How often do you turn the CPU off?

  • Thread starter Thread starter gascap
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Ive worked with computers since before thier were PC's, I have worked in enviroments where the machines were left on, and some where they were shut down. As far as I can see, it doesnt make much differance.

I leave mine on 24/7 because I am impatient. I dont like to wait for it to boot.

Computers dont use much power. THe monitors do, but just set the power settings to power it off after an hour or so.

Hard drives are mechanical devices, and with all mechanical devices, the more hours they run, the sooner they die. BUT, most harddrives outlive thier usefullness. I old 20 meg drives laying around that still work...So, even if you leave them on all the time, most of them will be thrown away long before they break

Montitors should be shut down, they use more power, and they die more often. Burn is not much of an issue anymore, modern monitors arent effected by burn in like the old ones. It still happens, but screen savers are more for entertainment than saving the screen. Having your power management kill them is a good idea

If you are worried about a CPU fan failure, install a monitoring proggy to shut the system down for you if it fails.

At work, we have aprox. 13-14000 workstations, and probably 10,000 or so of them are left on constantly. In fact, its company policy to do so to make sure they get updates.(many people ignore this and shut them down anyway). We really dont have that many hardware failures, considering the number of machines we have.

The box on my desk goes for months at a time without reboot, and no problems with it.
 
the only time that my comp has been switched off in the last 3 yrs was when a lightning strike tripped the power to my house. i feel the power up and power down puts some unhealthy surge currents to ur harddisks etc.

cheers!
 
I have the PC run from morning to midnight, and shut it down only when I go sleep. It needs sleep anyway... But when I do work offboard (long downloading things, defrag the disks ) I leave it on... :cool:
 
Yeah. Too bad it doesn't work 100% of the time.

I used to use it with this computer when I first bought it. It worked about as well as it did with my other computer.

Powering on in the middle of the night for no programed reason.

I really like looking at that bright screen at O dark thirty when it's supposed to be asleep or on standby.

Nothing programmed to happen at that time, not fax enabled, no automatic update enabled, no maintenance running, etc.

It just decided to turn itself on to see if I would wake up and start cussing at it. It IS on a UPS too.
 
At home: On/Off when needed, at the office only Off at the weekend. Power consumption is an issue. A dual athlon with a couple of scsi disks and monitor burns 500W without a problem. Nice in the winter for warming your feet on.

Permanent on is a bit better for HD (there is a parameter 'number of startups') and temp related problems, but these are well controlled these days. They have to, otherwise production of motherboards with those large BGA packages would not be possible! Earlier, some disks that were permanent on would not start again after a power down, you had to kick-start them by lifting a corner of the pc and let it drop.

Power saving is plain BS. The spin-up of a disk after a powersave down is just as bad as a cold start.

Shutting off with a real switch is safer I feel and draws the least power. But it stresses some components harder like psu and hd. Anyway, most things get replaced before they fail because obsolete.

So I got myself a small low-power pc to act a 24/7 server (<50W) and power up the big one when needed.
 
My main concern is power outages and lightning storms. If I'm not there, nothing is left on.
 
me too...during the spring thunderstorm season...plugs get yanked too.
 
I leave mine on for days or weeks at a time...but when I come in to use it, the first thing I do is reboot it, just to make sure that nothing has gone wrong that might cause me to crash while recording or mixing...like a leaky application.

Now, If my Fan burned out, and toasted my CPU....that would be grounds for an upgrade! :rolleyes:
 
Never!

Hey Gascap!
Ray here..I never turn off a pc, wake a sleeping baby or kick a sleeping dog :)
Much more system stress by powering up and down....

Ray
 
Turning off of the PC

My Pc gets shut down every night unless I'm downloading or trying to set a new Instant messenger uptime record. This PC is my recording machine too so it's important for me to boot up on a fresh reboot anytime I am ready to edit ANYTHING. I too do not want ANY chance of a lingering unstable program crashing me in mid sound capture or right before a save point. Seeing that I'm a Computer Nut (that's why I'm posting here) and this is my First Post I'd just like to say HI!.,.. well.. HI.. ok

Besides all that....

My computer it freaking LOUD.
(A guy has to sleep)

Peace

ZPphreak


www.zeroproof.8k.com
 
My understanding is that it is currently better to shut down now.

Monitors arn't phosphorus anymore so they don't "burn in" (but they do over heat)

The reason shutting down was a bad thing is that hard drive drivers sucked and would drop the needle on the disk (while it was still spinning) when there was no more electricty to hold it up (hence the access light coming on at the very last minute... that was fixed.

Usually the main reason computers are left on is because they are on a network and 1. a poorly done network can get confused when 200 PCs boot up at the same time and 2. (the most common reason) is that the network admins do remote maintenance at night. . .or it's automatically done. . .like defrag and chkdsk and backups... don't want that going on during business hours :) imagine being in the middle of recording the perfect take and defrag comes on automatically :)

There are bad things about leaving computers on. . . like CPU "memory" a lot like battery "memory" ... most CPU's are over clocked and if they run too hot for too long you won't be able to turn the speed down.

old PC were designed to last for 15 years where new PC's are designed to last for 2 years. . .most of the problems take longer to manifest themselves in hardware... unless you break your switches...

OS wise, modern computers are supposed to be rebooted once a day ... unless it's something other than a microsoft operating system in which case it's averages once a month. rebooting resets memory leaks... and don't forget to have the PC power down for long enough for the capasitators to dissipate usually 7-14 seconds...
 
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