Leaving a computer on 24/7

[Fuzz]

I keep my computer on 24/7. I think turning your computer on and off alot will wear your parts out faster than leaving it on all the time.

 

[Hairy_Lee]

I keep my computer on 24/7. I think turning your computer on and off alot will wear your parts out faster than leaving it on all the time.

thats gotta be the silliest thing i've ever heard. its actual use of a system that wears it out, so turning it off when you're not gonna use it is prolonging its life, aside from that it also saves electricity

 

[Fuzz]

The system board on a computer is full of solder points. Given that, when a solder point is heated up and cooled down over and over again (such as turning on and off the computer) the solder becomes brittle and has more of a chance of breaking.

 

[Hairy_Lee]

how hot does your motherboard get? i'm an electrical engineer and i've worked on units that have soldered points that will get to 90 degrees easily and have yet to see this occur. if someone has told you this then they are either an idiot or are just trying to scare you

 

[Fuzz]

Ok, what does stuff do when it gets hot? It expands. What does stuff do when it gets cold? It contracts. You cant tell me by expanding and contracting something over and over agian will not make it brittle or broken more easily.

I also dont think you have to worry about life spans of parts such as harddrives the Western Digital Caviar is suppose to run for 1.2 million hours. That comes out to around 13888 years of use you can get out of it.

And yes I do see what youre saying, its not a serious problem. But you cant tell me what I said above isnt true.

 

[Hairy_Lee]

yeah, but how hot does it need to get to make a difference. also, lets just say your theory is infallable and this type of failure will happen on every computer (even though i haven't seen it on electrical equipment thats 20 years old).
how long do you plan on keeping your current system in its current configuration without changing anything, not even a change of modem. 2 years? 5 at a push?.... i think you see where i'm going with this and you will see that the saving of electricity will outweigh any so called life extension of your system, even though this type of failure will not occur.

 

[Fuzz]

Pretty much any failure that occurs could have been caused by the expanding and contracting of the solder points, such as a video card going bad, maybe it was caused by a loose connection which was caused by the expanding and contracting of the solder points. I think you and I are both right, it just depends on how you look at it.

 

[Hairy_Lee]

Pretty much any failure that occurs could have been caused by the expanding and contracting, such as a video card going bad, maybe it was caused by a loose connection which was caused by the expanding and contracting of the solder joints. I think you and I are both right, it just depends on how you look at it.

i'm happy with that

if high temps are encountered i would say that delamination of comonents would be a major issue but its pretty rare to have that occur

 

[Fuzz]

That was fun! And we didnt even have to resort to calling each other childish names.

 

[The_Other_One]

My view on this is that everything has a certain amount of time that it's made to run. The more you run it, the more things wear out. I'm mostly concerned about fans and harddrives, but the video card and processor(espcially with overclocked systems) could also be a consideration.

Now, I used to leave my system in suspend all the time, but for some reason it won't stay in that mode anymore. But how my system would work, it would basically be completely off untill you pressed a button. Then it would be right back where you left it. No, not hibernation, suspend to ram as it's called in the bios.

 

[Fuzz]

As said before, I dont think you have to worry about life spans of parts such as harddrives the Western Digital Caviar is suppose to run for 1.2 million hours. That comes out to around 13888 years of use you can get out of it. Im sure most of the other brands run pretty close to it life span wise.

 

[Geoff]

It really just comes down to electricity, since computer components have very long life, they shouldnt die on you for many years. So if you dont want to save electricity, then leave it on.

 

[The_Other_One]

Electric components have super long life spans. Machanical devices have much shorter lifes. Plus, don't beleive everything you read about the lifespan. I've had drives die within a year, and I'm sure the lifespan was much longer considering they had a year warrenty! I've also had servers(well, standard computers I ran all the time) that have died. Caps started to bubble a bit in it so there might of been a heat problem, donno for sure, but it still died.

 

[ceewi1]

I've also had servers(well, standard computers I ran all the time) that have died. Caps started to bubble a bit in it so there might of been a heat problem, donno for sure, but it still died.

If you're talking about the issue I think you're talking about, it was due to a series of faulty capacitors which were produced and sold to a number of major vendors. http://www.geek.com/news/geeknews/2003Feb/bch20030207018535.htm

The motherboards would have lasted longer if the caps hadn't been faulty.

 

[The_Other_One]

I doubt they were faulty, the computer was about 7 years old when it died... But yeah, I know motherboards should last basically forever.

 

[ericvonzipper]

i know 2 families that turned theirs on and off every time they used it, yes used it, my friend upgraded theirs after 10yrs of this with NO failures, my aunt upgraded hers after 8 years, the hard drive failed, yep, her 8meg drive died. I turn mine off every nite. The longest I've gone without an upgrade is 3yrs, if I have one last even 5 years it's probably time for an upgrade anyway.

 

[ceewi1]

I agree. Computer components are unlikely to die before they become outdated and useless, unless they are faulty or abused, in which case it doesn't really matter whether the computer is left on or turned off. I turn mine off to save power.

 

[AdmnPower]

i run processes in the middle of the night to back up my systems important files to my file server, and a run virus and spyware scans too. It's all very handy because i don't have to sit around and wait on it to get done. It also requires me to leave it on most of the time. I usually turn off my computer only when i want the quiet. Really though i think the only thing you may have to worry about is your power supply, i've had too many go bad to trust them to last very long in the long run.

 

[Bobo]

I leave my computer on 24/7, but I just reboot it like once a week. Everything runs fine, and I have never had any problems with hardware.

 

[JFlo]

I do not care if i turn it off or leave it on. If its on ill leave it on, mostly cause I would be to lazy to walk over there and turn it off. How about your monitor? Does leaving on your monitor make a difference? I usually shut it off even though i leave my computer on.