What harm exists in turning a PC on and off every day?
Posted by YoungAmsterdam@reddit | buildapc | View on Reddit | 716 comments
Back in the early 2000s when our family had our first computers, my step-dad told us it's important to not turn the computer on and off multiple times per day because it would damage the computer. Now that I've recently built my own computer, I'm wondering if it's better to leave it on sleep mode all day or if I should be turning it on and off each time. I mean this question to be very general — not specific to my PC parts or anything.
Note that I typically use my home computer in question in the mornings, then I go to work all day, then I come home and use it again and keep it on all night. Is there any problem or benefit or difference of any kind if I turn it on and off twice per day? Will doing this on a daily basis cause any harm to my PC parts?
Comfortable-Low-3067@reddit
there’s literally no reason to leave your pc on, if you’re not doing anything on it. for me personally, i turn my pc off whenever i step away from it. however, i’m p sure that turning it on, and off frequently, will drain the battery on the motherboard faster. someone correct me if i’m wrong.
pdoherty972@reddit
The CMOS battery I think you mean? Yeah, I think you're right than when the system is off that battery is being drained to keep your BIOS settings intact.
Comfortable-Low-3067@reddit
yes. the cmos battery
Comfortable-Low-3067@reddit
yur hardware will probably last longer too
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
He's misinformed and you're more likely to run into issues with sleep mode than turning it on and off multiple times a day.
Maybe someone he hates is covering the electricity bill
bobbyelliottuk@reddit
Why not use hibernate?
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Had problems at some stage with all these features in the past, usually only for a day or 2 due to a bad update. Considering the pc goes from on to the login screen in like 15 seconds, literally no point these days though.
EishLekker@reddit
I guess that you don’t use many programs then?
I use hibernate frequently. Any time I need to restart (for updates or the system being slow for being on so long, so maybe one per week) it’s a hassle to to get back to where I was. With hibernate I get everything back exactly as it was.
tbombs23@reddit
whats the advantage of hibernate vs sleep? no power consumption? i used to do it when i had a laptop but usually do sleep now im desktop only
EishLekker@reddit
My main reason is that I don't trust sleep mode. I tried it before, and it eventually would randomly start up in the middle of the night or something. I don't want my computer to ever startup without me telling it to, regardless of reason.
I tried a bunch of solutions, but nothing was long lasting (as in, a setting might get reset after a windows update). In the end I got sick of it. I don't want to fight against the computer this way. I just want it to stay off until I start it up. Hibernate solved that, while still giving me all my programs back exactly as they were.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Went with one of the motherboards Hardware Unboxed showed as booting fastest and also have high speed nvme boot drive I keep decluttered - but yea, not put anything but absolute essentials to load on startup.
EishLekker@reddit
You misunderstood me. I’m not talking about boot time. I’m taking about the time it takes to manually get everything up and running as it was before the restart.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
A few seconds?
If it's a cubase project maybe 20.
EishLekker@reddit
When I'm working I have maybe 15 programs running with a window open and an icon in the taskbar. And several of those programs have multiple windows open, and those windows can, in turn have multiple tabs in them (mainly the case for Chrome, VSCode and FileLocator).
And I want most of those icons, windows and tabs in a specific order.
tbombs23@reddit
at any given point i have 50+ tabs open lol. i've found that if you close chrome in Task Manager then when you relaunch it recovers your session which is nice cuz then i clean boot more often.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Good for you lol? And on a side note - you know there are softwares that in a single click could open and resize all those for you, right?
When I'm working I have only what I need open and close it when I no longer need it, this way the thing I'm working with gets the resources they need. Music production is an absolute system hog.
EishLekker@reddit
I was simply describing what my setup looks like, and what it takes to get back to where I were before a restart. If I only needed a few select programs to do my work, then I wouldn't see a problem with a full shutdown or restart every day.
I genuinely would love to hear your tips on such programs. I tried the built in "Restart apps" feature of Windows a few years ago, and it wasn't really fulfilling my requirements (but maybe it has improved since then).
I do that too. The problem is that most things I need for multiple days, or even weeks, in a row. And since I need to shutdown or restart the PC more often than that, I'm in the situation I'm in.
I get that. But it sounds like you at least only need a few select applications running when you do your work. For me, as a system developer, instead of one gigantic application, I have like 15 as I mentioned earlier.
ElectricTeddyBear@reddit
I made a quick python script that runs on startup that boots whatever programs I want. It's pretty straightforward and may be useful for you
EishLekker@reddit
Well, I have a similar script running at startup, at least on my work laptop. But there are some problems with such a solution.
The programs to start is hard coded or configured in some way, instead of being flexible and automatic (the programs that was running at restart should get started, whichever they may be)
The inner state of the programs is reset unless the program itself restores it. In the case of a browser, all the windows and tabs. But I don't want those things restored if I manually close the program.
The order of the windows might get mixed up (I want the same order as before, even withing a single application)
ElectricTeddyBear@reddit
I think one and three can definitely be solved, but it wouldn't be a trivial program, and I would have to look at the docs to see what is actually viable. My specific use case was a bunch of random research papers in random spots that I wanted reloaded, and I just used chrome to do it. I had to manually input what I wanted to keep, but that could be easily automated.
I think really it depends how much you care. There may be a way to monitor current programs, store process ids for things currently running that aren't from the system, and reboot them on opening. Same thing with chrome's innards probably (there has to be an easy way to monitor open tabs, etc). Other programs though, I'm unsure. For example, I think you said you had vscode running, and I have no idea whether there's a programmatic way to interact with vscode itself to check open projects and whatnot. It wouldn't surprise me, but I'm not sure.
EishLekker@reddit
Well, ideally this would be handled by the OS itself. Like, it could do something like hibernate, where it basically saves a memory snapshot of everything running, but limiting that to all non-OS processes. So, all the regular applications would get their memory back exactly as it was (down to the last bit, at the exact same memory location), while the OS itself has been started fresh. Naturally I can see many challenges with implementing that, but if it could be done, it would solve the problem without the application developers needing to do anything.
The second best approach is something like the "Restart apps" feature already built into Windows, that I mentioned earlier in this discussion. It requires each application developer to add support for the feature in their application. Last time I tried it, it wasn't really good enough to convince me. But that was a few years ago, and I will try it again soon.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Exactly - this is why I hadn't discussed my specific uses till now before neither of us reflect your average user.
Your system needs multiple lightweight softwares on boot, mine requires a select few heavy softwares - most people need steam, discord and maybe spotify.
Senzin_@reddit
So you turned off fast boot and enabled complete shut down manually? Cause in windows 10 (and I guess 11), when you press shut down, it does not do a complete off. Restart does, but shut down goes into a low energy hibernation.
TheLightningL0rd@reddit
Fast boot was causing some issues for me. I would watch videos (either on the drive or on youtube) and the audio would slowly de-sync from the video. I googled for weeks to find a solution until I saw some forum post about fast boot. I turned it off in the bios and never had the de-sync issue again.
