Do you guys shut down or sleep at night?

My old Asus P4800 deluxe has been on 24/7 for 4 1/2 years and still runs like a champ. I never shut it off
 
I always shut down. The "dustbuster" (as my husband calls it, and he built the thing) is noisy and generates heat.

I also shut it down when away (like going to the store). If, for example, a fan were to die and it were to overheat, things could fry, so I want to be there to keep an eye on it.
 
I keep mine on nearyl 24/7 unless I will be away from it for more than 2 days.

I also as I have become accustomed to 8GB of RAM I ussually have 12-20 things open at a time..

such as Firefox, Photoshop, iTunes.etc I usually restart about once a week though.
 
lowteckh said:
Shut down desktop, sleep netbook, WHS 24/7. Having everything on makes the room too hot :(
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I do nearly the same. Desktop's monitor is set to go off after 5 minutes and gets shut off overnight, or whenever I'm away. Makes the room too hot in the summer, but makes a nice heater in the winter.
 
server seeds/torrents 24/7, my desktop gets put to sleep nightly (or auto-sleeps anyway). I pulled the power LED recently because the super-bright LED annoyed me and taping something over it would have required more effort.
 
I lost the power button to my Lian Li. I did have to start it with a screwdriver, but my new board has a power button. Still, having to take the side off to start is a pain in the ass. Also, I can't stand the quiet with my PC off.
 
I put it to sleep at night because I won't use it until I get home from work the next day. All of my systems that have to run 24/7 are set up as VMs on my server.
 
R128m said:
If everyone shut down their PCs how much energy would it save the planet :p
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Wouldn't do jackshit when you wake up the next morning and sit in traffic in a nice SUV or muscle car in hour long rush hour traffic :)
 
Shutdown provided I don't need it to finish something while I sleep. If I close the door to the room it can get up to about 90F in about 3 hours of decent load.

Oh, and on trips more than 3 days or so, I flip the power switch on my PSU--probably over cautious in doing so but I'd really hate for a power surge to kill all my components or burn my house down while I'm gone.
 
i have 3 desktops and 6 laptops(2 laptops are mine) in this house.. they all run 24/7.. the 3 desktops are at full load 24/7 cpu and gpu's.. the 2 laptops i own are at full load 24/7 as well but cpu's only..


kencheeto said:
shutdown. Don't torrent or anything, but if i'm not using it might as well be off.
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if your not using it.. why not run F@H while its not being used?
 
I pretty much never shutdown my desktop or my media/local file server. They never get put to sleep either. All my other computers get shutdown when they aren't being used.
 
My and the wife's machines run 24 / 7. I'm on every morning and every evening without fail. Wife is retired (lucky her) so she's on her machine off and on all day.

Our monitors shut off after 15 mins so that's my concession to power saving......:D
 
I do the inverse -- Shut down when I leave for work in the morning then power back on when I get home from work.
 
I just leave my system running most of the time. The only power management I have enabled is for the monitor. I have it go into standbuy after 30 minutes of inactivity.
 
i set downloads and video encodes overnight so i never turn it off unless on a rare occasion i dont have anything to download or encode. Couple times a month maybe. I of course have my monitor set to turn off because I dont want it to die early.
 
Monitors go off after 20 minutes of inactivity. Other then that system is on 24x7. Only shutdown if I'll be gone for more then 2 days.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Leaving your PC in sleep mode allows it to dream. Perhaps it dreams of running, carefree, through endless fields of flowers, lollipops, gumdrops and cotton candy clouds with friendly care bears waving in the distance. Why deprive your computer of all that?
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Mine dream of electric sheep!

R128m said:
If everyone shut down their PCs how much energy would it save the planet :p
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Well the gf and I decided to start shutting down and unplugging everything when we are not using them. Everything includes: 2 laptops, a TV, receiver, microwave, phone chargers, and some other minor things. Our electric bill went from $40 to $20 a month. YMMV
 
zoobaby said:
Mine dream of electric sheep!



Well the gf and I decided to start shutting down and unplugging everything when we are not using them. Everything includes: 2 laptops, a TV, receiver, microwave, phone chargers, and some other minor things. Our electric bill went from $40 to $20 a month. YMMV
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I wonder if all these people saying "you should fold when you're not using your computer!" would still be saying that if they lived in the desert like I do where it was 105F yesterday and their electric bill was $205 like my last one was (this month's will be more).

I turn everything off the second I don't need it.
 
I had a computer instructor in middle school mention one day every time you turn on your computer it's comparable to restarting a persons (computers) heart. It's better just to leave it on instead of shutting down. Is there some truth to this?

I leave my computers on 24/7. I have a computer purchased in like 2000 left on 24/7 for 8 years and the HD still hasn't failed as with other components. The computer still runs good.
 
Noticed something weird today. When I opened up my laptop my desktop came out of sleep mode, and it was a good 5 feet away. Maybe something about the network woke it?
 
vixer said:
I had a computer instructor in middle school mention one day every time you turn on your computer it's comparable to restarting a persons (computers) heart. It's better just to leave it on instead of shutting down. Is there some truth to this?

I leave my computers on 24/7. I have a computer purchased in like 2000 left on 24/7 for 8 years and the HD still hasn't failed as with other components. The computer still runs good.
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I would be interested in knowing the answer to this as well. Preferably some type of hard evidence.
 
All my systems are setup to go into standby after 1-2 hours of idle. My WHS box can be awoken via network.
 
Laptop sleeps, PC shuts down. No sense leaving it on... just a grievous waste of electricity and more $ down the drain. I don't buy into the start up stress BS and am not into Folding and other distributed computing apps.
 
So, there are 2 modes of failure people are alluding to here,

1.) From continuous operation, the current running through the CPU can cause electromigration in the copper interconnects (metal 'wires' that tie the transistors together). Electromigration means the current induces individual metal atoms to move in the direction of the current along the sides of the 'wire' so one end gets larger in diameter and the other smaller, until eventually you get an open circuit (or short circuit if two wires grow together).

2.) Thermal cycling due to repeatedly turning the system on and off. Every time you turn the system on, it heats up (duh). When you have different materials bonded together (like the copper/substrate of your motherboard, or similar things in the CPU, GPU, memory, etc), they expand differently upon heating. This creates a mechanical stress, and when applied over and over it can cause delamination of a wire etc that causes failure. (Think bending a piece of plastic over and over until it finally breaks).


All the components in your computer are tested and designed to withstand both of these failure modes for much longer than you're likely to own your computer. You might see (1) if you have your computer on 24/7 @70C for 15 years (longer at lower temperature.) For (2) I'm not sure but for most components I doubt its an issue unless you cycle the power multiple times a day and expect it to last 15 years.

EDIT: I should note that (1) will happen more quickly for components run at higher voltages.

The exception might be your hard drive. It seems from the few hard drives that I've had, they have issues on spin-up when they're dying, then run fine once they're "on". This would suggest fewer spin-ups for your HDD are better. I still let my hdd spin down when idle even when the computer is on though, as HDD seem to become obsolete every 3-4 years anyway.
 
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