Run pc 24/7 or not?

[camaro]

What's better? Run my PC 24/7 or should I shut it down as much as possible?

[cancer]

Personally, I'd turn it off more if it doesn't have a "sleep" mode. Keep in mind that it's pulling 200- 300 Watts while it's on. This does add up when the electric company comes asking for money. I have heard computers ( and thier peripherals) be called "electric vampires" and for good reason. But as far as it hurting your PC, I don't think so.

[otheos]

other than power consumption consumption reasons, it's better to run it 24/7 as far as the computers "health" is concerned.

By power consumption reasons don't take it narrowly to who pays the bills but rather to the waste of natural resources.

[Sanman]

I leave mine on, but I use the sleep modes.If I'm gone for the weekend, I will shut it down.

[setup]

Components on modern motherboards are designed to handle the power surge. I think the electric company started "Leave it on all the time" I don't mean turn it off and on every 15 minutes but if its not in use for hours on end why burn the fuel?

[[Neo770]]

I leave mine on too. Exept for the monitor which gets turned off after 1 hour.

Also if I will be not using it for more then about a day I will turn it off.

[JimG]

If you're going to leave it on all the time, and plan to use power saving features, make sure there's nothing that requires the HD to run. My computer doesn't have sleep mode or anything, so I tried setting the hard disks to go off after 30 minutes idle. Big mistake ... hit the perfect time for them to actually go off, then some process started them up a minute later ... this went on all night. Currently I leave mine on 24/7 (running SETI and some other stuff), and the monitor goes off whenever I'm not using it (i'm at college, and I don't pay the electric bill).

[camaro]

I'm mainly worried about the health. I turn the monitor off all the time. I sometimes keep the pc running for days though. I'm just wondering cause the computers we have in lab(in college) run 24/7 and so do the monitors with no screen savers. I think they were on for a couple years now straight and they seems fine.

[Bsdboy]

http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/015776.html

Bsdboy

[Ziz]

I leave mine on from when I come home from work (7:00pm) to when I go to bed (midnight or so), as I randomly go to it to do things over the course of the night. If I'm dashing out for a few minutes to 7-Eleven or something, I'll leave it on while I'm out, but during the day when I'm at work or going to be away for more than a couple of hours, I'll turn it off. I've had horrible luck with the machine not powering back up properly after hitting "sleep" mode, so I disabled any such features/settings. Since it's only on an average of 5 hours a night, I figure it's no big loss.

[shahani]

Turning off/on causes heat fatigue on some of the sensitive components on the motherboard. Leaving it on means constant temp and no fatigue to wear out the components.
Secondly, everytime you boot, the boot sector of the hdd takes a hit. So leave it on 24/7, but remember to put everything in sleep mode after an hour. Monitor consumes the maximum electricity.

I switch off my monitor if I'm not going to be using it for more than an hour. OTOH, a monitor is like a light bulb/TV. The more you keep turning it on and off, the lower its life.

Its all a tradeoff: like everything in life!!

[MoxManiac]

I turn my computer on when i wake up, and shut it off when I go to work (4pm). I usually turn it on for a little while before I go to bed, then turn it off when it's time to sleep. On the weekends, It goes on when i get up, and stays on until I go to bed, or go somewhere for more than a couple hours.

However, I leave my monitor turned on from morning till i go to bed, even if the PC isn't on.