Question regarding shutdowns and bootups.

[JMSOG]

So...My mom's old AIO computer just died after about 4 years of use. A long time ago, a friend of hers told her that one of the most damaging things you could do to a computer is to shut it down and boot it up. As a result, she would routinly leave it on for litterally months at a time.

 

Since it died, I put together a build for her (no hard drive, just a 1tb SSD, I don't know if that makes a difference), and the last few parts are going to arrive tommorow. So...before I present her with this brand new computer, I have to ask...

 

...Is it safer to leave it on than to shut it down overnight...? Factoring in performance overall and lifespan of the components.

[Guest]

Your mom is crazy (I'm sorry)

The only thing keeping is powered on 24/7 is add more zeros to the bills.

 

Just shutting it down every night is fine.

[007agentHP]

my older pc has been running 24/7 for almost 3 years with no downtime, so there is not danger to shutting it down at night or not.

[dmanschramm]

So...My mom's old AIO computer just died after about 4 years of use. A long time ago, a friend of hers told her that one of the most damaging things you could do to a computer is to shut it down and boot it up. As a result, she would routinly leave it on for litterally months at a time.

 

Since it died, I put together a build for her (no hard drive, just a 1tb SSD, I don't know if that makes a difference), and the last few parts are going to arrive tommorow. So...before I present her with this brand new computer, I have to ask...

 

...Is it safer to leave it on than to shut it down overnight...? Factoring in performance overall and lifespan of the components.

 

Some people leave it on, others shut it down. I like to shut it down to conserve power and such. But some things like servers stay on for years, and computers as well. Either way is fine but shutting it down is just less power consumption and less constant CPU load. But leaving it on is fine.

[TheKDub]

So...My mom's old AIO computer just died after about 4 years of use. A long time ago, a friend of hers told her that one of the most damaging things you could do to a computer is to shut it down and boot it up. As a result, she would routinly leave it on for litterally months at a time.

 

Since it died, I put together a build for her (no hard drive, just a 1tb SSD, I don't know if that makes a difference), and the last few parts are going to arrive tommorow. So...before I present her with this brand new computer, I have to ask...

 

...Is it safer to leave it on than to shut it down overnight...? Factoring in performance overall and lifespan of the components.

 

Rebooting it doesn't cause it any harm, and imo its better to reboot it at least once a week to take care of any errors that may have occurred in windows and that sort of stuff.

 

 

Though I just put my computer to sleep every night then wake it up when I wake up, that way everything is good to go right away instead of having to log into windows and start all my programs and reopen all my tabs every day...

[soup]

 

...Is it safer to leave it on than to shut it down overnight...?

 That is an age old disscusion/argument .

 

Two basic camps

1) Heat cycling is bad for your components and the major heat change is at switch on and switch off so don't do it

2) Leaving computer on whilst it is not being used uses up electricity you don't need to use .

So it's a case of you pays your money and takes your choice.

The middle ground seems to be don't switch it off if you are away for half an hour or so just (say) overnight. That way you are not power cycling so much and you are not wasting power overnight.

[osbios]

That's more superstition then anything else.

 

I would expect it to "wear" way more when running it 24/7 opposite then to turn it of at last 8 hours every night. (Your mother does sleep, doesn't she?)

 

Also in the lower end spectrum (where I consider AIOs to be) there is way lass voltage and heat fluctuations that really can wear down components.

And you have a big random factor of production quality.

 

To simplify:

Run it when you use it!

Make backups of data that you want to keep.

The machine can break 10min after you used it for the first time or it can still run fine in 20 years.

[osbios]

1) Heat cycling is bad for your components and the major heat change is at switch on and switch off so don't do it

That is not true for a long time now.

CPU and GPU use significant amounts of power only on demand. And everything else does not use enough power to have big enough heat fluctuations.

[JMSOG]

I've been on forums for almost ten years now, and I have NEVER seen responses to a topic this fast...I think i might like it here

 

I just gave her the URL for this topic so she can make her decision...Believe it or not, in our debates on this topic in the past, the power bill never really came up...Might be a little more important now, since it will be a 600 watt PSU

 

Thank you all!!!

 

EDIT: also never seen this "mark as solved" feature...

[soup]

That is not true for a long time now.

 

I did not say this was my view just that in any disscusion on leave on/switch off these seem to be the two main 'sides'.