Risk_of_Ryan@reddit
Fast boot was causing my GPU to stutter somehow and only when it was booted this way and it happened 100% of the time. A full shutdown/restart is the only way I trust things to be working as they should. As others have said just too many bugs/issues surrounding fast boot. The fact it's on by default is absurd.
tappy_okuma@reddit
Fast boot gave my newly built PC bsods almost every day for over a year. Turned it off and haven't had a bsod for years now
Anxrchh@reddit
can this not be circumvented by turning off the power supply after shutting down anyway?
omnichad@reddit
No. It logs out all users and suspends to the boot drive. Instead of booting up normally and starting drivers one by one, it just copies the hibernation file back into RAM and just resumes where it left off.
For the most part, this works. But any memory leak in the kernel or a driver will not be reset and it will get progressively slower. Windows updates once a month requiring a reboot is the bare minimum, but really 2-3 weeks without a proper reboot can really affect performance. This part is true whether you do the fake shutdown or just leave it on/asleep.
Anxrchh@reddit
ah well I restart my pc a lot and I personally disabled hibernation so my pc shuts down properly anyway as far as I know
throwaway63820174@reddit
I found out that holding shift while clicking "shut down" will do a complete shutdown
After a while I noticed a bit of slowdown and lagginess when gaming, and Task Manager was showing tons of threads and hundreds of thousands of handles, and I believe that was why. Shift + shut down clears them tho and I've been doing it at least every other time I turn it off just to be safe, haven't had any of the same issues since
tbombs23@reddit
our computers need a clean boot periodically. i would say at least once a week probably better every couple days realistically. theres a reason the #1 tech support solution is to turn it off and back on again. (power cycle)
I feel like we have been decieved by windows that shutdown doesn't really mean shutdown. kinda whack tbh.
tbombs23@reddit
this should also be mass communicated as a stickynote lol
tbombs23@reddit
this needs to be mass stickynoted everywhere lol. i only recently found this out. and sometimes turning OFF fast boot can create problems too so just fyi.
Definitely something we all should get in a habit of doing is clicking the restart once in awhile to perform a fully "clean boot" i believe. Or doing a clean boot shutdown an alternate way.
andresbcf@reddit
I used to use cmd to shutdown my laptop because it never actually turned off, and it was an old laptop so if I wanted it to be fast I had to do a full shutdown, turn on. I’ve written shutdown -s -t 10 more times than I can count lol
ImageLow@reddit
Yes. Only way to get magic packets to work these days.
JeffTek@reddit
I've had PCs straight up refuse to wake up. Fuck all that, modern PCs boot in seconds anyway just turn it off.
EishLekker@reddit
The main reason many people use hibernate is to get all the programs back like they were. That’s definitely the reason for me. It’s always a hassle closing applications, then restoring them after a restart.
Theoretically I could get exactly what I want using the windows built in feature “Restart Apps”. But last time I tried it, it was buggy, many windows ended up in the wrong position/order, and several third party applications hadn’t implemented the feature.
But that was a few years ago. Hmm. Maybe I should give it a shot again.
JeffTek@reddit
The only application I've had issues with has been afterburner and rivatuner. I keep the detached performance graphs on screen and it just always moves to some default position on my main monitor after a reboot. It's annoying but no big deal really
EishLekker@reddit
I just tried the "Restart apps" feature. It hardly works at all. Only two application was successfully restored without issues (Outlook and Notepad++). The vast majority, 9 applications, wasn't restored at all.
Two applications were restored but not in a proper way:
Chrome only restored the windows for one of the two profiles, and it got the window order wrong, and some unsaved text input in a website form was deleted.
Textpad was restored with the documents open, but it had deleted all unsaved changes without any warning.
So, that is a failure in my book.
icer816@reddit
Personally, my experience with hibernate has either been that it doesn't work, or is so slow to wake that it would've been literally faster to boot.
EishLekker@reddit
I can't remember a single time hibernate has failed for me. My current PC is 6 years old, and I have been using hibernate all that time, multiple times per week.
Sure, the boot itself is slower with hibernate. But it restores my applications exactly as I left them. If I need to do that manually, that takes several minutes. So, if you want to compare total time, then it's:
* regular shutdown time + regular startup time + \~5 minutes
vs:
* hibernate shutdown time + hibernate startup time
icer816@reddit
If you're so racked for time that allegedly saving 5 minutes is that big of a deal, then why even bother going any further than just locking the machine?
It doesn't sound like you're saving enough time or effort to even bother, imo.
EishLekker@reddit
Locking the machine isn't gonna cut it when we're talking a laptop.
Also, this still doesn't solve restarts that are needed because updates etc.
To bother with what, exactly? This is only really a problem when I do a full restart (since I otherwise just use hibernate), and nothing you suggested is gonna help with the restarts.
icer816@reddit
I meant the hibernate seems to be saving very little time.
Why wouldn't locking the machine cut it though? Would be even quicker to open back up than hibernate.
EishLekker@reddit
I ment to write: Locking the machine isn't gonna cut it when we're talking a laptop that will get put into a bag. It can overheat.
The startup from hibernate isn't long enough for me to get annoyed by it. At worst, it's a few seconds extra that I need to wait. The comparison earlier was between a regular stop/start (or a restart), and a hibernate stop/start, where the regular stop/start (or restart) involves a lot of manual work to get to the same state as hibernate gives me automatically.
Locking the machine doesn't solve my main problem. Because I still need to restart it eventually.
The "Restart apps" feature in Windows might solve my main problem though, and I will try it out soon. It's been several years since I tried it last time, and maybe they have improved it enough to be useful for me.
icer816@reddit
Ah, yeah a bag, fair enough, I just shut down my work laptop when I need to lug it around, and it actually takes a long time to boot but I just don't care that much lol.
Yeah, you'll have to restart eventually regardless though. I'm not actually familiar with "restart apps" but that sounds vaguely interesting for when my own machine crashes
EishLekker@reddit
I will try to remember to write here after I’ve tried it.
Oh, and I remembered one more reason for not being able to use the lock mode on my work laptop. We have a clean desk policy at the office, so I put the laptop in a storage box without easy access to power. lol
icer816@reddit
Ah, gotcha. We also have a clean desk policy but it doesn't extend to the actual laptop.
EishLekker@reddit
Ah. Well, we done have assigned/reserved spots. So we need to remove everything.
PCRefurbrAbq@reddit
On Lenovo ThinkCentre slim desktops with generation 1-4 Intel CPUs, we use the GPO to disable sleep modes S1-S3 entirely. That particular model loves to Rip van Winkle.
MadMaui@reddit
Because Windows just runs better if it gets properly rebooted at least once a day.
omnichad@reddit
At least once a day? Are you running Windows ME?
Every 2-3 weeks depending on usage maybe. You must be running some leaky software to benefit from once a day.
EishLekker@reddit
Any source for this claim? The “at least one a day” claim, that is.
Are you really saying that there is a measurable difference between restarting once per day, and restarting once every two days?
I use hibernate, and only do a restart when the system starts getting slow (or if it’s needed for updates or some app install). I can’t really say I’ve noticed any difference until after maybe 4-5 days. And normally I go about one week between restarts on my work laptop and maybe even two weeks on my PC.
How do you measure this? Is there some benchmark program one can run? I want hard cold statistics.
bobbyelliottuk@reddit
I think it's an urban legend. I do what you do.
