Is turning off my power supply switch bad for my pc?

[Sandwhichsareyummy]

7 hours ago, mariushm said:

A small part of your power supply is constantly running and powering your computer, mainly the chipset.

The reasoning for this is you may want to remotely turn on the computer (using a signal coming to your network card), or you may want to wake up the pc to receive a fax (yeah, from the times dial up modems were a thing).

The main part of your computer's power supply is completely shut down, what's left going into your pc is 5v at 2-3A ... basically pretty much similar to a phone charger.

If you leave the phone charger plugged in all the time, you can do the same for your computer.

 

As for bad things that can happen... pretty much nothing bad.

There is a downside to having the computer with the computer power supply turned off : the battery on your motherboard will discharge much faster and will eventually have to be replaced.

The battery is there to keep the system clock working, and keep the bios settings (if the battery is removed, the settings are erased within a few seconds). The battery is not rechargeable.

When the computer's power supply is turned on from the power switch, the power supply sends that 5v stand by power to the computer and the bios uses that to keep those bios settings and the system clock working, instead of taking "juice" from battery.

So, the battery is pretty much never used and can therefore last for 5-10 years. However, if you constantly flip that switch, the battery may last 6 months to a year.

Ive switched the flip most nights since april. Should i be worried about the time left with the pc i have? 

[Mira Yurizaki]

1 hour ago, Sandwhichsareyummy said:

should i be worried about my pcs lifespan as at worst i have done this about 150 times

Absolutely not.

 

Also if anything's going to, it's the PSU, not the entire PC.

[goto10]

do whatever you feel is right, leave it on, turn it off

 

is just a psu, it has warranty if it ends damaged that we already told you is very unlikely

 

these kind of questions seem to end with people concerned and about to enter in panic for a comment someone did, the power button on the psu is there to be used, use it 

 

or not, you decide

[Sandwhichsareyummy]

1 hour ago, Mira Yurizaki said:

Absolutely not.

 

Also if anything's going to, it's the PSU, not the entire PC.

But they said this would drastically lower the lifespan of my cmos battery

[Mira Yurizaki]

26 minutes ago, Sandwhichsareyummy said:

But they said this would drastically lower the lifespan of my cmos battery

No, it won't. What's tied to the CMOS battery is something that sips so little power that it'll last for years before needing a replacement.

 

Besides, all that happens is you lose your BIOS settings and the battery is a standard CR2023 coin cell you can pick up almost anywhere that sells an assortment of batteries.

[goto10]

28 minutes ago, Sandwhichsareyummy said:

But they said this would drastically lower the lifespan of my cmos battery

the cmos battery is a cr2032 battery that lasts between 3 to 5 years, it costs around 1 dollar

 

it is not rechargeable, once it discharges, you remove it and buy another

 

most users never replace the battery because they change the pc before that battery needs to be replaced

 

to be honest i have never heard a person concerned with the duration of a cheap clock battery, ever

[mariushm]

As I said, if you constantly turn off the power supply from its power switch, the battery on the motherboard will eventually discharge and the computer won't hold settings anymore.

The battery is a standard CR2032 one which costs less than 1$ and can be easily replaced, but it is an annoyance.

 

Other than that, every time you flip the switch on the power supply, there is a tiny "stress" on the power supply, that "inrush current" people tried to explain above. A few components in the power supply will be a bit stressed for a few seconds but generally in a modern power supply from a good manufacturer, these components are chosen to be capable of handling that stress for long time, so this inrush current in modern good quality power supplies is not really that big of a concern.

 

The weak point that few consider is the actual switch itself... some of them are only guaranteed for 1000...5000 switches.

Each time you flip the switch and electricity goes through the contacts of the switch, that switch takes a  very very damage: as the metal contacts inside are about to make contact, the high voltage electricity can cause sparks and "lightning strike" like stuff to happen between the contacts, for those micro seconds until the contacts actually touch.

