Thread: So, correct me if I'm wrong...

But isn't leaving your computer on 24/7 very bad for it? I've been trying to get my roommates to shut off their computers at night to save not only their computers, but also on electricity.

Besides electricity waste not really.

Unless your computer is prone to overheating from being left on too long... which is a different issue in on of itself and should be fixed with proper cooling.

Originally Posted by Option hunter

But isn't leaving your computer on 24/7 very bad for it? I've been trying to get my roommates to shut off their computers at night to save not only their computers, but also on electricity.

Actually, no, it's not bad for your computer. By all technicality it should last longer when you leave it on. It's because of the thermal cycles, if you leave it on all the time it never cools and contracts the metal, it's almost always at the same state (give or take).

BUT the lifetime of computer components are so good now, you shouldn't have to worry about it. I would rather put the wear and tear on the CPU (which really isn't very much), than get a huge power surge in the night that is higher than what my APC battery back up is rated for and lose all my data on my HDD.

And then definitely your electricity bill, much better when you turn them off at the times you're not gonna use it for more than 5-6 hours or more at a time.



Then again, I keep mine on during the day (and sometimes at night if I am out) so I can still access my computer through the PogoPlug cloud service.

tell is to them like this if you guys turn off your computers at night we will save x amount of dollars each every month which you guys can spend on games etc

my laptop gets turned off at night or when I'm at work... my main box is on 24/7/365

From a technical standpoint, its good to kind of refresh your computer every now and then to get it back to a 'startup state'. My work computers I keep on all the time because theyre not mine and Im not paying for the electricity, but my home computers Ill turn off every nite mainly to save on electricity and I have no reason to keep it on. Keeping it on means its still connected to the internet and still susceptible to attacks. Actually what I used to do is just sneak on friends computers that I used to live with and set their power settings to hibernate after 3 or 4 hours. They never even really paid attention to notice.

My desktops and server at the house stay on all the time. At night, they are busy updating software, ripping movies, performing virus scans, performing backup jobs and so on and so forth. I have a lot of computers at the house and I run it like an IT shop. Its good practice for work. I honestly do not care about my electric bill because I do not have to pay one

At work, I am part of a large IT department for a huge organization with dozens of offices all around the world. Our workstations and servers are all always on and only get rebooted for patches. Some of these have literally been powered on for several years, only rebooted for patching.

Leaving computers on all the time can extend the life of certain things, like motherboards because they do not take the initial surge when the power is turned on. Additionally, they do not have the heat up/cool down cycle that can also be hard on components. Modern computers are built with such high-quality components though, I think you would see little real world difference between turning one off every night and leaving it running all the time.