DeadGravityyy@reddit
I haven't seen hibernate as an option (using W10) for years now.
omnichad@reddit
It's been replaced/combined as hybrid sleep. If you don't change the defaults, sleep works both sleep and hibernate. If there's consistent power, it wakes like normal. If the power gets cut the RAM was already copied to disk and will resume like hibernate.
RawbGun@reddit
Hibernation is a type of sleep mode. If you enable it then when you put your computer to sleep it'll hibernate
DeadGravityyy@reddit
Not true.
They are two separate modes, hibernate is usually used for laptops since it uses less power than sleep (but takes longer to start back up).
I have seen it used on PCs back when windows 7 was a thing.
psimwork@reddit
Considering sleep/stand-by only uses like 1-5W of power, there's not a huge advantage of using hibernate over sleep. Hibernate is really only useful for a laptop when the battery runs dry and windows writes the contents of RAM to a storage device, and then recovers it when the machine is powered back up (which is why it's disabled by default on desktops - though it can be enabled).
But if you're unwilling to use sleep, and you want to use hibernate, you might as well just do a full shutdown. The startup/boot time should be similar with an SSD.
omnichad@reddit
The better hybrid sleep that's the default in Windows 10/11 has the benefit of being safe against power outages on a desktop. It suspends to RAM and copies the RAM to disk. If the power doesn't go out, it wakes up like regular sleep. If the power is cut then it resumes from hibernation.
You get the benefits of both.
EishLekker@reddit
Last time I tried using sleep mode on my PC I had huge problems with it starting up in the middle of the night. I went thorough numerous guides on how to solve that problem, disabling wake-on-lan for the NIC, configuring Windows Update to not awake it for updates, etc etc. But I never found a fool proof solution (especially one that lasted even after major updates of windows).
Also… The main reason many people use hibernate is to get all the programs back like they were. That’s definitely the reason for me. It’s always a hassle closing applications, then restoring them after a restart.
Theoretically I could get exactly what I want using the windows built in feature “Restart Apps”. But last time I tried it, it was buggy, many windows ended up in the wrong position/order, and several third party applications hadn’t implemented the feature.
But that was a few years ago. Hmm. Maybe I should give it a shot again.
PotatoSilence@reddit
Hijacking your question, I used to use hibernate but after a few of doing this (turning it on then Hibernate while I went to the store, do errands etc. PC wasn’t continuously for these days), the PC would lock up on wake so I had to hard shutdown (hold the power button). Now if between 30min or less I leave it and just have the monitors shut down after 15min of no use. If it’s going to be over and hour I shut down the PC.
omnichad@reddit
I had this. It was a buggy Ethernet driver that was locking up when entering that stage of sleep. Disabling onboard Ethernet fixed it, so I put in a PCIe Ethernet card.
It took me literally years to figure out.
Morkinis@reddit
Hibernate puts whatever is on RAM into your SSD so I suppose it can wear down tiny bit faster.
Zolazo7696@reddit
Yeah I just finished a new PC build and accidentally slept instead of restart and it wouldn't come back on and just had the orange ram light telling me my rams fucked and I just couldn't accept that as an answer leading to a hard shut down (gasp) and subsequently learned that Restarts, Sleep, and Hibernate dump the Ram and can fuck up reboot. Also that it could be a BIOS issue.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Yup. Back in the day not shutdown made sense due to how long boot times were. Makes no sense with modern systems given the potential (albeit unlikely) issues.
Shuber-Fuber@reddit
Also modern SSD reads are blazing fast.
omnichad@reddit
This is where hybrid shutdown / fast startup actually speeds up boot. Restoring to RAM from NVMe is super fast. Loading drivers from disk one by one and initializing them is CPU-bound.
Gochu-gang@reddit
You actually have it backwards. If "Fast Boot" is enabled, Windows will cache RAM onto the SSD so that it can load the state quickly.
"Restart" actually dumps the RAM completely. Or disabling "Fast Boot/Startup" and "Hybrid/Fast Shutdown" will let "Shutdown" actually dump everything instead of caching.
tbombs23@reddit
so having fast boot on can wear out your SSD quicker than not having it on?
Gochu-gang@reddit
Technically yes, but given modern endurance of SSDs it's a nothing burger. I still have Samsung 850 Pros from 10 years ago that run 24/7 with no errors.
The biggest takeaway is that RAM gets cached which means any errors would also be loaded on "Fast Boot".
omnichad@reddit
And even though the hibernate file is several gigabytes, that's just a reserved storage size. Most of the RAM is unused when it goes to hybrid shutdown. It's just kernel + drivers.
s00mika@reddit
nope, what are you talking about?
Djinnerator@reddit
Most motherboards will clear memory during its boot. Restarting doesn't copy memory contents to storage, so when you restart, regardless of fast boot, shutdown, or restart, memory gets cleared. Fast boot just copies the stored memory content back to memory.
Restart does clear memory though, regardless of what shutdown process you choose, whether or not the memory actually powers down or not too.
s00mika@reddit
I get it now, i thought he meant "write to disk" when he said dump the contents of the ram, but he actually meant that the contents are thrown away.
ligokleftis@reddit
so what’s the best option for the hardware then?
skyfishgoo@reddit
leave it to microsoft to completely upend the nomenclature around power states.
so glad i moved to linux where things still make sense.
NoDoze-@reddit
Don't be confused. Terms mentioned above, some are bios settings, some are ms settings.
Gochu-gang@reddit
I use multiple Linux distros daily. Love Linux, but a full replacement for Windows it is not. Not yet.
skyfishgoo@reddit
close enough.
Greatest-Comrade@reddit
Restart should dump but sleep and hibernate should not be fucking up reboot
NoDoze-@reddit
Yea, they're confusing bios settings which are messing up the ms os default behavior.
Devatator_@reddit
Restart shouldn't actually be doing that. Only shutdown does something in that vein and only if you have fast startup enabled
RawbGun@reddit
Exactly, if you have a high amount of RAM (32 or 64 GB) and use an SSD with low write endurance (mostly a drive QLC NAND) then it'll wear it down in like a couple years if you put your computer to sleep a couple times a day
icer816@reddit
Not the person you're replying to, but I've personally never once seen hibernate actually work. Every single time I've tried it, it refuses to wake up and you have to force power it down by holding the button. I know some people that apparently use it, but I've never, not once in my life, seen anybody successfully wake a PC from hibernate in less time than it would've taken to boot up (every time I've seen it work, it's extremely slow, which defeats the entire purpose).
bobbyelliottuk@reddit
My return from hibernate is about twice as fast as my boot time.
DigitalJedi850@reddit
Imma stop you right there…
XanderWrites@reddit
1) I think it might be the same thing at this point. They changed the names and terms a few years ago and few people noticed
2) There's no energy saving difference between sleep and hibernate on a modern system. At least none you'd notice.
3) It still has the same buggy issues hibernate had in the past where processes don't restore properly and crash or continue to run with errors. It's safer to just shutdown.
Terminal-Psychosis@reddit
Sleep has worked on many PCs and laptops for me, for a long time. Since XP really.
Hibernate is so hit and miss, I tend to just disable it outright to avoid clicking it by mistake.
Yah, the pc starts from shutdown quick, but then you lose all the windows / tabs you had open n stuff. Waking from sleep is even faster and you're instantly ready where you left off.
XanderWrites@reddit
But did you really need those tabs?
