How often?

[PizzatheHut06]

How often should you turn off your computer? Every night, once a week, etc? Is it bad for it to be "on" all of the time, or should I have it set a "standby" or "hibernation" setting at some point? Thanks for the help.

 

[chadley]

Hiya,

It won't do it anyharm to leave it on all the time. I often leave mine on for days for downloading etc.
On the other hand if ur not using it for anything it's not really worth leaving it on. It saves energy and the planet

 

[TheMajor]

computer are more or less build to run 24/7
servers are always build for beeing on all the time

 

[jaksback]

Unless you've made changes to the comp like installing and uninstalling progs, defragging, changes in sys settings, etc there really is no harm done by leaving it on. a restart should be made if any of the above are done. it certainly won't hurt though to save electricity, though if you do leave it on at least put your monitor in standby mode.

 

[Marvel]

A consideration to leaving the computer powered on 24/7 is being connected to the internet. A general user has protection with firewalls etc but if connected via DSL you may be open for inspection by the bad guys. My system will place the monitor in standby mode and log off a user if there is no activity, I was surprised to find firewall entry for the time I did have it powered on all night. I power my computer down to extend the life of the system and to keep it off the internet overnight. To each his own on this subject. I believe where you are in the country weather etc should be considered as it can destroy your PC or at least some components. The stability of your available power should be considered.
I really don't know if there is a correct answer on this subject, we do what we believe best for our situation.

 

[ThirtySixBelow]

Other than security issues of leaving your computer unmonitored overnight, there is really no harm to leaving it on. It's always good to give it a rest though and let it cool down. You can leave it on for the most part but give it some down time when you arn't using it for a while.

 

[Regulus]

Will the comp temps gradually increase by leaving it on for a long time, say a couple days?

 

[Marvel]

Speaking for my environment-the cpu and board temp take a few hours to settle at their peak if we consider the room temp stays constant for most of the day.
On hot days where the room temp shoots up around noon and continues to rise the cpu will gain temp slowly. The power supply fan will increase rpm a little and the cpu fan will be the first to spin much faster.
The box runs cooler when I take off the side panel and position a fan to circulate air to the open area.
To give you an idea of temp, the room temp is 82f, the cpu is 99f and the system zone-1 is 97f(power supply fan plug in point).

 

[Nubius]

Room: 78F - 25C
Case: 102F - 39C
CPU: 129F - 54C

My CPU seems to run hot =/. I'm gonna be renovating my case though. Personally I can't see why putting in front fans will help that much..its right behind the circuit boards for the extra USB's on the front..theres not enough space for air to really be 'SUCKED' in...so how much of a performance can they be?

Current:
2 - stacked 80mm fans - side - exhaust
1 - rear - intake 80mm fan

Here in a couple weeks:
2 - stacked 80mm fans - side - exhaust
1 - Rear - vantec tornado 80mm
1 - top blowhole - 120mm fan
1 - Coolermaster Jet blower for CPU..

rear intake will work out PERFECT cause the tornado and the centrifugal design of the blower line up PERFECTLY...so the tornado will blow right into the drum of the blower and it'll force it down even better. Plus I'll be giving my heatsink a good lapping plus I'll be using AS5 compared to stock heatsink and fan with generic compound as of right now. PLUS I MIGHT get the 35w 2500+ XP-M the way my computer has been acting lately has made me shy away from wanting to overclock..although after I found out that guy put grease ontop of a thermal pad and then put a glob on the core and shorted the little circuits around the core =/ luckily chip still works, but HD boot sector took a fall so I had to format my 20gb =(

I do have a clockwise spinning 60mm fan on the CPU...if you get this:

http://www.svc.com/fa6080-uvblu.html

attach the 60mm clockwise and then the 80mm tornado on top..and you'll have a compressor! Two fans spinning in opposite direction but having the same airflow....with that duct especially and the fact that the tornado already has blades on the bottom that are non-moving but twisted in opposite of that of the fan blades, you'd probably have one hell of a little compressor.....bet your CFM and air pressure would be nice and high......I would try it, but I've been taking my comp apart so much lately its getting tiresome...if I get a spare PC built if I buy that 2400+ XP-M I'll buy another tornado and that duct and get temps with just the tornado and then temps with that duct and let you guys know how it works out!.

BTW: heres a nice celcius to fahrenheit convertor:

http://www.wbuf.noaa.gov/tempfc.htm

EDIT: Wow I'm truly sorry I got offsubject....I don't know what happened.....It depends on what you use your computer for. I personally turn mine off everynight to conserve energy and just to give my processor some 'calm down' time I suppose you could say. They make a good point. go Into power settings and make sure you have it so your monitor eventually goes off and goes into standby mode and turns off hard drives for when you're leaving it on over night. My friend in washington..I was there 2 weeks and never once saw his computer turned off or even restarted. If you're doing Seti@home or Folding@home then it's cool, but basically CPU's are meant to last for thousands of hours...turning it off might gain me an extra 10 hours of life for my CPU opposed to you leaving it on...who the hell knows

 

[killians45]

I leave mine on. Granted modern computers have better components, but used to be that this could cause MTF. Think about it like this. You have, for example, alot of tiny resistors in there. They do as it says, resist... or limit... amt of juice. Well, anyhow, a few things happen. These components heat up, that makes sense. Now when they heat they get thermal expansion. When they cool they shrink. Expand... shrink...expand...shrink... get the picture? Why do, say.. sidewalks crack? Due to thermal expansion. The constant expand and shrink of a system will wear components down and eventualy crack. Now remember this is on older systems. However, on newer ones it may not be as much of a problem with better and heartier materials, but I can't say. There will ALWAYS be a thermal expansion problem, you cant beat that. You can only use better components that are STRONG... like carbon nano tubes cant wait for that one... but anyhow, I would look into it some more. there isn't really any correct way to answer that. just leave it on, thats what I do and the machines that I work on in the plants network. Some still run and they're 133's