Stupid question!

[Seefer]

I have heard so many answers on this so I thought I would hit the Linus forums for input! How often should one shut down their PC? Every night? Once a week? Once a month?

[themctipers]

never

[EunSoo]

I turn mine off whenever I'm not using it since it only takes like 10 seconds to boot. But at work, none of the computers (mac pro) are turned off or put to sleep and they are just fine. I'm sure there is an objective answer to this question but I don't think it makes much of a difference.

[Leonard]

It is always good to do a PC restart to kill unused running processes, especially in Windows and you should turn off the PC whenever you are not using it and if you find this to be stupid then leave your house lights on in the day too.

[Brooksie359]

I put mine to sleep. The only times I turn it off is if I need to for software reasons or if Windows is acting strange.

[Seefer]

Thanks guys, I was asking because I heard your PC can get really hot and take a lot of power if left on for a long time, I am one who rarely if ever shuts his down and it freaked me out lol

[Brooksie359]

4 minutes ago, Seefer said:

Thanks guys, I was asking because I heard your PC can get really hot and take a lot of power if left on for a long time, I am one who rarely if ever shuts his down and it freaked me out lol

Just put it to sleep. You won't heat up your components and save power while not having to deal with a long startup time. I don't have to worry about that on my desktop but on my laptop startup is quite slow. 

[Leonard]

1 minute ago, Seefer said:

Thanks guys, I was asking because I heard your PC can get really hot and take a lot of power if left on for a long time, I am one who rarely if ever shuts his down and it freaked me out lol

that is true but only if the PC has an OC with steady manual voltage or if processes are running that is using all the resources, malware can also do this but if the PC has no malware, has an OC that has adaptive voltage and is properly maintained and by maintained i mean software and hardware maintenance(this includes periodic cleaning of dust) it will not run hot nor overheat.

 

Now there is one more thing to keep in mind and this is for laptops and or small form factor builds, if the air intake and or exhaust is blocked for whatever reason, idk like a plastic bag somehow then it can also overheat.

[Daniel644]

my laptop gets put to sleep to move from 1 location to another, aside from that it gets a reboot for the occasional Windows Update, I only ever "shut it down" if I'm gonna open it up for something and I haven't done that yet as RAM is stupid expensive, I find older versions of Windows need rebooting because they get noticeably slower the longer they are run for, Windows 10 isn't to bad about it, once and a while if I have trouble flipping between audio devices, like going from internal speakers to Bluetooth Headset to USB DAC/Amp (all of which get used atleast once every day) then I will restart to clear the error causing the playback issue, basically I only restart Windows 10 when I need to because something isn't right.

[Daniel644]

18 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

are there people who leave it on running nothing passive (like the PC’s not running a render job or Folding or mining) while they’re away for work? o_o

my mom, but her computer is a decade old and takes 5 minutes to boot up (i'm building her a new one soon as RAM prices aren't crazy), will probably wait for one of the Ryzen APU's launching in February since thats all she really needs and we don't have to deal with GPU prices.

[Daniel644]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

is it able to use a SATA SSD? o_o while the rest of the new PC is on hold

in theory but not worth the 786 mile round trip to drive to her house and back to install an SSD

[Daniel644]

1 minute ago, VegetableStu said:

oh dang, i forget that i practically live next to a PC hardware shop ._. sorry

the issue is even if I bought an SSD, set it up in one of my computers and got it all ready so all she needed to do was plug it in, she wouldn't even be able to figure out how to open the case to install it, let alone install it and she lives in a small small town, like barely has a post office and 1 fast food joint and 1 grocery store level small (like the nearest Walmart is almost an hour away). she'd probably have to drive an hour or so each way up to Panama City to find a shop to install the drive then they would probably want to sell her a copy of windows not understanding the drive is ready to go and BS her with some line about how she would still need to buy a license for windows at full retail from them and the copy on the drive is pirated or some other BS to make sales off of older people that don't know computers.

[LogicalDrm]

Windows only needs to be shutdown when its updating. Linux practically never, which is partly why its more common with servers.

 

 

7 hours ago, Seefer said:

Thanks guys, I was asking because I heard your PC can get really hot and take a lot of power if left on for a long time, I am one who rarely if ever shuts his down and it freaked me out lol

That doesn't make much sense. It uses same amount of power, depending on what load is running. Also it only gets hot if you don't have enough cooling to move hot air out and cool air in. And if you are running heavy tasks like folding, mining or rendering. You could run stress test to see what is max temp of your components. Meaning that if you leave it to just run heavy tasks, it won't go over that stress temp. Unless fans fail, in which case mobo will do force shutdown to prevent any damage. Limit of CPU temp for shutdown can be changed in BIOS. Default for Intel is 110C.