Why not just save your project and reopen it tomorrow?
EishLekker@reddit
Doesn’t a laptop in sleep mode still generate heat? So, maybe not very good if you keep your laptop in a bag.
Also, last time I tried using sleep mode on my PC I had huge problems with it starting up in the middle of the night. I went thorough numerous guides on how to solve that problem, disabling wake-on-lan for the NIC, configuring Windows Update to not awake it for updates, etc etc. But I never found a fool proof solution (especially one that lasted even after major updates of windows).
Djinnerator@reddit
Sometimes user-configured notifications can do that.
XanderWrites@reddit
The wake from sleep: probably the mouse. You just need a truck that rattles the ground enough to turn the sensor on and it will probably wake the entire PC.
The heat generated by your laptop in sleep is probably irrelevant in the larger scheme of things. Laptops run super hot as it is and they and hit their active temps while sleeping
EishLekker@reddit
No. It’s wasn’t the mouse or keyboard that awoke the computer, because those were turned off.
Terminal-Psychosis@reddit
Hibernate is even more buggy than sleep.
If you have a system it works on, great. Many won't, or not consistently.
Sleep seems to work on pretty much everything though, in my experience anyway.
I don't understand actually turning off the PC though, when sleep takes so little electricity, and you go back to working right where you left off.
helluscorus@reddit
Hibernate breaks a lot of drivers, which in turn make a lot of things act super funky.
Anen-o-me@reddit
Funny thing is, turning your computer off IS hibernate and most people don't know it.
What you really have to do is disable fast-boot. Only a restart is a complete power on / power off cycle.
Neraxis@reddit
Hibernate is total dogshit and thrashes storage and is more likely to include issues from a constantly non-refreshed system.
EishLekker@reddit
Source? I have used hibernate almost daily on my 6 year old PC, and the Samsung SSD software still gives my SSD a clean bill of health. I’ve never had a problem with my SSD.
Sledgehammer617@reddit
I always use hibernate, but mine needs to be fully shut off every once in a while or I start running into crazy bugs.
XFauni@reddit
This I used to keep my pc on 24/7, but started to not wake up from sleep mode and required holding the power button to turn off and back on. I personally turn it off now, but it could be days till I use it next so 🤷🏻♂️🤷🏻♂️
Hogartt44@reddit
Seriously I’ve had so many problems with sleep mode over the years. That shit is permanently disabled now.
TammyShehole@reddit
My PC kept waking itself up from sleep mode yesterday literally like every two minutes, if that long. I don’t usually use sleep mode but just happened to yesterday. That experience is just a good reminder of why I don’t use sleep mode.
omnichad@reddit
With it that short, it sounds like a bug with hybrid sleep. It turns the screen off right away but can't do everything it needs to do so it aborts the sleep. Also disable wake on LAN in the BIOS if you don't use it because there are buggy implementations out there.
psimwork@reddit
Huh. I used to have issues with sleep mode back in the days of Windows XP (and a little bit into Windows Vista/7), but at this point, Sleep mode works just fine. I'm curious if you've tried it recently.
EishLekker@reddit
So it never awakens the computer without you actually pushing the power button (or using the keyboard or whatever)?
It kept waking up in the middle of the night. I hated that, and never were able to get a satisfactory solution to that problem.
Terminal-Psychosis@reddit
Might be windows waking up for an update.
Or a mouse that "wanders" slightly.
Oh, just saw that other comment. Ok that's very strange. Usually bios will have a "wake on" section you could look into. You might have some USB device that's randomly doing strange things and waking the PC.
EishLekker@reddit
Well, the problem was that there were lots of people with different theories in different discussions online, and lots of websites basically saying “This is how a solve this problem once and for all”. And sometimes the problem seemed to be solved, only to show its ugly head again after some update.
It got very frustrating after a while. I can’t understand why Windows can’t provide a single master setting that says “The power button is the only way to wake from sleep” or something to that effect, and that setting should never ever get reset after an update.
Errantry-And-Irony@reddit
Win 10 and 11 letting sleep activate bugs out explorer in exactly the way. It's one of the only reasons I even changed to Win 11 and it still happens.
EishLekker@reddit
That thing where the computer decides to wake it self up, even if it tried to configure it not to?
That was my main grievance with sleep mode. I never made it work as I wanted, so I went back to using hibernate.
ThatOldAndroid@reddit
Weird mine just won't turn some of the USB slots back on
Gry20r@reddit
This argument I had no problem so it is not true has no weight. Generally electrical component do get spike voltage when powered on. This spike reduces components lifespan . It is not because you do shut down your since 30 years that your components lifespan was not reduced. How much times did you change components or even the whole pc during this time ?
Aertew@reddit
Someone mentioned back then HDD's didn't like it
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
There's potential truth in that one - maybe a cheaper brand didn't have good circuitry and that caused more boot-related failures than some, that led to that advice. Be cool to know.
ToastedTrousers@reddit
I didn't have issues with sleep mode until my current build. From the install, every time it came out of sleep mode, it bluescreened with an error code relating to power or drivers. A blank reinstall and shuffling in different versions of the drivers didn't help. So I just disabled sleep mode and haven't had a single bluescreen since.
Codrum@reddit
I have multiple computers (Win10) both at work (Intel) and at home (AMD), all enter sleep mode after about an hour of not being used, I've never had any problems with "buggy sleep mode". With solid state drives, sleep mode uses a miniscule amount of electricity and wakes faster than booting from power off. The only reason I could see to not use sleep mode is if you're paranoid about the computer waking itself for updates or something.
formesse@reddit
Depending on the system, it will consume more power turning on/off than it will sitting for several hours idle. At least - if it's components are going into a low power state and monitor shutting off.
It's one of those amusing outcomes of things like "earth hour" of years gone by, that by shutting everything off - you would get this giant power spike the following hour as... everything is turned on, often exceeding any "savings".
The truth is, a lot of consumer parts stem from R&D put into making parts for enterprise, where power efficiency is a desirable thing, especially when talking about data centres that are paying to run the machines, and paying to keep the room cool meaning: if it ain't doing work, you want it to use as close to zero power as possible - while being able to spin up immediately when demand hits.
That being said: The impact is marginal, and fussing over it probably expends more money than you would save in years of operating as you do.
0whodidyousay0@reddit
Yep, shit I do the same thing with my PS5 these days, it's sooo quick to get into games - if I know I'm going to be more than 30 mins, I'll just turn the whole thing off tbh, definitely overkill but hey
XanderWrites@reddit
Another vote for buggy sleep mode.
I swear I've turned the shit off. I would rather it stay one hundred percent on if I forget to turn the PC off than it go into sleep mode. Nearly every time, I get errors or at least have to restart explorer.
Might as well just clean the deck and save a bit on energy.
Saffa1986@reddit
Yup, problems here.
It’s fucking maddening. Usually when I let it autosleep, but sometimes when I put it to sleep. The power button blinks like it’s a sleep… but it’s not.
I hit the power button and the machine starts up from boot, my stomach drops, and I find all the fucking documents I’ve been working on are at risk. Most of the time it’s just the annoyance of sorting through saves and auto-saves, but one piece of specialised software I use doesn’t auto save, so I can lose hours of work. Does my head in. Particularly when I’ve stepped away for a coffee, my phone is out of connection so machine goes ‘oh, he’s stepped away, time to auto lock… no wait sleep… no wait, fuck his shit up’.
