Leaving My PC On Constantly.

I've heard many bad things about leaving your PC on constantly. I've also heard very good things. I'm not sure who to believe, as it's something I've never done.

I) Some people have told me that leaving my PC on is dangerous, as it wears out the components and wastes electricity. Plus, I've been told that your plugs could overload and cause a fire which would no doubt burn me to death while I slept. Well, I'd probably wake up for the burning part, if I survived the smoke. But, that's going off-topic...

II) Others have told me that leaving my PC on is a good idea. You don't have to mess about turning the damn thing on and off, the PC goes into hibernation so that you don't have to waste electricity, the parts inside don't wear out as easily because they don't have to cool down and heat up repeatedly, and the risk of fire is almost nonexistent.

I'd like to leave my computer on constantly, but the rumours have made me think otherwise. I'm inclined to believe argument #2, but I honestly don't know what to do. Help, please?

Thanks Unne/Arche/Del/Endless/Baloki. :D

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Originally Posted by Rainecloud

Thanks Unne/Arche/Del/Endless/Baloki. :D

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You expect me to help you Mr. Rainecloud? I expect you to die, mwhahahahaha. Sorry, anyway:

It is a well known fact an idle computer only uses as much power as an electric lightbulb. If you leave your computer on constantly your components will wear out quicker yes but most likely the fan, and probably only one or two weeks before it wears out past infinity anyway. Turning off a computer less is better for it and it has less power surges (when its turned on power serges throught the system kind) so components have less wear and tear.

Thats not the be all and end all, but trust me, there is very little problem with leaving your computer on, just remember to turn the monitor and don't overload power sockets.

I think the only time my PC doesn't have power is when I need to move it, or am doing doing maintenance e.g. replacing a HD, or cleaning out the CPU heatsink (though I sometimes do the latter with the machine on :p ). Otherwise, it's on 24/7 for the entire year.

Yes, the components will wear out faster (more likely mechinal parts), since you're using them more, and everything has a limited lifetime. I've already had to replace the oldest HD, and the power supply unit itself, over the course of 3 years I've had the PC (both within the last 2 months). Considering the latter was rated at only 20,000 hour working lifetime though, that's actually pretty good :p I've not had to replace my CPU fan, but the fan on my graphics card has been broken for maybe 2 years now - I haven't bothered replace it and instead underclocked the card so it generates less heat, since I rarely use 3D-intensive things like games :p

Whether it wastes electricity or not depends on your setup and how you use your PC really. If you need it on 24/7, or have it doing something at all times, then I'd say it's less of a waste than someone that doesn't need to run a PC like that all the time, like someone that only uses a PC for email/web surfing, and just leave it on for the sake of it. Of course it'll use more electricity overall, but you have power saving options to help counter that to some extent, like turning off the HD/monitor if the PC is idle for some time. I physically switch the monitor off usually when I'm not at the PC anyway.

Hibernation is the same as turning the PC off completely powerwise - when the PC is in hibernation, the RAM is saved to HD, the PC turns off, and you use the power switch to turn it back on again. The difference from a normal shutdown is that instead of booting normally, it'll reload the contents of RAM instead and so you can resume exactly as you left it before hibernating. It's not the same as leaving the PC on 24/7 - the PC can't do anything while hibernating. If you use hibernation, you're effectively messing around switching the PC off and on all the time :p

The plugs will only overload if you're stupid and do something like plug in PC + monitor + speakers + printer + scanner + toaster + stereo system + other devices into a single socket :p Use several sockets instead. If you're worried about power surges from the electricity grid itself, get a power strip that has surge protection. If you're worried about short brown-outs/black-outs/power-cuts, then maybe a Uninterruptable Power Supply. My UPS has surge protection as well, so I only need the latter.

There's probably lots of other factors to take into account too, but I have no problem leaving my PC on all the time without a side cover :p

I left my old computer on 24 hours a day for about 4 years, minus a few days here and there, and it's still working (minus the hard drive). HDs disintegrate over time anyways, so who cares. I had one computer that would spin the CD in the CDROM drive nonstop no matter what, so if yours does that it might not be too good an idea to leave it on. In the summer my room gets insanely hot, so I turn off my computer when I'm not using it, so as not to melt the thing. I think it turns itself off once it hits a certain temperature anyways, but I'd rather not obliterate my HD partitions in that particular way.

So in summary do whatever you want. By the time leaving your computer running actually manages to add up to real harm, it'll be so old that it'll only be worth $27 anyways.

[QQ=Unne]So in summary do whatever you want. By the time leaving your computer running actually manages to add up to real harm, it'll be so old that it'll only be worth $27 anyways.[/QQ]

I'll be leaving it on, then. I don't mind replacing the odd HD/Fan in the future, as I've done it before.

Thanks for your help and advice.

As for the fire risk of leaving it on all the time, there is virtually no risk at all if you use an uninterruptible power supply, as a computer draws suck a low current that the friction of the components builds up far more heat than the current. And if you have some sort of spike protection, that'll help prevent surges causing sparks or some such, and starting fires.

EDITL Fixing stuff. :/