clean power out the other side, not to mention constant if there's a brownout.

I've been using computers heavily for the last 27 years. In my experience, if some component is 'weak', it usually gives up within 3 months after moderate to heavy use. Once that critical period has passed, it nearly always live beyond the point of being obsolete. I have HDDs over 10 years old that still power up and run without a problem, even though they've been sitting in a box for 7 years or more.

Yes, powering up a computer puts more load on the system for a brief moment, but if it's a good quality system, it'll still handle multiple power cycles a day long past the point of being obsolete.

Also keep in mind that waking the PC up from sleep mode still puts a certain amount of load on the system and for some components still count as a full power cycle. You still have fans and HDDs spinning up and down. You still get the cold-hot-cold cycle as you go from sleep to being in use and the back to sleep when you stop using it. Sleep mode is also notorious for being unstable on some setups, in particular custom built overclocked systems. Google Haswell USB 3 bug if you want to see just one example of sleep mode issues.

Now, you can disable sleep mode and HDDs from spinning down, but keep in mind that most PCs, especially off the shelf prebuilt ones are not really designed for being on 24/7. At the very least, if you're going to have a HDD running all the time, make sure it's a HDD designed for 24/7 usage if you value your data.

The thing is, you're living on borrowed time anyway by using the strategy of not turning off your system. If some component is dying, it will die. Question is, do you want it to die now while it's still under warranty or one day after the warranty expires? If it's an old PC no longer under warranty, is it worth the cost of the electricity running it vs. just buying a new one when it dies? Where I live, everything comes with a minimum 2 year warranty and electricity is quite expensive. I buy quality hardware with a 2 year lifespan before upgrading in mind. I keep my previous PC as a backup since you get almost nothing from selling a 2+ year old custom system anyway. Therefore, there's no reason for me to baby my current PC. If it dies, it's still under warrenty and if it dies the day after the warrenty expires, I'll run on the obsolete PC for the week it takes to get a new system.

In general, I shut my system down for the night and if I need to leave the house with nobody else there to react if something happens, I shut it down as well (unless we're talking half an hour or less). Other than that, I've generally been leaving it on all day since I use it all the time. However, now that I have an iPad and spend more time doing other non-PC related hobbies, I turn it off if I don't see myself doing gaming, powersurfing (lots of open tabs) or other PC activities that the iPad doesn't really work for within the next couple of hours. Assuming my estimations are correct, the iPad is going to save me $200 in electricity over the 2 years I expect this iPad to serve me just from having my PC running less frequently. That's not peanuts and accounts for a fair share of the price I paid for the iPad to begin with.

So yeah, at the very least turn your PC off for the night. Although I have no statistical evidence based on proper tests, I simply cannot see how sleep mode is going to significantly enhance the lifespan of your PC given that it suffers from many of the same issues as a full power cycle and keeping the PC fully running 24/7 is not advisable unless it's a system built for it, which frankly, most aren't. I certainly wouldn't do that with my system without first making some modifications and even then, I'm still going to have to reboot at least every other day if I stick with Windows 7.

My computers are running 24/7. Only issue I have is it gets dusty real quick.

Which is 10x worse if you're a smoker! I've cleaned hundreds of machine over my lifetime (jobs, etc.)

Regular dust is light, greyish and fluffy... it takes a ton of it to really kill airflow. A little air is all that's needed to blow it out, or a vacuum with a soft attachment.
Smokers' dust is a dark yellow-brown, heavy, sticky and gummy. It kills airflow way faster and is devastating to fans! You really need to get in there with air can, q-tip, tweezers and more...