Gah!
cheezecake2000@reddit
Jeeze I do not miss the days of turning on my pc and waiting ages. Or downloading a game to come back 3 days later to play. Or waiting 3 hours just to connect to a garrysmod server and download all the content for that server just to get a lua error.
I'm not even talking about pre 2000's computers either. Can't imagine. Now I can go from off to gaming in 2 minutes tops
throwaway13630923@reddit
The most likely explanation is that he was just clueless or heard it from someone else who was also clueless
timfountain4444@reddit
Thermal cycling is a major cause of failure in electrical components. Electronics like to stay at a constant temperature....
Ok_Light_6950@reddit
But when it goes into sleep or hibernate mode it starts using less power and even disables some hardware, then once you wake it up to play a game it gets massively hotter again. So it's definitely not staying at a constant temperature.
timfountain4444@reddit
As you know sleep and hibernate are different things. I was also responding to the OP who was asking about turning on and off. But yep, you get the idea, thermal cycling exists, and as I also said "But it happens on a scale that is irrelevant to a normal PC/Laptop."
Sincerely - former embedded PC designer for harsh industrial applications....
Stargate_1@reddit
No there's nothing to worry about. Although thermal cycling (getting hot, getting cold, getting hot etc) is harmful, this happens on timescales you don't need to worry about. Turning a PC on and off a couple times a day is basically normal use.
Iammorgz@reddit
This ^^^ yes it does get warm but unless you’re heating and cooling 100x a day, it will be well obsolete before thermal cycling becomes an issue.
Fusseldieb@reddit
Tell that to modern GPUs, especially notebook ones. Those used for gaming die very quickly compared to those used for mining and other things. Now put everything together and guess why. Thermal stress.
It is an issue and nobody talks about.
Ok_Light_6950@reddit
In this case turning it off is actually better because they get so hot when left on.
Fusseldieb@reddit
Quite the opposite actually. Keep it on at all times so it maintains a certain temperature, which therefore decreases thermal stress.
Ok_Light_6950@reddit
But that’s not how cpus work. It’ll still cool when the system sleeps and heat up drastically when you start gaming.
Fusseldieb@reddit
I mean, if you put it in standby the CPU basically shuts down (or almost), so there will be very very little to no heat generated. I mean letting the PC run, so it maintains 40C.
Owobowos-Mowbius@reddit
Laptop on bed, GPU will be dead.
Dapper-Conference367@reddit
Tbf before you're gonna notice any issue with it you will already have new hardware.
A guy I know has the same PC since 2012 and both CPU and GPU had dry paste and got well over 50c idle and over 90c during any mid load task (even browsing with 4/5 tabs open), he turns it off every time he stops using it and after a repaste everything works fine now, so I think it's just a theoretical problem thqt won't ever actually happen.
Tommy_____Vercetti@reddit
Isn't repasting the GPU a little bit sketchier than doing the same with the CPU?
Dapper-Conference367@reddit
Kinda, but honestly it's pretty easy.
My first time took me more than 1h, now I can dismount it, clean the remaining paste, apply new paste and remount it in 20 mins.
MyStationIsAbandoned@reddit
with building a PC, I've come to learn that stuff is hard until you actually just do it. like the hardest thing to do in the world is imagine yourself doing something you've never done.
GopnikOli@reddit
Just piggybacking but I feel like that with a lot of things lately, I convince myself I cannot do some things and then turns out it’s nowhere near as bad. It was just good to read because it’s relatable.
Dapper-Conference367@reddit
Yep, first time be extra cautious and follow every step, second time you might need the guide/video to check something in case you forget, 3rd time the charm!
The more you do anything (even non PC related) the more tricks and tips you learn to save time or do something more safely.
Chaosr21@reddit
Yea. I did it on an r9 290x and i had to take the whole thing apart and put it back together. The pc ran fibe but it kept getting messed up from windows updates, so I put it out of its misery a year ago. I have an old pc with an rx 580 and i5 2500k still running strong as hell, and right now I have a newer pc with a 6700xt
TheLightningL0rd@reddit
I've only done it once but it was pretty simple. Only needed to remove a few screws from the assembly on top of the card. This was back in like 2009 though, so things have probably gotten a lot more complicated.
Fortune_Cat@reddit
No
wizl@reddit
i got one from 2015 that has ran 24x7 not repasted lol. still see like 81c playing red dead 2 on it.
Kephler@reddit
Absolutely the right answer, that being said, you aren't really conserving power or improving your computer at all by turning off/on every day. When the computer is in sleep mode it uses \~0 power so just leave it on, maybe restart once every other week or when you think about it.
Stargate_1@reddit
Nah sleep mode is shit and messes with the system. Never use sleep mode just turn it off.
Joseelmax@reddit
Unless you have a 4090
Stargate_1@reddit
I don't get it.
OldMan316@reddit
Schedule reposting every 6 months or a year and you should be okay. Also you have to actually go to shut down not just hit the power button.
-Steamos-@reddit
Every 6 months is insanity
Greatest-Comrade@reddit
Or just properly use good paste and you should only have to replace in like… 5-6 years. Which is long enough i get a new system nowadays anyways.
OldMan316@reddit
I prefer kryo sheets so I don't have to think about it.
Greatest-Comrade@reddit
Shit you can probably reuse those. I heard theyre very good but they aren’t used often.
Stargate_1@reddit
Wtf no? Why would I waste money and time on doing that? You repaste when temperatures become problematic, not at arbitrary intervals.
skyfishgoo@reddit
the SMART data on your drives will reflect your power cycles and may indicate "old age" sooner than it probably should... and there is thermal cycling to consider.
i just use suspend to disk (S4) so even the ram gets powered down, but that's more out of convenience than any concern for the hardware.
Ok_Light_6950@reddit
And thermal cycling definitely still happens when it goes into sleep or hibernate mode. Once you wake it up to play a game it gets massively hotter again. So it's definitely not staying at a constant temperature just because you leave it on.
omnichad@reddit
Pretty sure the drive will get power cycled going in and out of sleep. I wouldn't worry too much about power cycles.
NewestAccount2023@reddit
Hard drives in the 90s didn't like to be turned off and on.
PuzzleheadedTutor807@reddit
There was a process that should be followed, called "parking" the drives. Windows did it when we selected "shut down" there, but flipping the switch caused (potentially) head damage on the platters.
TicTac_No@reddit
Disks spin at many 1000s of revolutions /per minute/ and that is not only dangerous but when going from 0 - 1000 revolutions per minute can cause wobble. Parking the drive assures that upon travel the disk are not damaged because they cannot move and the head cannot touch the drive. The reverse is true as well. Upon startup, when starting from a known state, the head can be moved to a 'spin up' position that is significantly more removed from the platter space or moved to a more central hub space away from the edge of the now-spinning disks.
Imagine the distortion at the edges of a millimeter thin disk spinning at 7500 rpm. That's 125 revolutions per second.
Wobble wobble.
zhaDeth@reddit
Wait are the disks always spinning ? I thought the noise it made was because the disk was spining one way and then changed or started and stopped spinning. I guess it's just the head moving that causes the sound ?
theBird956@reddit
The disk always spin in the same direction, all the time (unless the drive goes into "sleep").
