Leaving PC on Does Damage Components

[Reid Bridges]

I know this is old but I get so tired of this Myth. I own a computer business and have for 25 years. First off I think most of this came from people from their work. Yes workstations and servers are made to be left on all the time. They have much better components then consumer class computers that's why they cost three times as much. 

The fans are ball bearing if there are any, I build mine with fans less designs with larger heatsinks. Power supplies have much better parts with again ball bearing or fluid bearings so they have a much longer life. They also came with solid state capacitors long before consumer computers did. Most of you buy the cheapest computers you can find and they have the cheapest parts China can sell in them. 

That said, the number one cause of computers failing we see is from systems left on all the time. 

1: Dust will build up at a much greater amount with fans pulling it in all the time, yes a sleep mode will help here.

2: Fans will and do wear out and if it quits in the middle of the night you wake to a burnt up system. 

3: Power supplies will fail if powered on all the time, and when the fan quits I have seen then catch fire.

4: Hard drives consumer class have a three year continuous life span so if you leave it on all the time you take the chance of it failing. Enterprise drives have a 10 year life span.

5: Capacitors still fail regularly especially if they are electrolytic solid state Polymer ones last much longer but are usually only in higher class or business class computers. 

I see them fail all the time, they will bulge and rupturer and can burn out memory and cpu's because of the surge of voltage to them. They have a life span and the longer they are in a heat zone the sooner they fail.

6: The energy cost alone should be enough for us to turn the computer off when not in use. Some systems pull 400 or more watts, that's like leaving your hair dryer on low all the time. 

7: Computers no longer take 10 minutes to boot up so there is no benefit anymore to leaving them on. 

8: You wont get your updates installed, or fixes, a lot of automated system scans run on startup. 

9: It just makes no sense at all. 

[TetraSky]

3 minutes ago, Reid Bridges said:

6: The energy cost alone should be enough for us to turn the computer off when not in use. Some systems pull 400 or more watts, that's like leaving your hair dryer on low all the time. 

7: Computers no longer take 10 minutes to boot up so there is no benefit anymore to leaving them on. 

Just these two alone makes it pointless to leave the PC on all the time.

My PC boots in less than 20 seconds(fastboot). And reboots in under a minute. Easy enough to just press the power button in the morning and power it down at night.

 

Also, another reason not to leave your PC on all the time:

 

 

Stuff like this can still happen and you may end up without a house, especially if you leave the PC ON without supervision.

[Reid Bridges]

Glad to see your reply. I came to this forum because I just fixed yet another pc left on 24-7 he said he was out of town for Christmas and came home to his pc rebooting over and over. All the fans were either so stopped up with dust or had failed from drive sleeves as cheap computers have no bearings in the fans. It's a 4 year old HP. I put a hard drive in it in 2018 that failed taking his data with it. I told him the same thing then, turn it off. So here we are two years later. At least his hard drive is still good. But people dont learn, he has always left his computer on at his government job and is told not to turn it off. So it's in his head. But these are two completely different systems. But people still have this surge of power damages my computer garbage in their head. If you have a surge of power then you need a better power supply. I even see one guy say after he turned his off that had been on for years the fans seized so that's why he doesn't.  You think they wouldn't have ever seized if you left it on? They seized because the sleeves were bone dry because you left it on all the time. I rant people will still do what they believe,  so I will see them sooner then later.

[RejZoR]

I have my systems on 24/7 and never had any issues. If cooling works correctly and you don't have massive dust buildup, it'll be fine. In fact most components prefer to be at operational temperatures at all times instead of massive temperature fluctuations which can crack internal traces of chips or PCB over time. Running and warm components are also less likely to accumulate ANY kind of condensation or moisture. One could argue HDD's don't like it since they are mechanical, but I had drives that have tens of thousands of operational hours with only few hundred startups and they work fine even today.

 

Also as someone suggested, since it's ON at all times, having power surge in between wall and your system is a good idea. Surge protections cost few € and have saved my devices twice so far. It's just stupid not to use it.

[LogicalDrm]

*** Split from another thread ***

 

Original:

https://linustechtips.com/topic/1130218-does-leaving-pc-on-damage-components

 

Yes, the original is old. And because this topic does come up constantly, you should have posted it as own topic to begin with.

 

[NineEyeRon]

My PC boots from cold before I can sit back in my chair after pressing the button, there is 0 reason to leave it on h less I am using it or just briefly stepping away for something like a drink, food etc.

 

My PC doesn’t make me money so speeding thinks up beyond a point makes no sense. If your PC speed makes you more money then invest as the payback will make it worth it! You can leave it on doing tasks etc.

[Inelastic]

To reply to some of these:

1) That's aside from leaving your computer on. If your components get damaged due to dust, then that's negligence and will happen even if you turn your pc off when not in use. It will only delay it. People should be dusting their computers normally.

2) Ball bearing fans typically give off a noise before they die, so you can get to them before they die. If it's a case fan, then there shouldn't be an issue. Your system should be able to idle with no case fans and not burn out. If it's the cpu fan, then it's possible that damage can occur, but it's also possible that it will shut down before it gets damaged. You can prevent this with monitoring software that shuts your pc off if it gets too hot. But yea, leaving it unattended can bring a risk of something going wrong. Bitwit had a water cooled machine leak and spray water all over his components because he left it unattended too long and let it go too long without maintenance.

3) I guess it depends on the quality of the power supply. Components do degrade over time and can fail, more-so if they're cheaply built. I've never heard that they aren't designed to be on constantly.

4) That's true. Typically the default power settings will spin down hard drives if they're not in use which will extend the lifespan, but I don't recall if they spin down if it's the OS drive.

6) Under load, when at idle it's more like 100 watts. But, yea it does cost money to keep them on.

8: Updates will come. You'll get notifications about updates. Nowadays Windows forces you to update. If you're on Linux, then you probably know what you're doing when it comes to updates.

 

Hearing someone say "leaving your pc on does damage it" sounds misleading, like by design they aren't suppose to be left on all the time. To make up some numbers for an argument: If the lifespan of a fan is 10k hours, then it'll probably breakdown after 10k hours. When people say, at least when I say, that leaving your pc on all the time doesn't damage components, what's meant is that the fans will still last 10k hours. Are you trying to say that you'll burn through those 10k hours faster if it's left on all the time, or are you saying that the fan will last 8k hours, or are you saying that the ball bearings were only designed to be on 12 hours before they need to be shut down for a period of time? Your arguments lead me to believe that you're saying you'll burn through those 10k hours faster, but I feel like that's common knowledge; the more you use something the more you wear it out.