What is best for your PC? Off, On, Hibernate?

  • Thread starter Thread starter KingOfHearts
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K

KingOfHearts

I have heard that you should leave your PC on, that just seems strange to me
so I don't do it. So I always turn it off when I am done, I could turn it on
and off 2 - 3 times a day, but then I was told that all of this "cold"
booting could damage the computer. What about hibernating or sleeping, is
this better. Maybe all of this is BS and it doesn't even matter.
Thanks for any input.

KOH.
 
Many people have many different opinions on this. I hate the fact of having
my drives spin down and up and down if I am gonna turn the system off
several times a day. The power may be a concern but I don't believe any PC
sucks that much juice while idle. Most ppl leave them on.
 
KingOfHearts said:
I have heard that you should leave your PC on, that just seems strange to me
so I don't do it. So I always turn it off when I am done, I could turn it on
and off 2 - 3 times a day, but then I was told that all of this "cold"
booting could damage the computer. What about hibernating or sleeping, is
this better. Maybe all of this is BS and it doesn't even matter.
Thanks for any input.
Click to expand...

Most stress on electrical and mechanical components happens during
turning on (and with rapidly changing enironment conditions like
temperature). Just think about why incandescent light bulbs almost
always fail when you turn them on and rarely while they are operating.
That said, there's a trade off point which is very hard to assess.
 
True, I had several AMD / Tyan duals that worked fine but once shu
down for a while they then refused to startup, now they may have bee
from a bad batch of boards but other systems of all kinds have don
the same thing

Use em and at the end of the day shut em down, as long as they ar
well cooled running them won't hurt them, allthough keep the speaker
on for warning alarms and shut down the monitor if going to be awa
for more than an hour

The logical downside is that no matter what, moving parts do wear ou
faster than those not moving, fans, HDD's, etc
 
The issue is moot for many ppl, given the Internet is 24/7. Many ppl use
their PCs for a wide variety of purposes, and the idea of shutting down and
restarting on a daily purpose seems almost quaint. Heck, I have literally
DOZENS of programs that need to run at all times of the day & night,
including anti-virus scans (twice a week), daily anti-virus signature
updates, anti-spyware, RAID synchronization checks, time updates, webpage
monitoring utilities, backup jobs, Tivo Desktop (so my various Tivo's can
provide mpeg, photo, and mp3 support anytime of day), Diskeeper defragger,
and on and on. Some, like Tivo Desktop, are 24/7 by nature. For the
others, the idea of running many of these during the day and gobbling up my
resources just isn't worth it. And some I don't even control when they
decide to run, they have their own schedules. IOW, for many ppl, the debate
is academic.

Based strictly on others experience and my own gut instincts, from a
technical point of view, it's probably best to run 24/7. Seems I've had a
LOT less HD failures, for example, since I started running 24/7 many years
ago (keeping things at a constant temp/humidty seems to help too). The only
time I'm *down* is if I'm away for an extended period(e.g., vacation).

JMTC

Jim
 
as far as I am concerned tyan boards and opterons are meant as servers, I
would keep those running anyway however I would guess it is a bad batch of
boards too
 
In message <[email protected]> "Jamie"
power supplies these days are pretty good with that
Click to expand...

Your lack of quoting makes it difficult to determine what you're talking
to, but in the case of PC death, the power supply isn't usually the
component that dies, it's often the capacitors.

Bad caps are unfortunately common, but in my experience, heating and
cooling them frequently tends to speed up capacitor failure.

It's like anything else though, it's luck of the draw.
 
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