The slight "clicking" you hear is the head that moves back and forth very fast to read data. When you start your computer, you might be able to hear the disk spin up to speed.
Unless you have an SSD, there are no moving parts in a Solid State Drive.
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
*HDD
Not trying to be mean. Thanks for the information, really.
Droid8Apple@reddit
Not sure why you are trying to correct them.
HDD - hard disk drive (spinning, old tech).
SSD - solid state drive (nothing moves; solid).
SSHD - solid state hybrid drive (still has moving platter but also has an SSD attached for cache - best of both worlds in 2015ish).
NvME SSD - non-volatile memory express solid state drive (doesn't use sata which caps at 6Gbps, making this the faster option).
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
Yes, I was wrong. My apologies for misinterpreting their words and costing confusion and time to everyone. I guess sleeping more would be helpful for me. Thank you for your comment further emphasizing on the different Hard drives- reminding me about the existence of SSHDs (these things are almost non-existent now, from what I've seen). Have a great time ahead.
Droid8Apple@reddit
No worries mate - I wasn't trying to sound snarky. Guess that's what low sleep means for me lol - I simply enjoy teaching when I can.
You're so right about the SSHD's though - they were perfect for like two seconds. HDDs were too slow, but cheap. SSD's were fast, but so expensive even for 64-128GB. Why not have both? Basically the same principle as Optane (new memory unlocked?) and was perfect for game drives.
I actually still have my 1TB firecuda and it still works - just recently bought an external drive bay and was testing out my old drives lol.
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
I'm glad that you understand and that you enjoy teaching- I hope that a good chunk of your time doesn't get consumed just helping elderly folks. Also, I had sleep, a whole 12 hours for 5 days.
I remember Optane drives. Heck, I even saw one at my local thrift store for $20, unopened! I feel like HDDs or something similar (but more reliable) might make a comeback. Weren't Microsoft working on ceramic drives? Can't wait for the days when a TB is $0.50.
Also, wow. I can't imagine having a collection of hard drives. I barely have 3 drives with me.
ModernManuh_@reddit
It was confusing, but correct nonetheless. A short version would be "The click you hear comes from moving parts in the drive, unless it is an SSD. There are no moving parts on SSDs."
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
Realized that way too late. I'm sorry for wasting your time. Thank you for taking your time to write out this comment. I'm sorry. Have a great time, I hope.
ModernManuh_@reddit
I'm more impressed by the apologies rather than anything else I've seen on the internet in a while :)
beirch@reddit
I fucking love confidently incorrect people on Reddit. It's really fun imagining what you're like iRL.
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
My (still) sleep deprived ass couldn't interpret the sentence correctly and due to poor judgement (again, due to sleep deprivation), decided to write a comment (I usually don't even participate because someone else has already written what I might say). I don't usually display such traits IRL (or Reddit because then my Karma would've been negative)... I hope. I'm sorry for the inconvenience I caused to you. Have a good time ahead.
gammonb@reddit
SSD is correct. They even told you what the acronym stands for.
HDD stands for Hard Disk Drive.
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
I'm sorry for the confusion and time I've cost you and everyone. I should really take more care about what I write and post when sleep deprived. Thank you for the further clarification that you provided. Have a great life ahead.
WiiShouldITellU@reddit
I'm sorry for the comment I made. I realized that you were correct. I interpreted the last sentence as "Unless you have a HDD, there are no moving parts in a SSD" and thus made the foolish error of trying to correct something that isn't wrong. I am really sleep deprived and I think I should really sleep more. Thank you for your understanding. And again, thank you for the information. Have a great life ahead.
theBird956@reddit
Hey, don't worry about that. I can definitely relate to misreading and wanting to correct someone. The fact that you realized you made a mistake and then apologized is a skill not enough people have and shows a lot that you care about teaching people and being respectful. I really appreciate that.
So go get some sleep, and stay awesome
rayinho121212@reddit
Thanks for the info. Feels like jurrasic techno now but it is still in use..
Commentator-X@reddit
doesnt proper balancing mostly alleviate this? Thats how you remove wobble from plastic drone props that iirc spin a lot faster than 7500rpm.
ZjY5MjFk@reddit
modern disks do have features that if powered off without parking, they will spin down correctly and park themselves. Not sure if that was true of older drives.
s00mika@reddit
There is no wobble at lower speeds, you don't know what you're talking about. The head is cushioned by air, and it's that cushion which doesnt exist yet when the drive starts.
And almost all modern drives and basically all 2.5" drives are self parking outside the platter surface, this also works when power is suddenly lost.
lcburgundy@reddit
Manual head parking was only required for the earliest MFM drives from the early to mid 1980's. That wasn't a power cycling issue, but the risk of head damage if you moved the drive at all with the heads not parked.
The 90's drives just didn't do well with lots of repeated on/off cycles.
Falkenmond79@reddit
Yeah. Lead to some weird superstitions. Dos had a „park“ command and i knew some that religiously used it before turning off their PCs. Wasn’t even necessary in the later dos stages but still. Couldn’t hurt.
The_Lowest_Bar@reddit
Man, throwback to the time that slapping the shit out of something actually had a non-zero chance of fixing it.
iApolloDusk@reddit
Hell, at my last job many of our customers still swore by it lmao. Makes me wonder if I should be beating my case more.
OwlWelder@reddit
electronics may have progressed to the point where beatings have dubious payoffs, but there will always be one thing that'll always enjoy a good asswhooping
🦆🧻
The_Lowest_Bar@reddit
Idk dude my laptop (thats currently held together by zip ties btw) really gets the point when the keys are pressed with a little more oomph
iApolloDusk@reddit
Is it an HP or an Asus gaming laptop by chance?
The_Lowest_Bar@reddit
nah, an acer swift 3. the hinges were screwed into a thin piece of plastic instead of something more substantial so i drilled through the aluminum back and ran a zip tie through it. the bottom of the screen bezel has a little bit of a bulge but what the hell, it adds character lmao
ModernManuh_@reddit
a non-zero chance of NOT* fixing it, I still do it with my remote (my mom insists it is the batteries like it doesn't do that with brand new batteries)
TheBadeand@reddit
Percussive maintenance :3
CovetousFamiliar@reddit
You guys have just shaken loose ancient memories I didn't even know I'd lost. Ha
Kushroom710@reddit
This is why I'm still haunted by anyone just pressing the button to power down instead of going thru windows to do it.
ConsciousJohn@reddit
Power button on my desktop puts it into sleep mode. Configurable in windows.
Ravnos767@reddit
I disabled mine cos the cat kept standing on it
TheFirebyrd@reddit
Lol, that’s what I keep having to do too.
Aggravating_Cupcake8@reddit
Me too, but it’s because I’ll randomly the urge to use my tower as a foot rest and you guessed it power button is on top.
ConsciousJohn@reddit
Cat: “It’s warm up here. Also, are you ignoring me?”
ActualShare6277@reddit
lmao i taped a stiff card over mine
Kushroom710@reddit
That's a great tip! I should have figured they would have that option, just never looked
Strong_Fan_388@reddit
Oops
donxemari@reddit
Nowadays the power button in the front acts exactly the same as turning off the computer from Windows.