Those effects can cause microscopic dents, denivelations in the surface of the two metals that are supposed to make contact in the switch, and can also cause oxidation.. all this increases the resistance of the metals which means that the switch itself will heat more as it gets degraded.

Eventually, if it's flipped too much, it could happen the contact between metals inside is no longer good and the switch may fail to work.

 

My advice is to get some courage and hit the DEL key to enter the bios and look for an option that doesn't give power to components when pc is shut down (look for 5v stand by for usb etc)

 

Leave the power supply on all the time, only flip the switch if you're leaving for more than 2-3 days or if there's some heavy storms outside and you're in an area with unreliable electricity grid (power supplies have some protections inside but they're not UPSes, if a tree falls on some power lines and you suddenly get 480v AC instead of 230v AC, some components in the power supply will fail)

 

[Guest]

On 7/30/2019 at 9:11 AM, seon123 said:

Several people have posted topics where they killed their high end PSU by flipping the switch every night. I recommend not doing it. 

The PSUs have capacitors that are usually always charged. When you cut the power, they eventually discharge, and they then get charged quickly the next time you turn on the power. This probably caused those PSU failures. 

The bigger the PSU, the longer the hold up time.  The longer the hold up time, the larger the bulk caps.  The larger the bulk caps, the higher the in-rush current.

 

It's actually more likely to ruin a high-end 1000W PSU with 16ms hold up time @ 100% load then it is to ruin a cheap 500W PSU with only 10ms hold up time when you flip the switch off and on every day.

 

 

[Guest]

You want to try to keep the inrush current < 65A w/ 115V mains, but when you have a switch, a fuse, an EMI filter and the bridge rectifier itself that can all be impacted by inrush, it's impossible to make a product completely bullet proof even when you use parts more robust than the inrush rating.

 

In an effort to install more "protections", you literally install more potential points of failure.  The advantage being:  If a PSU fails due to repeated in-rush, it's very unlikely it would damage anything else down the line.

 

[Longjohnson]

On 7/30/2019 at 11:54 AM, Sandwhichsareyummy said:

So whenever i go to bed and the pc is shut down the leds still show. Im pretty sure i can disable them in bios, but the bios scares me. Can i keep just flipping my psu switch off whenever the pc is off? Also, sometimes my girlfriends desired way to shut it off is via the switch at the back? Can doing this while its on hurt the pc? 

Technically it is bad for you pc even if the pc is completely off. Our power grid isn't exactly clean, we have some what "dirty" electricity. All this means is turning the psu back on can spike the electricity in your hardware wearing them down faster than normal vs a consistent stream of power, like leaving the psu switch on. It's called flucuation, and it can damage components over time. This happens for all appliances. There are fluctuations naturally in our power which slowly damages components, they make voltage stabilizers for this reason. 

 

So yes technically speaking, it is worse to repeatedly flip the psu off and on instead of just leaving it on. How much worse, well we can't say but it is indeed technically worse than leaving it on. It draws extremely little power from the wall while off anyway. 

[KD2]

On 10/3/2021 at 11:05 AM, Longjohnson said:

Technically it is bad for you pc even if the pc is completely off. Our power grid isn't exactly clean, we have some what "dirty" electricity. All this means is turning the psu back on can spike the electricity in your hardware wearing them down faster than normal vs a consistent stream of power, like leaving the psu switch on. It's called flucuation, and it can damage components over time. This happens for all appliances. There are fluctuations naturally in our power which slowly damages components, they make voltage stabilizers for this reason. 

 

So yes technically speaking, it is worse to repeatedly flip the psu off and on instead of just leaving it on. How much worse, well we can't say but it is indeed technically worse than leaving it on. It draws extremely little power from the wall while off anyway. 

 

Oh my... this is new to me, thank god i read such thing, i always turn off my pc at bed time and unplug completely all the electronics devices (speakers, pc, monitor), didn't knew i was killing it, believe was true the countrary, the more you use your pc the more you decrease the lifespan. I never considered such inrush current issue. Well, is better to leave at least my pc in standby instead of turn it off completely.