Should You Shut Down Your Computer After Use?

[TestudoAubreii]

Greetings,

I don't know if this has been discussed here, so sorry if it has been talked about lately. Anyhow, I was just wondering about when, or if you should, shut your computer down after you are finished using it. I have a computer that is strickly for gaming. Well, I mean I'll use it online to update games and the such, be really it is just for gaming. I have one that I just use for the internet and work that I sometimes bring home. Now, I beleive that there are to different schools of thought on this, but I thought I'd ask anyway. SHould you shut your computer down after you are finished using them?

With that asked, let me say how often I use each computer. I use the gaming computer for a few hours on the weekend. During the week I usaully play about an hour and a half before I go to work and maybe the same on some evenings. Really, it is just based on freetime. Anyhow, am I hurting anything of the components by shutting it down, I don't know, so frequently? Both computers are turned on everyday for whatever reason.

Any advice offered is greatly appreciated and thank you in advance to any and all responses.

morrisonicus

[Spiff]

Why wouldnt you turn your computer off? It saves power..

Im no expert on computer wear and tear, but it seems to me your computer is more likely to fail if it is constantly running than not.

[Simetrical]

I don't think wear and tear on components is a big deal. You'd save a lot of power by turning it off if you only use it a few hours on weekends. If the time it takes to boot annoys you, you can have it sleep instead of power off completely, and not waste too much power.

[Strelok]

While running it obviously uses power, so you see your electricity bill go up. Other than that, the life span of your components is hence reduced. However when any operating system is idle all of the tasks are (usually) as such suspended and are not "stressing" them or severely wearing them out. The most likely thing to do the fastest due to leaving it running constantly is the fans before any hardware you have would die out. The death of any component is inevitable after use, whether it takes 20 years, it *will* happen. Just about any operating system (assuming your using whatever version if Windows) uses hard disk reads & writes and CPU time which in turn can slightly reduce the lifespan of those specific components if never shutdown and given a break.. However there is also power options to put the PC into hibernation which is just a very low-power state but not completely off, and hence only takes a matter of seconds to return from the low power state. You can try that option if you want to. Leaving it on all idling all the time does wear it out by an amount, but not as much as it would as, let's say, running a game or 3DMark 24/7. Your components produce half the heat (mainly the CPU and GPU, and the hard disk and RAM temperautre increases should be slight) on idle than running a game. Heat is one of the major causes of short lifespan for hardware, operation time is more based on the lifespan of the fans. The fastest thing of hardware to wear out would probably be the hard disk.

So to summarize it to make things simple: Leaving it operating 24/7 will reduce it's longetivity but the difference shouldn't be overly dramatic. There should be a quickening of the death of your fans, though. However this depends if they are high or low RPM, a low RPM fan will always last much longer. As noted above: a big concern would be the electricity bill.

Now as for what is said that shutting down is hard for your components, I fail to see why, and even if it does, the benefits of shutting it down when needed would outweight the so called "risk" of shutting it down each time after usage. On average right now I boot up my PC and reach the Windows 7 Beta desktop in about 10-15 seconds due to the recently bought Patriot 32GB SSD. So "waiting" for the time to bootup is no concern for me. I then go to use it between 15 and 20 hours, and then it is turned off for 6 hours, till it is used again. The 15-20 hours includes web browsing, music and strenous gaming. If you are truly worried about shutting it down a lot, then look into the hibernation option.

My father bought his new PC in Feburary of 2008 and he runs it 24/7 for many reasons, mainly recording TV while he sleeps, and has been running like this without issue till now of late March of 2009 and will probably continue to do so over then next years of usage.

For the *maximum* possible lifespan of your components and minimum cash coughed up for bills, I would always highly recommend turning off your PC whenever it is not needed.

