Leaving the PC on all the time, Yes or No?

[Journeyman]

This has been talked about before, what is best?

Or i should ask, does it wear out a computer faster, leaving it on all the time?

thanks

 

[hellah10]

yes leave it on....turning it on and off constantly isnt good for the power supply...

if you leave it on all the time, its good to reboot....ive gone 4 months before without rebooting lol

 

[RobFunk]

yup. hellah is right.

only thing is if you have a graphics card with a fan, once every 6 weeks or so you should blow the dirt off the fan it accumulates quickly. if not the card will probably go bad from over heating.

most people dont have a graphics card with a fan though.

 

[quantumleap]

Hard drives can be damaged if they are turned on and off frequently.

 

[Journeyman]

Ok good news

I have left mine on basically for an entire year...

 

[hellah10]

robfunk

one of the best investments i made was buying my ati 9800 xt pro....didnt know gaming could be THIS much fun lol

 

[TTinCO]

Hard drives can be damaged if they are turned on and off frequently.

QL, I think that frequent reboots will EXPOSE the damage on hard drives, but will not necessarily CAUSE any damage.

 

[TwoCard]

If you have a cable ISP. would not leaving the computer on all the time increase your risk of infection ??

 

[hellah10]

If you have a cable ISP. would not leaving the computer on all the time increase your risk of infection ??

no

protect urself

close ports that u dont need

get a router

 

[quantumleap]

QL, I think that frequent reboots will EXPOSE the damage on hard drives, but will not necessarily CAUSE any damage.

I just did some research and it just so happens that today's hard drives are more sturdy than the old ones. I had heard that frequent reboots damage hard drives. Here's an excerpt from Lawrence Livermore Labs saying that isn't so.


http://fac.lbl.gov/Facilities/Planning/Publications/FacQ/archive/FQ_10_00.pdf

The oft-heard warning that

frequent reboots will kill your hard drive

is, Reaves says,​

​

“…a myth from the days

when hard drives were larger and made

from softer materials. In fact, the Rocky

Mountain Institute has conducted studies

that show a computer would have to be

turned off and on every five minutes for

several years before damage would occur."
​

 

[Anonymous1]

i used to...then one day the fan went out and i was not aware...heat got the hard drive and that was all she wrote...now it goes off at the end of the day...

 

[RobFunk]

robfunk

one of the best investments i made was buying my ati 9800 xt pro....didnt know gaming could be THIS much fun lol

how much $ was that. It's insane how much some of these cost. Mine was 60 I believe, not much difference between 60 dollar one and the $500 one. anything over the stock card is a big upgrade.

 

[hellah10]

how much $ was that. It's insane how much some of these cost. Mine was 60 I believe, not much difference between 60 dollar one and the $500 one. anything over the stock card is a big upgrade.

$220...got it off ebay...i got a great deal. works perfectly

 

[druidwarrior]

A school of thought in ohio have debated this question before. And the conclusion is: Everytime you switch your pc on and off, your pc get get a -1 day in lifespan.

 

[PixWinns]

This has been talked about before, what is best?

Or i should ask, does it wear out a computer faster, leaving it on all the time?

thanks

Leave it on. Actually, large companies leave the PC's on for the longest time. In refernece to wearing out your PC, don't worry, unless you have hardware problems.

 

[TTinCO]

Another thing to remember is that there are a lot of programs out there that have resource leaks. What this basically means is that your computer will have less resources to use the longer you leave it on.

A reboot flushes out these leaks, and you start clean.

 

[hellah10]

Leave it on. Actually, large companies leave the PC's on for the longest time. In refernece to wearing out your PC, don't worry, unless you have hardware problems.

i dont even remember the last time i had to reboot our servers here at work

 

[TTinCO]

i dont even remember the last time i had to reboot our servers here at work

Are they running Windows? If so, what are you doing about Windows security updates?