PuzzleheadedTutor807@reddit
yeah i still twinge when it happens too lol... but i was buying my own hardware through the late 80s and 90s so im always looking at lifespan
Tango1777@reddit
What were ACTUAL chances of any damage happening?
Because I used many computers since early 90s and I lived in the area where we had power blackouts almost on a regular basis. My computers got shut down when running zillions of times with multiple HDDs in them, since back in the days you usually had at least 2 HDDs, sometimes 3. I haven't lost any data, haven't lost any HDD, literally nothing ever happened with any of them.
The only thing that those power blackouts caused was occasionally boot sector on HDD got corrupted and you couldn't boot Windows, you had to run terminal and rebuild boot sector with a few commands. That was the only failure that I ever experienced. Other than this I believe people think electronics is way more fragile than it really is. HDDs were fragile to physical damage, but other than this they could last many years.
So let's leave that at "it could POTENTIALLY damage", in reality it was closer to 0 chances of any damage happening. But let's stay sane here, if you shut down a PC with something in the middle of writing, don't expect on that data being fine. That was often a sad story of downloading e.g. a movie, which back in the day weighted around 700MB in so called "DVDRIP" quality, and getting shut down and losing all the progress and no ability to resume from where it stopped.
PuzzleheadedTutor807@reddit
in my actual experience, slim to nil then, now none.
you should still follow the correct shutdown procedure from windows, since it will write files and set itself up to be restarted faster and will make sure everything is ready for the off state. honestly though these things are designed for hundreds of thousands of power cycles. it is beneficial to power cycle (actually shut down, not hibernate, sleep, or restart your computer) at least daily. they have come a long way, but they are still somewhat limited devices that benefit from a cold start.
MWink64@reddit
I haven't seen a hard drive rated for hundreds of thousands of power cycles. Even the enterprise class WD Ultrastar is rated for 50,000 start/stop cycles (at 40C) and only 10,000 at more extreme temperatures. They're rated for 600,000 load/unload cycles (head parks).
MWink64@reddit
It could definitely damage the disk. I've seen it happen multiple times. It's also possible for damage to occur, without you ever noticing. If you end up with bad sectors in an area of the disk you never access, you might never know.
nross2099@reddit
What are your chances of getting salmonella from eating raw chicken? Pretty low (~1/25), but I’m not gonna risk it
zhaDeth@reddit
I wouldn't call 1/25 a low chance. If someone shut down the pc each day you would expect a drive to break almost every month with these odds.
Trick2056@reddit
oh time you accident turn off your pc without letting it shutdown and heard a loud click pray that was just PSU discharging not the HDD .
s00mika@reddit
That was in the 1980s in the DOS days. Wasn't the case since the early 1990s.
OriginalNo5477@reddit
"It is now safe to turn off your computer"
Captain_Nipples@reddit
I remember getting our first Pentium 2 and you no longer had to hit the power button. It just magically shut itself off
Wilbis@reddit
Had that on my Pentium 120 already. The last computer I had to manually shut down was a 486/66.
Captain_Nipples@reddit
Hmm. My 200MMX still had the old school power buttons
Wilbis@reddit
The P120 was a prebuilt (to my great shame) so maybe that's why it was already using ATX specs. P120 was introduced in the same year as ATX specification.
majoroutage@reddit
Our lord and savior, ATX power specifications.
bestanonever@reddit
I don't remember if it was Windows 98 S.E. or XP, but the first time the PC turned it off by itself I was like: "The future is now!".
You always had to wait for that message and then press the power button.
5553331117@reddit
Thankfully HDD tech is not stuck back there
Appropriate_Ant_4629@reddit
Nice pun.
I remember having to pound on Sun hard drives with the back of a screwdriver to get them unstuck when we powered them off to move from one data center to another.
amcclintock83@reddit
I found an AIX server that had been running for 25 years. Powered it off for kernel patching and those drives wouldn't spin up.
digitalsmear@reddit
park your heads!
Lusankya@reddit
You needed to whack them to get them unparked, especially if they'd been sitting cold for more than a few hours.
If you shipped a drive without parking the heads first, you didn't need to whack it. You also needed a new drive, because that one was toast.
utkohoc@reddit
Hard drives packaged from the manufacturer have specific instructions on the box about temp when unpacking and using them.
(Hard drive boxes containing 20 mechanical drives)
Still sell a lot suprisingly but mostly for security and data storage backups like NAS. Pretty unusual to see one get shipped with a home PC. Even then they are always accompanied by an SSD.
You can tell the big businesses apart from the others. When an order comes in for 30 4tb Samsung 990s vs Joe schmo 8x16gb mechanicals you know they dgaf about money anymore. Packaging $120,000 of drives into a tiny box felt somehow wrong. Imagine that going missing in the post. Some unassuming brown box the size of your fist worth $100 grand
Javad0g@reddit
So real. Our old RLL drives did NOT like being moved until that park procedure was run.
pdoherty972@reddit
I wish it was more "stuck". I had a barely 1.5 year old SSD croak completely ("surface" scan registered like 35% of sectors as failed) taking a bunch of data with it. SSDs are easier to wear out than magnetic disks, in my experience.
3DprintRC@reddit
80's disks didn't self park but only the very early 90's disks had this problem.
glytxh@reddit
You’d still have to be rebooting dozens of times a day to really notice a tangible impact though.
funkmachine7@reddit
Suddenly, powering down was fine.
Similar-Count1228@reddit
And yet I've never had one fail from this era. You all must be cursed.
korvus2@reddit
"IBM Deskstar has entered the chat."
NewestAccount2023@reddit
It's statistics. A 3% failure rate be omes 8% for example when turning on and off every day. Computer repair shops would see it, the average person wouldn't
Captain_Nipples@reddit
Nah, they wear out. I remember doing the screwdriver tap and getting enough time out of them to copy over important stuff, but usually they were pretty gone by that point.
ASheynemDank@reddit
Your account made it to 24!
NewestAccount2023@reddit
24 what
rocket___pak@reddit
False
NewestAccount2023@reddit
https://www.toshiba-storage.com/trends-technology/mttf-what-hard-drive-reliability-really-means/
That's from 2019. You can use your imagination for how it was in 1995, and that not 100% of all drives are perfect for their whole MTTF. Starting and stopping is worse than leaving it running, albeit by a small amount.
rocket___pak@reddit
Desktop HDD's aren't active 24/7. Most PC's back then would shut the drives off after 5 minutes of idle.
StarHammer_01@reddit
Tbf it's the same today except hard drives today are much more reliable and most people use ssd.
Afterall it basically takes a jolt of power to spool up a hard drive. Something like 25w while once it spins up it only uses around 8w. This phenomenon is the same for any motor.
Quithelion@reddit
One of few reasons is the motors wear out faster when constantly start up from 0 speed, than it would left spinning none-stop at any speed.
Reason is motors need multiple more amp than running amp to start up from 0 speed.
WhatevBroski@reddit
They would get blue bolts...
smackythefrog@reddit
Prude-ass HDDs
lectrician7@reddit
I built a new PC last year. The one I used before that I had built in 2013. It ran from 2013-2023 without issue. I never had to even replace any parts. It was actually still running perfectly fine when I stopped using. I only replaced it because I felt it was overdue for an upgrade. Meanwhile my wife’s PC got turned on and off each day sometime a couple times in the same length of time. Her’s was completely replaced at about the 5 year point. I also replaced 2 power supply’s, ram once, and one hard drive (conventional HDD in the first computer) in that time.