[TestudoAubreii]

Thanks for the responses. I don't mind waiting for it to boot up, I mean it doesn't take that long to get everything up and running. As for the power, I am all for saving power, but what I am concerned about is the life span of the components. I will continue to turn the computers off. I guess it will not hurt anything to shut them down the 8-10 hours that I am at work and 6-8 hours that I am sleeping. Thanks again.

morrisonicus

[Strelok]

but what I am concerned about is the life span of the components. I will continue to turn the computers off. I guess it will not hurt anything to shut them down the 8-10 hours that I am at work and 6-8 hours that I am sleeping. Thanks again.

Even if it does "hurt" the components to shut them down a lot (I doubt it), overall better life span is achieved when shutting them down.

[Mafioso]

you should shut it down, you can save mother earth that way

[Stilgar CG]

tw3kr-PC said it all. Shut it down when you are sure you will not need for a while. This will shorten the lifetime of components, but you will very likely change them or buy a new PC before they fail anyway. Ask someone running servers or PC clusters for calculations. Those are running day and night (often under some load) and do not fail every day.
I turn my desktop off once a week or so, unless I am out of town or XP update requires a restart.

Btw, electrical appliances are at higher risk to fail when powered up

[Edelward]

But how much power is used by computer ?
My friend told me they have some energy saving scalable system.
Most of power is taken while on loading / content generating screens in the games.Less while playing on map,even lesser while browsing web
and then in energy saving waiting mod ?

[PGeo36]

But how much power is used by computer ?
My friend told me they have some energy saving scalable system.
Most of power is taken while on loading / content generating screens in the games.Less while playing on map,even lesser while browsing web
and then in energy saving waiting mod ?

Less than your tv relatively speaking to other appliances computers take up very little power most of the power goes to the monitor, but if you have that off and are running the computer on idle it hardly takes any power.

As for me I turn my computer off overnight or when I know I won't be using it for many hours, but if I'll be back on in an hour like if I go make lunch or something I usually leave it on (sometimes paused in the middle of a battle in E:TW).

[Juvenal]

Although tw3kr-PC did indeed say it all, here is an executive summary:

Leaving your machine switched on 24/7 costs money for the power and wears out the fans (try switching off the screen if you really want the machine running overnight).

Switching the machine on and off stresses the components because of expansion/contraction due to temperature changes. Most components are composites of materials with different coefficients of expansion, so eventually something cracks, de-laminates or goes bang.

Switching on and off just a couple of times per day (rather than every time you go away to get a cup of tea) would be a happy medium, you will probably find that you have replaced the PC long before it breaks.

[Simetrical]

However there is also power options to put the PC into hibernation which is just a very low-power state but not completely off, and hence only takes a matter of seconds to return from the low power state. You can try that option if you want to.

"Hibernation" often means "suspend to disk", which uses up no power, but is rather slow to turn back on. The only advantage over proper shutdown is that you have the system back exactly how you left it, in theory (as opposed to having to restart all apps, etc.). "Suspend to RAM", often called "suspend" or "sleep", is what puts your computer into a low-power state where it can be quickly restored.

As the names imply, suspend to disk writes the machine's whole RAM image to disk and reads it back when the computer starts up again. This means hundreds of megabytes of disk writes, so it's kind of slow, but disks need no power to keep their storage working, so there's not necessarily any power use. Suspend to RAM basically just disables the CPU, the disk, network card, the monitor, and most peripherals, keeping only the RAM alive (and maybe enough peripherals that you can turn it back on by hitting the mouse or whatnot). RAM uses very little power compared to things like the CPU and disk, so this is a nice compromise.

Assuming it works. I've seen blue screens in Vista from these, and never got it to work even once in Linux.

Now as for what is said that shutting down is hard for your components, I fail to see why, and even if it does, the benefits of shutting it down when needed would outweight the so called "risk" of shutting it down each time after usage.

Rebooting often is hard on your disks. Desktop disks are not meant to be continually spun up and down; they're meant to stay spinning most of the time. This uses more power but improves latency (the disk doesn't have to be spun up for reads or writes). They're only rated for a certain number of spin up/down cycles. Practically, I don't know whether it's better to keep them spinning all the time or spin them up and down all the time, but I could see it going either way.

[morteduzionism]

There was just a story yesterday about all the energy that can be saved by turning off your computer.

