Do you ever power down your desktop PC, until the next day?

[Chuckmiller1964]

I assembled my first PC, for my own use, in 1990 or 1991. My hobby eventually evolved into a business on the side and went on for 25 years. I was asked 1000 times if a computer should be left on or turned off overnight. On/off results in heating/cooling cycles which brings expansion/contraction of metals. That wisdom says it's better to leave the PC on 24/7. Get it warm once and hold it there. The flip side of that record says leaving it on 24/7 will bring some components, such as spinning hard drives, to their expected end of life as soon as possible. My own practice and advice to others became this: try to strike a balance. Leave it off until you need it, then turn it on. Leave it on until you are sure you no longer need it and then turn it off. Don't turn it off every time you leave the office for an hour and don't leave it on 24/7 just to kill your hard drive as early as possible. (Hard disk failure was very common back then) Fast forward to this era. My desktop PC suffered a failure while I was away from the house for a few hours so I wasn't able to witness what ever happened. Did it overheat? Did the power to the house surge or brown out multiple times? That may not be close to what happened but you can see my point. I'm thinking that when I get it rebuilt I may stop leaving it on overnight and when I'm out of the house for hours on end. 

 

What do you do?

[Dedayog]

1 minute ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

I assembled my first PC, for my own use, in 1990 or 1991. My hobby eventually evolved into a business on the side and went on for 25 years. I was asked 1000 times if a computer should be left on or turned off overnight. On/off results in heating/cooling cycles which brings expansion/contraction of metals. That wisdom says it's better to leave the PC on 24/7. Get it warm once and hold it there. The flip side of that record says leaving it on 24/7 will bring some components, such as spinning hard drives, to their expected end of life as soon as possible. My own practice and advice to others became this: try to strike a balance. Leave it off until you need it, then turn it on. Leave it on until you are sure you no longer need it and then turn it off. Don't turn it off every time you leave the office for an hour and don't leave it on 24/7 just to kill your hard drive as early as possible. (Hard disk failure was very common back then) Fast forward to this era. My desktop PC suffered a failure while I was away from the house for a few hours so I wasn't able to witness what ever happened. Did it overheat? Did the power to the house surge or brown out multiple times? That may not be close to what happened but you can see my point. I'm thinking that when I get it rebuilt I may stop leaving it on overnight and when I'm out of the house for hours on end. 

 

What do you do?

Like anything, tolerances are such that any machine can handle on/off cycles.  Similar to the debate on cars, do we turn off the engine at stop lights or let it run?  Do we break them in for 500 miles when new?  Do we let them warm up on cold days?

 

I've had 35 years of PC's, never had a failure of a product like you mention.  I leave them on for days, and sometimes I turn them off multiple times a day.

 

I haven;t run into anything that would lead me to believe one way of doing it is better than the other.

[Chuckmiller1964]

I should probably add that my PC is protected by an APC 1500 UPS.

[RONOTHAN##]

6 minutes ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

What do you do?

Turn it off every night before I go to bed and turn it on when I sit down to start using it for the day. I don't personally care about any of that heat cycling or any of the other reasoning that exists (from what I know it really doesn't matter), I do it because I sleep within earshot of my main rig and don't wait it to keep me up. 

[Chuckmiller1964]

2 minutes ago, Dedayog said:

Like anything, tolerances are such that any machine can handle on/off cycles.  Similar to the debate on cars, do we turn off the engine at stop lights or let it run?  Do we break them in for 500 miles when new?  Do we let them warm up on cold days?

 

I've had 35 years of PC's, never had a failure of a product like you mention.  I leave them on for days, and sometimes I turn them off multiple times a day.

 

I haven;t run into anything that would lead me to believe one way of doing it is better than the other.

35 years. Did you begin with a 286? 

[TylerD321]

Just now, RONOTHAN## said:

Turn it off every night before I go to bed and turn it on when I sit down to start using it for the day. I don't personally care about any of that heat cycling or any of the other reasoning that exists, I do it because I sleep within earshot of my main rig and don't wait it to keep me up. 

This is what I do for my personal computer (except for when I have my computer using Folding @ Home).

 

However, when I used to work IT at a college, we would use windows task scheduler to restart computers at around 2 am local time. The reason for this was to ensure that the computers don't stay on an excessive length of time. You would be surprised the number of times I went to a professor's office to look at their computer because they called about it being slow and the computer had been on for almost a year straight according to task manager. 

