Do keeping my computer on harm it?

[gantugsmk]

I was looking at my computer's uptime, downtime sometime recently and saw that it was almost on every time since I re-installed Windows. 

Does it affect performance? I run it most of the time because I can access my files even when I am at school with Anydesk. 
 

[Needfuldoer]

4 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

Does it affect performance?

Not appreciably, no. You're not going to harm your PC by leaving it on all the time.

 

In fact, some will argue that constantly turning it off and on will cause more damage because every power on event is a tiny power surge.

[W1ll1aming]

11 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

Does it affect performance? I run it most of the time because I can access my files even when I am at school with Anydesk. 

Define harm it, by default Windows will turn off disks not used for a time, so those are likely fine, im sure windows does this with other things too

 

But aside from that there will likely be more tear and wear on machines that are powered on rather than off

 

If its not in sleep mode, whitch is unlikely if this is a desktop, then the fans are spinning, heat is being generated, the normal tear and wear applies

[Tetras]

8 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

Does it affect performance?

If you leave certain programs running all the time it can do, because memory leaks may slowly eat into your RAM, until it is freed up by closing or restarting.

[KidKid]

11 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

I was looking at my computer's uptime, downtime sometime recently and saw that it was almost on every time since I re-installed Windows. 

Does it affect performance? I run it most of the time because I can access my files even when I am at school with Anydesk. 
 

It is good to restart your system every week at least to keep performance up.

[gantugsmk]

9 minutes ago, W1ll1aming said:

Define harm it, by default Windows will turn off disks not used for a time, so those are likely fine, im sure windows does this with other things too

 

But aside from that there will always be more tear and wear on machines that are powered on rather than off

 

If its not in sleep mode, whitch is unlikely if this is a desktop, then the fans and spinning, heat is being generated, the normal tear and wear applies

i thought it's going to be more unstable, more so on the cpu because my oc can't hit 3.3 or above with adequate cooling, is this just wear and tear?

[Hinjima]

19 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

I was looking at my computer's uptime, downtime sometime recently and saw that it was almost on every time since I re-installed Windows. 

 

Does it affect performance? I run it most of the time because I can access my files even when I am at school with Anydesk. 
 

Its not going to harm your computer   I turn my PC off maybe 4-5 times a year, its just on for months at a time.

I notice no performance loss in games or slowdown during regular use. 

I am not worried about anything 'wearing out'.  Of course, case fans etc will take more wear because they are on all the time... But I have never had a fan fail in 25 years.

 

I run everything overclocked close to the limit and I use performance mode in the power settings, meaning my CPU clockspeed is never going down.

Its just at max clock speeds 24/7, even while idle.

[Tetras]

12 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

is this just wear and tear?

A 24/7 overclock is usually set lower than a benching overclock, just because of diminishing returns with voltage, efficiency and heat.

 

Leaving your PC on doesn't cause "wear and tear" that would meaningfully impact your overclock, unless the voltage is too high and the CPU degrades, but that's normally something (assuming a sensible voltage) that takes a year or multiple years to occur, not a few months.

[W1ll1aming]

16 minutes ago, gantugsmk said:

i thought it's going to be more unstable, more so on the cpu because my oc can't hit 3.3

Now overclocking isnt my area of expertise, but is this the case only when the pc has been on for a while or always?

 

Normal tear and wear wont cause your pc to perform worse per say, it will just shorten the lifespan of some things by a little, a fan that is spinning 24/7 will need to be replaced before one that is spinning 6 hours a day

 

12 minutes ago, Hinjima said:

  I turn my PC off maybe 4-5 times a year, its just on for months at a time.

Just out of curiosity, how do you install updates? Windows will force updates on if you dont install them often enought, and if you are using linux, then you still wount get security updates and so

[Ominous]

It doesn't matter, unless you care about:

• Wasting electricity 
• Unnecessary heat generation
• Your case getting clogged with dust more quickly
• Your operating system's memory rotting
• Missing critical security updates

Either choice: leaving it on or rebooting every day, causes negligible "damage" to components; do what you want.

[Hinjima]

16 minutes ago, W1ll1aming said:

Just out of curiosity, how do you install updates? Windows will force updates on if you dont install them often enought, and if you are using linux, then you still wount get security updates and so

Never had a windows update be forced on me. 

When I install updates are basically the only times I restart my PC, unless I want to go into the BIOS.

I don't use Linux, my PC is purely for gaming. I do nothing else.

[freeagent]

I only shut my computer off for maintenance, other than that it runs 24/7, sleep is disabled. I do reboot it for reasons, but I run my max stable OC 24/7.

[Pusbucket]

18 minutes ago, W1ll1aming said:

Just out of curiosity, how do you install updates? Windows will force updates on if you dont install them often enought, and if you are using linux, then you still wount get security updates and so

 

1 minute ago, Hinjima said:

Never had a windows update be forced on me. 

When I install updates are basically the only times I restart my PC, unless I want to go into the BIOS.

I don't use Linux, my PC is purely for gaming. I do nothing else.

There is a big difference between rebooting a machine and turning it off.

Never saw Windows update requiring a full power down to install updates.

In theory the only time you "need" to turn off a computer is messing around with the actual hardware.