Of course I can't find it now.

(Bleep)ing yahoo news...

[Hun Birodalom]

I just switch mine to sleep so it's like it boots up in 5 seconds (literally). I restart every 2 days or so to clear up stuck data in RAM, cached files, temporary files and things like that.

[Strelok]

"Hibernation" often means "suspend to disk", which uses up no power, but is rather slow to turn back on

Because 5 seconds is slow to turn on? I don't know what PC & OS you tested hibernation with, but using Vista's hibernation + my current hardware setup, it takes between 5 seconds to load up. Even so, it should *always* be faster than a cold boot .The second I press the power button it says "Resuming Windows" and then Desktop is reached and fully responsive. As for sleep, it never works for me as my PC automatically comes back from sleep after a couple seconds and the welcome screen is shown.

The only advantage over proper shutdown is that you have the system back exactly how you left it, in theory (as opposed to having to restart all apps, etc.

As I said: I have yet to see Hibernation taking longer than cold boot up.

Rebooting often is hard on your disks. Desktop disks are not meant to be continually spun up and down; they're meant to stay spinning most of the time. This uses more power but improves latency (the disk doesn't have to be spun up for reads or writes). They're only rated for a certain number of spin up/down cycles. Practically, I don't know whether it's better to keep them spinning all the time or spin them up and down all the time, but I could see it going either way.

Well all my PC's I owned have been tested endlessly: Overclocking, 12 hour gaming sessions, rebooting constantly and defragmenting the disks constantly and shutting down everyday. The hard disks show little to no signs of reduced lifespan by this. My 80GB 5,400RPM HDD on my 1GHZ PIII based system built around the year 2000-2001 has had that exact same hard drive and is still spinning a long fine to this day.

I restart every 2 days or so to clear up stuck data in RAM, cached files, temporary files and things like that.

Stuck data in RAM can be cleared without a reboot.
Temporary files can be cleared with cleaners.

[Hun Birodalom]

Stuck data in RAM can be cleared without a reboot.
Temporary files can be cleared with cleaners.

Thanks captain obvious. But some temporary and cached files can't be cleared unless you reboot because the OS is using them. I have TuneUp 2009, I know what it does.

[Strelok]

Thanks captain obvious. But some temporary and cached files can't be cleared unless you reboot because the OS is using them. I have TuneUp 2009, I know what it does.

What specific cached files? No cache should be needed to be "cleared". No icon/thumbnail, DNS, browser disk & RAM cache, etc should *ever* want to be cleared. They are there for a reason. Sometimes if your getting an issue you can clear the specific cache, for example if the DNS resolver cache is causing internet hickups you can try purging it. For example I have a 999MB Firefox disk cache that I never clear out, and set CCleaner & Disk Cleanup to never clear the thumbnail cache. So wanting to clear "cached files" isn't exactly a good thing. I'm not sure what specific cached files you're talking about, though.

As for those specific temporary files: Disk Cleanup + CCleaner, + manually cleaning Windows\Temp, Users\Local\Temp, ProgramData\Temp, is enough cleaning for me.

[TSD]

http://tech.yahoo.com/blog/null/14848

This blog says its not really a big deal either way.

Anyway unless you plan on using the same computer for 5+ years, I really wouldn't worry about what you choose. I assume most gamers get/build a new one every 2-3 years.

[Simetrical]

Because 5 seconds is slow to turn on?

That would be enough to read 250 MB or more of uncompressed data from disk, maybe 500 MB compressed . . . seems plausible. I never really used hibernation, so I'm probably misremembering how slow it is. It should certainly be faster than a cold boot, yeah, unless maybe you're booting off a disk mounted across TCP over pigeon. I didn't really think that post through.

[jouno53]

To save some $$$ on the electric bill I just shut my computer down or put it into S3 standby (hybrid standby in Vista) before I go to bed, and turn it back on when I get home from school. That way, it's reducing the wear on the drives by only having to spin up/down once a day, and saving some money.

I have found this way to work well, you should try it.