[Dedayog]

6 minutes ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

35 years. Did you begin with a 286? 

486dx25 if I recall correctly.  1989 or so I think, parents bought it from Sam's Club.

[Chuckmiller1964]

My first box was a store bought 286 with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives. My first self build was a 386 with the much better 3.5 inch floppy drives. My first hard drive was probably a 20MB model. The average RAM capacity was what, maybe 8MB? A math co-processor was a luxury add-in item. 

[Dedayog]

24 minutes ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

My first box was a store bought 286 with dual 5.25 inch floppy drives. My first self build was a 386 with the much better 3.5 inch floppy drives. My first hard drive was probably a 20MB model. The average RAM capacity was what, maybe 8MB? A math co-processor was a luxury add-in item. 

More like 2MB probably for you.  The 486dx25 had 4MB RAM and 170MB HDD, with a 5.25 floppy, 3.5 inch floppy, and like a 4x DVD reader.  I added a 4MB Voodoo card and then a 8MB Voodoo after that 4MB failed.  

 

And I never bought another desktop again   

[RONOTHAN##]

53 minutes ago, TylerD321 said:

The reason for this was to ensure that the computers don't stay on an excessive length of time. You would be surprised the number of times I went to a professor's office to look at their computer because they called about it being slow and the computer had been on for almost a year straight according to task manager. 

Knowing some of the profs I had back at school, this doesn't surprise me at all. Then again, my laptops aren't too much better, being on for usually 2-3 months at a time with only sleep mode in between. 

[Eigenvektor]

I always turn my computer off when I don't use it, never had any issues either. On most days that means powering it up 2–3 times (e.g. in the morning before I go to work and in the evening when I return home). Have also been using PCs since the 486 days (and a C64 before that).

[LloydLynx]

I shutdown my PC over night and use suspend for coming back to it same day. I have the case power button set to suspend for convenience. Never worried about fan bearings or heat cycles.

[manikyath]

the wisdom of heat cycles has been irrelevant for as long as computers have had dynamic clock speed, because they heat up and cool down with use anyways.

[starsmine]

the only reason why people bring up heat cycles is to tell people you are not doing anything in terms of longevity by letting the silicon rest. 

But in terms of power savings go ahead and put it it sleep when not using it. I often dont but thats because of how I use my PC to do things like play podcasts as Im going to sleep or use as an alarm to wake me up and make me go across the room to turn it off, but usingit like this means it using like an extra kilawatt a day, which isnt nothing. 

[porina]

My main PC usually gets left on all day and off overnight. This is not to save stress on the system but more that I'm too impatient to let it boot, and sleep has never worked well for me on any non-laptop system so I always disable them on desktops. Hibernation is so slow I might as well boot normally so I disable that on everything.

 

Other systems I might use less frequently get turned on as needed. That's more for power saving. I don't keep them running just in case I might need it.

 

BTW nice to see there's some other erm... vintage enthusiasts in this thread  I'm 486-era too. Getting into it a bit later, mine had 250MB HD and 4MB ram, later upgraded to 8MB. Woohoo!

[Doobeedoo]

I power it on the next day and only power it off when I go to sleep. It's near my bed one reason, I don't have a heavy render queue, sometimes I would leave it over night to download games with my crap internet. 

No point really shutting it down if you're away for few hours. Just have it have sleep, monitor turn off and so after a while. Won't degrade stuff, especially idle, it's meant to be used.

Just better not be some old cheapo crap that has noises on desktop and no cooling. Also drives go to idle too. Power wise idle and especially sleep barely sips power anyway.

So yeah I only turn it off when being away for much longer or sleep. 

As for power surge, I guess can power and unplug it if bad storm is on and expensive PC though I kinda don't. Can always get those protectors for it.

[TetraSky]

I have always turned my PC off at night for the past 20 years. Never had a single failure that happened due to this. Be it hard drive, power supply or what have you.

Though these days, I mostly just put the PC to sleep because I have tasks that runs on some days to automatically backup my computer and I'd rather it does that while I'm not home.

 

I have had an external 3TB hard drive for quite a few years now and it powers down/up all the time.

It's currently sitting at 47364 power on count according to CrystalDiskInfo. Still works fine. No bad sector or slow downs.

