i plan to leave my computer on for a couple of days.... how long is it safe to let your computer run? are there any side effects for prolonged usage of the pc without switching it off?

There are good and bad to both. If you leave it on it gets very hot especially in the summer and needs to be in a cool location. It burns about as much electricity as a 100 watt bulb. If you turn it on and off you are wearing out (slowly) the on/off button and when it's cold stressing the hard drive which has to spin up and warm up every time you turn it on. Personal preference really. Unless you are concerned about the possibility of starting a fire.

Leave it on Stand-by or Hibernate if your not going to be using it for a while.

Turn it off if your going away for a few days.

Will it wear out quicker if you leave it on,rather than off ?

Half the experts say yes.Half say no.

i would choose the hibernate option, b/c this process writes all you open data to hard disk, then shuts down ther PC, if there is a power outage, then all you data is safe, b/c its already on the HD. Be sure to turn off the monitor though, as they consume ALOT of energy, especially id its a CRT.

...AMD

so it's safe to use your pc the whole day and when i'm gonna sleep i leave it to hibernate/standby(around 7 hours)? if i do it this for a week is it all right?

Thats pretty much what i've been doing with my pc for the past 7 months.. Hadn't had a cold boot/soft reboot untill a few days ago to do some maintanance.

Even less so (hibernate) since it got a new cpu cooler and i cant hear it much, therefore i forget to press the hibernate button..

Like mentioned above, your most likely consern is your temps if you plan to run it all day, especialy cpu and your active HDD temps.. use speedfan and monitor it to see how hot it goes then if you need to mod your pc or clean out the dust as necesary. And also your PSU, if its capable of handling such prolonged hours of use..

oh ok t hanks.. btw whats PSU?

what i would suggest, is to take a vacuum, well first shut the PC down and unplug everything from the computer. then put the hose attachment on the vacuum, then suck the dust from the PUS fan, and the air intake fan ( if its a BTX chassis) then suck dust from the air output fan on the reaer, and also clean off all the dust from the vents on the side. do this every few months, and this will dramtically cut down on heat issues.

...AMD

BTW, forgot to metion, that after the computers all unplugged, from the power source, press the power button to drain any residual power.

My computers on almost all day, if im not at it, or in bed then its on standby. I restart every couple of days because i play a lot of games and run out of Virtual Memory, ive had mine nearly 2years, still runs great. If there are problems to leaving it on a lot i dont know it.

I have an old computer i use as a file server, as a backup mostly, thats on all the time (small PSU, lower Power consumption than most)

My computers on almost all day, if im not at it, or in bed then its on standby. I restart every couple of days because i play a lot of games and run out of Virtual Memory, ive had mine nearly 2years, still runs great. If there are problems to leaving it on a lot i dont know it.

I have an old computer i use as a file server/http, as a backup mostly, thats on all the time (small PSU, lower Power consumption than most), i havent used it properly in a few months, but it seems fine too, thats abotu 5years old but ive only been leaving it on for around 6months

yea that happened to me once, windows refused to come out of hibernate. finally i just started pressing keys on the keyboard, and only the up arrow key is what bought it out of sleep.

...AMD

I leave on for days at a time
left a 1ghz intel running for a yr on reboot I lost the cheap maxtor drive
my last reboot on 2 machines was 9 days now

mine's been running for two years straight. I run BOINC in the background and donate my unused clock cycles. I have all non-essential equipment, hard drives, monitor shut down after a certain amount of time.

that is not neceessary,perhaps you are too care about your hardware and waste of electicity.
no a perfect suggestion could be fit for this condition, I think.

so if you turn off drives in given time period turn off monitor
the only side effect left is your electric bill
I make a coupla bucks with mine so its a % small tax deduction

the amount of electricity my CPU, ram, and fans use is negligable.

turning off/on a computer all the time is not healthy as you're going from one state to another. Heat expansion is a big cause of failure.

Yeh true. So is overheating and/or unstable/under-powering...

You get no heat expansion when you let it run all the time. It is already in a warm state - so I don't see your point.

Maybe i should've expanded on it before...

i ment if you're pc/components are running at high temps for too prolonged periods.. there is a difference between letting it run constantly on 25-35`C and running it constantly at +50`C. The latter is obviously no good for your system.