Is it safe to run PC overnight?

[Mahbub]

So last night i discovered that molex to sata cables can catch fire.. i had one in my pc..  today i threw it away and used the normal psu cable instead of the molex to sata..  but now my OCD is going wild.. i cant stop thinking that my pc might catch fire if i keep it on overnight.. how safe is it to keep pc on overnight? For stuff like downloading games and stress tests etc?

[minibois]

Any PC you trust to run for 10 minutes is one you should be able to trust for hours, including overnight.

I have ran my PC overnight hundreds of times and many people on this forum will tell you they run their PC 24/7/365.

[ProjectBox153]

My machines (with a few exceptions) run 24/7/365. My main desktop actually has a molex to dual SATA adapter in it - it's been that way since I built the machine in 2019. No issues yet. Unless your computer has a serious issue (yours does not) you don't have to worry at all about leaving it on. 

[Mahbub]

11 minutes ago, minibois said:

Any PC you trust to run for 10 minutes is one you should be able to trust for hours, including overnight.

I have run my PC overnight hundreds and times and many people on this forum will tell you they run their PC 24/7/365.

 

8 minutes ago, ProjectBox153 said:

My machines (with a few exceptions) run 24/7/365. My main desktop actually has a molex to dual SATA adapter in it - it's been that way since I built the machine in 2019. No issues yet. Unless your computer has a serious issue (yours does not) you don't have to worry at all about leaving it on. 

Thanks to both of u.. phew.. makes me feel better..

[dizmo]

Anything can catch fire. Doesn't mean it will. If it was a quality connector there's no reason to throw it out (though I don't know why you'd be using it if you already had the native cable on the PSU). I don't turn off my PC. I've never had a fire.

[manikyath]

I've probably seen a combined 4 million hours of PC uptime (yes.. many computers, 24/7, several years), and in all that time i've seen *two* fire incidents. both with a faulty sata cable.. in fact both with the SAME BATCH of faulty sata cable.. so in a sense it could be seen as one incident... caused by a supplier cheaping out too hard on the plastics in their cable.

 

moral of the story? dont use cheap freaking adapter cables.

 

actually.. no, i've had a third incident.. my home server caught fire once, because it was a 10 year old motherboard where every capacitor was bulging, and i decided to run *that* 24/7 at 100% load. but that's sort of like saying "i broke my arm when seeing if falling of a roof hurts"

[jtgolden1s]

I have always ran mine overnight.

[Archer42]

I personally tend to take certain precautions, like with any electric equipment left unattended.

Use separate low current fuse in outlet it is connected to, make sure nothing easily flammable (paper, cloth) left close to it, use full metal case for stuff that runs overnight etc.

Someone might call it stupid, but IMO totally worth tiny bit of trouble. House fires are no fun and they happen when people get careless with stuff.

 

That said i never had an incident at home when something really caught fire. Burned components - sure, but shorted/burned capacitor or melted connector is one thing, actual fire is another one.

 

The only incident with, let's say "open fire" I've seen was ibm storvize v7000 extension PSU blowing up when I was working on some cable management in a rack near those with storage system. Made loud "bang", the fan immediately spun up to max RPM and whole bunch of magic smoke with capacitor innards and fire came out. Startled me "a bit" and for few seconds i was standing there and thinking "So what do I do now? Try to pull half-burning PSU? Or just cut the power to whole rack, which will obviously be bad?". Thankfully the thing detected "PSU fault" and turned it off (or some protection was triggered in PSU itself and then "PSU fault" happened - i do not know)... the smell was there for few weeks though... but again - no actual fire in the end, just a "jumpscare"...

[Jayzer]

I never run any of my devices overnight, and even then, if I want to download a game on my laptop, I ask my dad to help queue it up while I'm sleeping so it's ready the next day.

I don't see my dad downloading stuff and leaving his PC on the entire night, so I don't know what'll happen, but just take precautions and make sure that nothing can unexpectedly blow up.

[Letgomyleghoe]

I have a phenom system that ran for 12 years almost on continuously, never caught fire. used the same shitty 650w antec PSU for most of the time it was alive.