If turning it off and on hurts it... It ain't hurting it enough to care about it in the long term.

[Avocado Diaboli]

I turn it off when I'm done using it. No point in leaving it on and sucking back power that I have to pay for. It's not like it takes an eternity to boot up. And if you're that impatient, I suggest you look at getting your ADD diagnosed and treated. The only reason I would leave it running is if I've got a encoding or something running that can't be interrupted. But even then, I configure it to shut down the machine once it's done. 

[vf1000ride]

My main pc acts as my plex server and I also fold@home on it and did crypto back when it made money so it stays turned on almost 24/7 when possible.  I checked my smart data on the hard drive (970 evo plus nvme) and if accurate the pc has spent 78% of it's life turned on. The build pictures I have of my system show Nov 7, 2019

.Days since I put it in my system, 1830

Smart data showing 1439 days of up time.

718 power cycles

 

 

[PaulFCB]

 Yeah, when the crypto made good money it ran 24/7 for a good amount of time, it wasn't mining only when I was playing something and I didn't play that much it probably dropped 120 hours in C2077 and a couple hundred in CoD and only stopped it for other stuff like adding an SSD or restarting when updating the OS or other software.

 

 But that was 9900k and 3080, right now the PC is 14900k and 4090 and it's not running 24/7 even though I also use it as my Plex Server and it's up pretty much all day except for when I sleep.

[Holmes108]

I always turn it off at night. I'll often even turn it off in the day too, if I don't expect to use it for some time, but more often than not I will let sleep through the day.

 

Edit: I should add that I don't do either do to any real specific rationale, other than that it's just natural for me to turn off anything I'm not using for a period of time. It often takes a bit of extra effort in my brain to say "I'll just leave the PC on for now", if I was using it on lunch, for example, before returning to work, with the assumption I will be using it that evening. But always off at night.

[Chuckmiller1964]

To everyone:

Whether you turn it on and off frequently or pretty much leave it on all the time, are you getting at least 5 years from a system before you replace anything? 

[smcoakley]

Anyone who turns off their computer regularly aren't going to like the new Mac Mini.

[DeerDK]

23 hours ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

I assembled my first PC, for my own use, in 1990 or 1991. My hobby eventually evolved into a business on the side and went on for 25 years. I was asked 1000 times if a computer should be left on or turned off overnight. On/off results in heating/cooling cycles which brings expansion/contraction of metals. That wisdom says it's better to leave the PC on 24/7. Get it warm once and hold it there. The flip side of that record says leaving it on 24/7 will bring some components, such as spinning hard drives, to their expected end of life as soon as possible. My own practice and advice to others became this: try to strike a balance. Leave it off until you need it, then turn it on. Leave it on until you are sure you no longer need it and then turn it off. Don't turn it off every time you leave the office for an hour and don't leave it on 24/7 just to kill your hard drive as early as possible. (Hard disk failure was very common back then) Fast forward to this era. My desktop PC suffered a failure while I was away from the house for a few hours so I wasn't able to witness what ever happened. Did it overheat? Did the power to the house surge or brown out multiple times? That may not be close to what happened but you can see my point. I'm thinking that when I get it rebuilt I may stop leaving it on overnight and when I'm out of the house for hours on end. 

 

What do you do?

Yes. And I have a physical power switch that I turn off as well. So when my pc is off it is OFF. 

 

My work laptop on the other hand, I usually put in sleep mode until the auto updater tells me that it needs to run a reboot because it's been a week and the CAD software gets frequent updates and tweaks. 

 

9 hours ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

To everyone:

Whether you turn it on and off frequently or pretty much leave it on all the time, are you getting at least 5 years from a system before you replace anything? 

In general yes, but my last gpu + case was a stop gap solution during Covid so Ive replaced those way more recently. 

[RokinAmerica]

3 hours ago, Chuckmiller1964 said:

To everyone:

Whether you turn it on and off frequently or pretty much leave it on all the time, are you getting at least 5 years from a system before you replace anything? 

I am on a near 4 year old desktop system I turn on every morning and off every night. It replaces my 2016 MSI desktop and my 2016 MSI lappy. both used every day until Super Bowl morning in 2021 (when I built this one). All were used the same way. I work from home on a multi-screen pc and still have the MSI as a weekly used backup pc, and use the laptop maybe 3-4 times a week. 

 

I don't have any worries.