M
Mxsmanic
Johannes said:
To do that, you must turn off all the power, or disconnect a lot of
electrical devices each time you go out.
To do that, you must turn off all the power, or disconnect a lot of
electrical devices each time you go out.
M
Mxsmanic
if said:
I turn off monitors after about 2 hours, but I leave the machines
running continuously. I'm willing to pay for the power in order to
lengthen the life of the machines.
D
DaveW
Frequent re-boots are hard on the hardware in a computer. It puts thermal
stress on the motherboard components, harddrives, etc. as they heat up and
cool down frequently. Your machine will last longer over the years if you
simply turn it on in the morning and turn it off at bedtime, if you will be
using it once in a while during the day.
stress on the motherboard components, harddrives, etc. as they heat up and
cool down frequently. Your machine will last longer over the years if you
simply turn it on in the morning and turn it off at bedtime, if you will be
using it once in a while during the day.
J
John Weiss
DaveW said:
Cold boots and shutdowns may thermally stress the system, but I doubt warm boots
appreciably do so.
If electricity cost is a problem, then using a Standby mode during the day may
be better than repeated on/off cycles. However, I'm a fan of keeping them on
24/7 (used to run a BBS; now my idle machines are folding for the cause --
http://folding.stanford.edu). My current oldest machine has been on almost
constantly for 5 years now...
O
Odie Ferrous
Your simple question sparked off quite a debate!
I power my systems on and off all day long. Some machines get it over
100 times a day. On a regular basis.
My machines don't fail.
Besides, I upgrade most of my systems a couple of times a year, so can't
say what sort of long-term damage this might cause.
Odie
M
Mxsmanic
Odie said:
That's every five minutes during an eight-hour shift. What are you
doing with them?
N
nooneimportant
As a lot of people have pointed out, system life is almost negligable to
consider, cycling may well reduce life span, but whats the point if the
shortened lifespan is still longer then your typical replacement interval?
I personally do upgrades every 18 months or so, and a new system every 3
years or so.. If powercycling reduces the lifetime of the system to five
years, i don't consider it as significant.
Personally I leave the system itself on at all times, it might get shut down
twice a month, typically for updated stuff that needs a reboot, i'll just
shut it down at night instead of walking away from it, and let the reboot
happen when i restart in the morning. Typically when I am going to be away
from the desk for more then an hour or so I turn off the speakers and
monitor, printer is OFF unless needed. Having the system continue running
has added only slightly to my monthly power bill, and may well be negligable
come winter when the heat produced by the system is sufficient I won't have
to run my heater very often (Phoenix arizona, ran my heater maybe a total of
twenty hours last winter, but then again my downstairs neighbors did most of
my heating!). I leave my system on tho so that the TV tuner card and it
associated recording software can do their magic and grab some of the late
night repeats of daytime programming that conflicted with other recordings,
it typically snags about an hour of TV each night for me, usually from the
discovery channel. I don't know how much power draw it pulls when the
monitor and speakers are off, but at the end of the month the bill isn't
much bigger then it used to be so I don't worry about it. If you are
concerned about power consumption there is a little contraption out there
that you plug into your wall, plug your system into it, and it will report
volts/amps/watts etc that is being drawn through it. Think some even
measure kWh for time based measurements. Find one of those little jewels
and try it out, see how much power us used during each cycle compared to a
running system, startups do draw more power, all that static friction to
overcome in the moving parts bringing them up to speed, lot lower power
demand to keep them at speed. Additional power demand by processor
depending on what its doing at the time....
My laptop on the other hand... gets hibernated when I am more then twenty
minutes away from it... why? Cus i don't need it ot be running full time,
and its ancient, nearly six years old, everything in it from teh factory
except for a hard disk i replaced last year (think my fujitsu travelstar
10GB it came with lasted ALMOST to its 5 year predicted lifetime).
Bottom line... if you ask two different people this question you will get
five different answers, choose what works best for you and stick to it.
M
Mxsmanic
nooneimportant said:
There are many people who keep computers for years, not months.
I've kept individual systems for more than eight years. It makes no
sense to upgrade every three years, much less every 18 months.
