Whats better? Leaving the computer on or off?

Danda

Member
So I been having a debate with a friend of mine about which one is more energy efficient. To keep it nice and short, whats better for the electricity bill? Leaving the computer on, or turning it off every time you are done with it?
 

TFT

VIP Member
Personally if I was to use it again within an hour or two I would leave it on, but it is turned off completely every night.

A couple of quotes taken from this site.

http://www.energystar.gov/index.cfm?c=power_mgt.pr_power_mgt_faq

In reality, the small surge of power created when some devices are turned on is vastly smaller than the energy used by running the device when it is not needed.

Modern computers are designed to handle 40,000 on-off cycles before failure, and you're not likely to approach that number during the average computer's five- to seven-year life span. In fact, IBM and Hewlett Packard encourage their own employees to turn off idle computers, and some studies indicate it would require on-off cycling every five minutes to harm a hard drive."
 

Machin3

New Member
At night, I leave it off unless I'm downloading a large file that takes a while to download. Otherwise, its just like everyone else.
 

Aastii

VIP Member
Whenever mine isn't being used, I turn it off. The only exception is if it is downloading, installing, defraggings, virus scanning etc etc, or if I plan on going back on soon. If I won't be on for a couple of hours or more though, I will turn it off beacuse of the noise (it is in the living room) and for the electricity bill's sake
 

Danda

Member
Thats what I thought. My friend was telling me leaving it on will save more money because the boot up spends alot of electricity in the few seconds it starts up. Thanks guys, just wanted to get your opinion on this.
 

Dystopia

Active Member
Think about it...the computer uses at least 100W if you have a low level system. Leave that on for an hour and calculate how much energy you are using...quite a bit, I think, compared to lets say that you use the max W that you PSU can give (which you don't). Whats your PSU? 550W...
 

jancz3rt

<b>VIP Member</b>
Hmm

My suggestion is to turn it off when you sleep. There is no need to have it run (other than Folding of course :p). As well as that, most standard HDDs are designed to run for 8-10 hours a day, but only a few are specifically designed to run 24hours/day - nonstop. This is yet another argument for giving the PC a break for some time of the day. Shutting down and starting up several times during the day is not good as well. Do as you wish, but do take all the suggestions above into consideration.

JAN :D
 

linkin

VIP Member
I turn my computer on during the day, and leave it on until i go to sleep at night because i'm frequently getting on and off of it.
 
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