Turn off PC every night...or not?

H

hoosieradvisor

New Member
I have always heard that turning off my PC "wears it out", whatever that means.

I'm concerned that if I leave my PC on 24/7 my electric bill will go up, up, up.

What's the truth? :confused:
 
I'm not sure how others feel, but I always shut mine down at night. I usually cap off the night with an AVG full system scan and use the "Power off PC when done scanning" option. It works well for me since I really don't like leaving my system up all night.

Just my opinion, today's PC parts are made much better than in the past. I don't feel shutting it down every night is bad for your system.

Others.....?
 
This is a [fairly] common debate; you will more than likely get mixed responses. What it "wears out" is your hard drive. Your hard drive can only withstand a certain amount of start-ups before it dies, somewhere in the tens of thousands (I believe).

The amount of money you would save from turning it off every night would probably buy several TB's (terabytes) worth of drive space. However, I would shut it down if I were you and plan on using all of that money for an SSD for my next drive. With an SSD, there is theoretically an infinite amount of start-ups because there are no moving parts.
 
It doesn't hurt it one way or the other. Honestly, the life of each component will exceed it's value. Basicly it will work until it goes obsolete. I am sure someone will have an opposition of this, but it is generally true. 9/10 computers get thrown out because they are obsolete, not because they are broken.
It basicly comes down to if you want to pay the energy bill for leaving it on 24/7.
 
Try a shut down once ever 3-4 days...thats commonly what i do, and if im running no programs while im asleep it is alway put into sleep mode.
 
I shut down after i'm finished, then turn it off at the wall. Saves electricity and yeah thats about it.:)
 
Eh idling a PC for 10 hours would cost... 0.3Kw * 0.15 = 0.045 and that times 365 for a whole year would be about 16.40 (a little bit more 2 cents or so). Then for an average of 5 years that would be 82 euro's... For that you can buy a new drive easily.

And my last hard-drive lasted almost 8 years... then it died because of the PSU... So I'll trust myself on this one and just turn of the PC and buy a new drive with the money I saved by turning the system off ^^
 
I've heard this all the time as well, some people say that when you turn off a PC all the fans turns off immediately, causing the components to overheat. I've heard that turning it on is the same as x amount of hours/minutes as if you left it on.

IMO, I would only leave a computer on if I knew I'd be back within a couple hours. Anything longer then that I usually just put my computer in standby, or turn it off completely. I've had computers that were 10-15 years old and still work, so I don't believe that it would actually wear out before the computer is useless anyways.

It really comes down to whether or not you want to pay for the electricity or not. But remember, leaving a computer on for 8 hours overnight wears it out as well.
 
I turn it off at night simply because it is right under my bed and the fan keeps me awake. (I like total silence when I sleep.) Like others have said, it doesn't hurt it enough to make a difference.
 
Timo said:
Eh idling a PC for 10 hours would cost... 0.3Kw * 0.15 = 0.045 and that times 365 for a whole year would be about 16.40 (a little bit more 2 cents or so). Then for an average of 5 years that would be 82 euro's... For that you can buy a new drive easily.
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And I would say that's a pretty conservative calculation. Some homebuilt computers can consume 30W just from the fans.

OMEGA said:
I've heard this all the time as well, some people say that when you turn off a PC all the fans turns off immediately, causing the components to overheat.
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The problem with that arguement is that if the power is cut to the fans it should be simultaneously cut to the processor. With no heat load the temperature cannot increase.

In my opinion, any slight risk of damaging components is offset by consuming less resources as well as saving money. If you need to quickly access the computer just put it in standby or hibernate.
 
I turn it on when I get home (around 4 in the afternoon) and turn it off when I go to bed (about 11). I could leave it on overnight if I wanted to, but I really don't see the point of it.
 
my grandmothers computer(windows 95) that was shut down every night for 5 years, still worked when i fired it up in january, and a computer i got for free had windows 98 on it, shut down every day until they got rid of them 7 years later, still worked when i hooked it up 2 days ago
 
I always shut it down at night unless I am downloading something big like a game demo or something. Saves money on bills and gives my parts a break. Also my fans won't suck in as much dust!
 
If someone's computer uses 300W at idle I doubt his or her electricity bill is high on his or her list of priorities anyway.
 
Timo said:
Eh idling a PC for 10 hours would cost... 0.3Kw * 0.15 = 0.045 and that times 365 for a whole year would be about 16.40 (a little bit more 2 cents or so). Then for an average of 5 years that would be 82 euro's... For that you can buy a new drive easily.

And my last hard-drive lasted almost 8 years... then it died because of the PSU... So I'll trust myself on this one and just turn of the PC and buy a new drive with the money I saved by turning the system off ^^
Click to expand...

I want to correct something.

I made a faulty calculation.

Ok lets be really really optimistic here and say that your computer runs 200watts whilst idling. Don't want to know what you're running but ok it's 200watts idle.

Then you'd be using 0.2 Killowatts per hour. This is what I missed; Per hour. And if you sleep 10 hours, thus letting it idle 10 hours. That would be 10 times 0.2 killowatts... Which is 2 Killowatts per time you let it idle 10 hours.

So that would be 0.2Kw * 10hours * 0.15euro's = 0.30 euro's a night... And that times 365 days would add up to: 365*0.3 = 109.50 euro's... Over here you can buy a nice Raptor from that...

@Yeti: 0.3Killowatts.. That's 300 watts Idling... That's quite much for me :p

Ké perhaps a more unconservative calculation lets say you idle at 400watts (jeez...) 0.4*10*0.15*365 = 219 euro's per year! You can almost buy the new Velociraptor for that money over here! That would mean that if you turn of the computer for 10 hours a day instead of letting it idle those 10 hours you would be able to buy a Velociraptor 300GB's every year... After 3 years that would result into a killer RAID0 setup :eek:
 
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