 

Back in the day (90'-00's) when doing tech work we would invoke every prayer and superstition we could muster if we had to power down a server that had been on for years. Always a fair chance they wouldn't come back to life.

I'm sure it's a much rarer occurrence today.

 

Personally My PC's are pretty much on 24/7 unless mucking around with hardware, never had a problem.

Actually have 2 WD Black HDD's still in daily use, one has almost 13 years of "power on", the other about 10 1/2 years.

Wish they still made stuff of that quality now.

[Pusbucket]

The only thing I do is load different bios profiles, one with system OC'ed, one just default mellow settings.

I only load the OC profile for gaming or cpu intensive tasks.

I will reboot prolly at least every couple days just to refresh crap and avoid those nefarious memory leaks.

[Pusbucket]

This reminds me of the time it took almost twenty minutes to explain to a client why he couldn't keep working on his pc while we replaced the PSU.

"The POWER SUPPLY supplies POWER to the computer so it turns on, if I remove it, there will be no electricity for the pc."

Is the sentence that made him literally say "Oh.....I get it."

 

Mind you this was a guy with a Master Degree in Engineering.

[cmndr]

On 5/31/2025 at 7:24 AM, Tetras said:

If you leave certain programs running all the time it can do, because memory leaks may slowly eat into your RAM, until it is freed up by closing or restarting.

This was more of a concern 20-40 years ago when computers had around 1000x less RAM and the OS wasn't as robustly designed. 

 

My suspicion is that with modern windows you'll have enough forced restarts for updates that you won't need to worry much.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memory_leak

Quote

In modern operating systems, normal memory used by an application is released when the application terminates. This means that a memory leak in a program that only runs for a short time may not be noticed and is rarely serious, and slow leaks can also be covered over by program restarts.

 

Disclosure - I barely restart, I have tons of RAM. I don't close things.

[Mark Kaine]

I somehow do both, I leave my PC on for days and I sometimes turn it on/off a lot (usually for software reasons, mods, etc, but sometimes I'm just testing different GPUs etc, ram OCs, etc...*)

 

I don't think it harms anything, if you have a good PSU... except the poor fans... They're not in the best shape...

 

 

*tbf most of these are just restarts so the PSU isn't turned entirely off... Turning off and on your PSU frequently is BAD, no two ways around it... (some people do this "daily" apparently )

 

 

 

22 hours ago, Hinjima said:

Never had a windows update be forced on me. 

But by default windows does like weekly "security" updates... How do you go about this, are you like "oh I wanted to update anyways, nothing is 'forced' upon me..." or? 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Pusbucket]

3 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

But by default windows does like weekly "security" updates... How do you go about this, are you like "oh I wanted to update anyways, nothing is 'forced' upon me..." or? 

by turning off automatic updates, pausing them, etc. Then you can choose when and what to install for the most part.

I always turn off auto updates. I wanna see what is updated so when it borks my PC it helps troubleshooting.

There is a whole range of settings for updates.

Only very MAJOR security updates are forced.

 

remember, if your PC worked Tuesday morning but not Wednesday morning  AND you have auto updates enabled, check the updates. 

[Mark Kaine]

28 minutes ago, jmwhite33 said:

by turning off automatic updates, pausing them, etc. Then you can choose when and what to install for the most part.

I always turn off auto updates. I wanna see what is updated so when it borks my PC it helps troubleshooting.

There is a whole range of settings for updates.

Only very MAJOR security updates are forced.

 

remember, if your PC worked Tuesday morning but not Wednesday morning  AND you have auto updates enabled, check the updates. 

 

I personally use this

 

https://www.askwoody.com/ms-defcon-system/

 

 

Sidenote: last couple or more years this was always defcon 1, so I was clear to stay clear!  now recently I'm seeing 2 and 4 

 

Not sure how that's possible... or is this only for windows 10... 

[Redfury2020]

I’m wondering about the fans. If they are constantly running to try to keep the computer running cool, then isn’t that going to be a problem at some point? They are going to be sucking in dust and hair, etc as well, and a lot people don’t seem to remember to clean the fans from what I’ve watched on Linus’s videos. Just a thought. 

[Hinjima]

33 minutes ago, Redfury2020 said:

I’m wondering about the fans. If they are constantly running to try to keep the computer running cool, then isn’t that going to be a problem at some point? They are going to be sucking in dust and hair, etc as well, and a lot people don’t seem to remember to clean the fans from what I’ve watched on Linus’s videos. Just a thought. 

Well, yes and no.  Fans usually last many years and replacing them is not very difficult or expensive if you buy some budget fans.

You'd be surprised how well systems run with dust in them, at my mothers job their computers would be on 24/7 for years without any clean.. The dust was properly caked on the hardware.

 

Most modern PC cases have some sort of dust filters.

But yes, after a few years it might start to overheat due to dust buildup.

[atxcyclist]

I built a server out of ancient parts for my old office, it runs 24/7 and the board/processor had almost a decade of use on it before I deployed it, and the case fans had more than that as I used an even older one. It's been running now for several years and has only been shut-down a few times for maintenance, it doesn't care. I replaced one fan with a quieter version, but that was just a quality of life improvement the older one was still going. 

 

My home machines I typically shut down just because I don't need them on all the time, unless I was running a long file transfer offsite or when I've run a Minecraft sever for friends.