J
Jeff Gaines
Long term research on the reliability of on/off switches
R
Rob Morley
Testing knackered hard drives - fit drive, power up, check BIOS to see
what it says, power down, remove drive, fit drive ...
D
Dragoncarer
Mxsmanic said:
Sometimes it makes a hell of a lot of sense: it all depends on what you're
using the system for.
Try playing, for instance, Doom3 with any respectability on that 8yo system,
or encoding video. Or even compressing several hundred megabytes (nay, GBs)
of files and folders into an archive...long and slow and frustrating.
D
Dragoncarer
<snip>Odie Ferrous said:
I've noticed that no-one seems to have said anything about alternatives to
complete shutdowns (unless I missed some posts). Of course, I'm aware the
original purpose was to enable a simple text editing environment without
loading a clunky OS at every bootup, but what about putting your 'puter into
Stand-By?
I tend to do it all the time. I'm just using my computer for home use, and
I'll usually shut down at bed time, and boot up in the morning. But rather
than leaving it humming all day (many fans), I put it into stand-by when I'm
not using it. So it's in and out of stand-by 3 to 10 times a day. Stand-By
is nearly instanteous - or for me it is. And it will save power!
You can also leave word or your text editor running when you go into
stand-by, so you can begin working again exactly where you left off almost
instantly.
Just a thought...
C
Conor
If the power switch is rated for 100,000 cycles, he'll only be able to
turn on the PC for 5 times a day for roughly 54 years. How will he cope
after that?
And yes, I do think you're a pillock for thinking that is remotely
consequential.
C
Conor
And you'll have replaced the PC long before you notice the damage done
by cold booting.
C
Conor
And there's plenty of old P3's knocking about that are functioningMxsmanic said:
perfectly despite being turned on and off many times since the late
90's.
O
Odie Ferrous
Mxsmanic said:
Eight hours? That'll be the day. More like 14 - 16 hours a day. Seven
days a week...
Odie
N
nooneimportant
Mxsmanic said:
That may be your personal experience... I use the hell out of my system,
lots of horsepower, gaming, graphic editing, video encoding, lots of things
that really strain a system. As such I'm always on the lookout for how to
improve things a bit. And from teh gaming perspective each new killer game
ups the system requirements a bit more. But my point still stands, What's
the point of a shortened lifespan if its still longer then the replacement
interval. Whoopdedo if your replacement interval is 8 years, if your system
does its job adequately for all of those eight years thats just fine and
dandy, but for many of us system requirements do change pretty rapidly.
Anyone with demands for a high horsepower system will find themselves
needing to do something every couple of years at least to keep it "high
horsepower" as software and system requirements change. Now my websurfing
and emailing machine is an ancient laptop that still works, well beyond its
expected life now, all i've done was replace a hard disk that took a dump on
me last year, I'n in no hurry to upgrade that system any time soon cus it
doesn't need it. But my desktop gets pushed to its limits daily, and i want
to keep making those limits harder to reach, so I end up doing graphics
cards, hard disks, memory, from time to time, and at some point its most
economical to build a new system and downgrade this one to my
email/internet/chat computer, let my laptop become the doorstop I'm
surprised it hasn't turned into yet.
K
kony
No point in thinking about a switch rather than any other
lesser limitations. For example, long before the switch
life rating was exceeded we could expect repeated inrush
current to have taken a toll.
K
kony
yes, but then there are alos plenty of them that have had
one or more parts fail already too. They may've been turned
on and off "many times", but what evidence is there that
they were turned off, on average, several times per day?
M
Mxsmanic
Dragoncarer said:
There aren't usually enough hours in the day to play video games, and
I never encode video. There are very few applications that really
require significant horsepower today, although games are sometimes
among them (if you like 3D stuff especially, although the video card
may be more important).
Most people never do backups, either.
The world of computers is growing, and the average amount of time a
computer is kept by its owner is increasing steadily. There may be a
few people who upgrade every 18 months, but nowadays many people keep
one computer for years, and it may even pass through several owners.
The computers at my school are over ten years old now.