Sign up for a new account or log in here:
also @ TechSpot: Lenovo sees huge increase in PC sales as rest of industry declines
Home › News › Weekend Open Forum
Weekend Open Forum: Do you turn your PC off at night?
For years we have heard the pros and cons regarding turning off your computer each night. Those in favor of the practice usually point to energy savings as their main reason for doing so. The trend of “going green” is no longer new but it’s hard to turn a cold shoulder to saving money, especially in this economy.
Those who are concerned with security point out that leaving your computer connected to the Internet unattended could make you vulnerable to attacks, however unlikely it may be. If you live in a small space like a college dorm room or keep your PC in your bedroom, leaving it powered on at all times will certainly add more heat to your surroundings – not very desirable during summer months.
Sure, you could set your PC up to go into hibernation mode to conserve energy and eliminate heat output, but several people complain that their computer behaves differently after coming out of hibernation and a full reboot is needed to remedy the situation.
Those who are against shutting down daily point to a long-running belief that booting and rebooting is hard on components and should be avoided as often as possible. Others run software in the background 24/7 like Bit Torrent clients of Folding @ Home. Some users simply want to gauge how stable their system is by measuring how long it can keep running before a reboot is necessary.
So, what’s your take on the subject? Do you typically shut down your system(s) at night or leave everything running for days, weeks or even months at a time? We’d love to hear your reasons in the comments below!
Image via LHF Graphics / Shutterstock
User Comments: 140
Got something to say? Post a comment-
yes, of course. and from outlet, too.
only medieval people don`t do this.
-
Always on and 100% CPU
I'm part of Folding@home project, my PC runs 24/7 regardless of whether I am on the PC or not.
-
I used to leave my rig on 24/7, but noticed it was considerably hotter in my office, and hallway, than in the rest of the house.The temp has been a lot more comfortable in the evenings since I began shutting my pc off. Another plus is that my power bill is consistently $70-$90 less each month. I don't think of it as "going green", so much as plain old smart economics.
-
I put my laptop into low power consumption settings at night (not sleeping it), because the next day I typically SSH tunnel into it from my school network to bypass school filters (SOCKS5 proxy) and to access documents as well. Very helpful.
-
straight on all time.
just reboot when it crashes.
and it just goes off when have a blackout.
-
I let it suspend to ram (s2ram) after 60 minutes w/o use or overnight. It just takes a few seconds to wake up in OpenSUSE.
-
I turn it off at night now. Back in the day when I had a much slower internet connection, I used to leave it on all night to download stuff, but now the connection is fast enough not to worry about it.
-
Why would i want to wear out my hardware by leaving it on 24/7? Not to say that i don't leave my p4 fileserver on from time to time but that also seeds my favorite versions of linux. I feel that power savings and saving my hard drive life is much more important. Also gaming rigs suck a $hitload of juice.
-
negroplasty said:
Stay on 24/7 365. I've heard it can hurt your machine turning it on and off frequently as when you kill the power your system continues to heat up for a short period of time, if turning off after heavy use you can see the potential for problems here. My computers have always stayed on with their hard drives spinning. No longevity problems as of yet.
-
I have one computer that I keep on 24/7, for whatever tasks I decide for it to do. This system does not use much power, so I am not terribly concerned. I put my other "main" computer on standby whenever I'm gone during the day and at night I sometimes outright turn it off, though the later is not regularly part of my routine.
-
i have always shut down at night, except when i was in the business. we had novell server that ran for 8 years without a reboot. sure wish windows could do that.
-
My computers stays on 24/7. At night when I am asleep is when my computers run backups, disk cleanup, defrag, scans, ect... I also have security cams connected to my pc and a lot of other programs such as ftp, network scanners, ect.
-
I only leave my computer on at day when I leave something downloading, every other case and over nights I turn it off. It is unnecesary to leave it powered when I'm not even at home, specially since boot times are of around a minute or minute and a half.
-
I never shut my main PC down and haven't for years. One of the main reasons is that I remotely access it when I am not at home using Orb or Splashtop.
-
treeski said:
"Going green" be damned lol. I turn my computer off every night to save money. It's a pointless waste otherwise, except for a rare occassion when I have something to download over night.
-
At the wall?
-
yRaz said:
It gets cold in my room at night and my computer doubles as a space heater. I also need the ambient noise of the fans to put me to sleep at night.
-
Suspend every time I get up from the computer and shut down if more than a few hours.
-
TrueBooleanFals said:
cut it off at night, the bright blue LEDs would keep my wife awake all night and would heat the room to a temperature I couldn't sleep with. During the day, it's only on when I feel like it or if the wife wants to surf the web. Fast boots, decent net, 380w/h usage, why keep it on like back in the day. I can't believe I used to keep my 750w PC on when I lived with my parents...
-
Tekkaraiden said:
I always turn my computers off when I'm not using them.
-
Sarcasm said:
Shut down before I go to work, turn back on when I get home after 14 hours. However, depending on if I'm working on any projects then I leave it on.
-
Sarcasm said:negroplasty said:
Stay on 24/7 365. I've heard it can hurt your machine turning it on and off frequently as when you kill the power your system continues to heat up for a short period of time, if turning off after heavy use you can see the potential for problems here. My computers have always stayed on with their hard drives spinning. No longevity problems as of yet.
Probably depends on the component. However I also did hear specifically about GPU users who have long gaming sessions with their GPUs heating up, and then shutting the computer down immediately leaves all the heat inside the GPU. Some suggested to let it cool down first before shutting it off. Sorta makes sense.
-
mailpup said:
I shut mine down at the end of the day or if I know I won't be using it for awhile.
-
learninmypc said:
Many years ago when I was reading a similiar article from Kim Komando
She said it was best to leave your pc on 24/7, 365 so it would get virus/malware updates as they arrived.
That was good enough for me,but since I also listen to the tunes on my pc to sleep by, I can't really turn it off. So yes, I leave mine on all the time. rebooting a few times a day.
-
I shut my pc down every night, my roomate leaves his on. Guess who has more trouble with their pc? He does, period. I know this is by no means difinitive but it saves energy and I feel more secure.
Most Popular
| Trending | Featured |
-
GeForce GTX 780 Review: The Titan Descendant
-
OCZ Vertex 450 Review: Vector-like Performance For Less
-
Xbox One: Entertainment hub first, gaming console second - but can it disrupt TV?
-
Microsoft officially announces Xbox One: here's what we know so far
-
Apple claims Samsung violates Siri patents with Google Now
Featured on PC Games
Subscribe to TechSpot
Get free exclusive content, learn about new features and breaking tech news.