_notgreatNate_@reddit
Ive always heard the opposite these days. Leaving it on for too long isn’t good. Not sure why but I shut mine down every night when I’m done
WarriorT1400@reddit
Now? Absolutely nothing go nuts, mine is on and off every day. Sleep mode works too, technology has come a long way, lots of freedom, sure it may lower the life span to some degree but the amount would be very minimal and for what pc parts go for nowadays unless you plan on keeping the machine for a long time (a very long time) it’s not really of concern. You’ll also run into less issues powering the computer down regularly for it to perform updates and changes
theonlyalankay@reddit
I turn mine off everyday for the simple fact to give it a break from Those high temps. I don’t see it doing any harm at all. The power button is there for a reason. You’re not gonna tell me that giving a cpu/gpu a break every once in a while is going to do more harm than leaving it on every hour of the day
pdoherty972@reddit
That "high temperature" is at thermal equilibrium (where heat produced is matched by cooling systems) and is better for the system (IMO) than the constant "cool down to ambient room temp... sit... shock of electricity from turning on... heating up... equilibrium reached... shock of power going off... etc)
theonlyalankay@reddit
You got any source for that info?
pdoherty972@reddit
You need a source to prove that a computer, once turned on, rises in temperature from the CPU/GPU/powersupply/etc generating heat, until temps stabilize from that heat input vs ambient temps + the cooling system? Or are you asking for a source that says it causes wear and tear by constantly undergoing that process?
When do light bulbs typically break? When they're being turned on or off. Computer electronics are fragile, so I can't imagine constantly zapping them from unpowered states at ambient temps is great for their longevity. I'm not going to bother finding sources that agree with me since we all know this is a long-debated issue and any of us can find someone arguing for whichever side we agree with.
theonlyalankay@reddit
There’s no way to realistically determine this. You’d literally have to have 2 identical pc’s with identical parts, running side by side, then turn one off everyday and keep one running, for months - or maybe even years until something breaks. Lmao so yeah a “source” would be any kind of published test, which is what I was asking about. But there are none. So we can just agree to disagree then
theonlyalankay@reddit
By the way a pc is not a light bulb
pdoherty972@reddit
Yeah, an incandescent light bulb filament is a lot stronger and thicker than the traces on a motherboard. Which strengthens the analogy. The point being that initial power on is a problem. Same as with a car - a large percentage of the wear on engine components happens when the engine is started and there isn't yet any oil circulating (and all the oil is in the pan). Here's some people in an engineering sub debating whether it's 80% of all engine wear comes from startup or some other number (they all agree it's high).
Vioret@reddit
High temps? Bro it idles, it doesn't sit at 84 idling.
Plini9901@reddit
What I'm gonna tell you is that the difference in longevity is so minuscule that you should do whatever is most convenient.
kaje@reddit
The PC will likely live beyond become obsolete either way, it doesn't really matter.
clownshow59@reddit
Unless it’s an Intel 13th or 14th series apparently 🤣
nahman201893@reddit
Call the burn unit!
Eastern-Professor490@reddit
which is crazy to think about since the cpu's are usually the most reliable part
aznvjj@reddit
My PC went through multiple motherboards (I’ll never buy Gigabyte again; my MSI Gigabyte told me to go buy has been phenomenal), RMA’d my RAM twice (sk hynix g.skill), and had a bad CPU (3800X; I have the replacement unopened as I got a 5800X on sale as I needed a replacement that day).
I do wonder if the CPU was bad from the factory. The horrid AMD drivers for a 5700XT were masking the problem. When I swapped to nVidia and started getting occasional blue screens, with some help from EVGA, I ultimately reproduced the crash and pulled an unlisted CPU error code off the motherboard. AMD didn’t even argue once I sent them the code. I don’t know what it meant, as it wasn’t in the book, only that numerically it fell into the CPU table, and the appropriate debug lights were on, and AMD was like “we agree your CPU is bad, please send it in.” My 5800X has been wonderful. I only wish the 3800X had made it to the release of the 5800X3D as I was planning to upgrade to it originally.
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
Originally had an MSI motherboard that I replaced with a Gigabyte one for my ITX build. For the most part, it's been stable. The trouble is that there doesn't really seem to be a "good guy" MOBO brand lol. Perhaps I'll give ASRock a try the next go around.
rory888@reddit
Asrock is pretty good now a days. Its scrappy.
They need better UI designers but the hardware itself is great and at a competitive price.
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
Huh, I'll have to keep that in mind for my next build. I'm looking to go AMD next time around because I am absolutely not dealing with anymore of this bollocks from Intel so I'll shop ASRock when that time comes. Hopefully the UI improves by then because the last thing I want to do is to be fumbling around in the BIOS for a half an hour lol.
rory888@reddit
Half hour? maybe total including time to flash update. Expected time is like 3-5 minutes while feeling like half an hour because its new and you actually have to learn something.
Check out hardware unboxed AM5 mobo roundup. Like half the recommendations at every price tier was an ASrock because they were just that competitive with both performance/features and price.
Its really scrappy. Originally a budget offshoot of Asus, had issues years ago, but fixed that shit and is competitive and good.
omnichad@reddit
And then there's ASRock Rack if you want to build your own server with a consumer CPU and ECC memory support.
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
It was a joke, mate lol. We would have big problems if it took that long to navigate BIOS.
Honestly happy to hear that it sounds like they've surpassed ASUS at this point. I'm looking forward to trying out their hardware in the future.
rory888@reddit
I’ve spent that long staring at BIOS before… but I admit I may have consumed or been distracted by something at the time.
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
I’m usually only in there that long if I’m fucking around with something specific or looking for something specific that has been buried in submenus. Usually, I just check CPU settings, turn on XMP, and activate Resizable Bar.
rory888@reddit
yeah in a normal scenario you wouldn’t take that long unless you’re troubleshooting and rebooting multiple times for extreme hobby nonsense
actual first time setup is fine. just took note my buddy saw it for the first time and called it ugly lol. personally idc as log as its functional
VXM313@reddit
I've had an Asrock X570 Pro-4 since 2019 and it's held up great. It's been through multiple hardware upgrades and it'll be with me until it either dies or I upgrade to AM5.
MattBrey@reddit
Scrappy is such a good way to put it. They really offer solid products, not that many bells and whistles, but they 100% nail the basics for a great price
Dddfuzz@reddit
I have an old asrock 970 extreme 3 that refuses to die with an 8350. It’s outlived ever other computer and laptop I have had. I would say. My I choose that one by going to the shop and asking of all the boards they had, which did they get least returns/repairs on. This was back in 2013 ofc
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
I'm glad to hear you had a good experience with them. In fact, I don't really have anything negative to say about either MSI or Gigabyte as they've both performed all of requisite functions one would expect from a motherboard but I refuse to buy ASUS after seeing how they treat their customers.
wuttang13@reddit
It's been a while for me (5+ years) but wasn't Asus the "premium" brand while Asrock was the cheaper brand?
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
From what I’ve been told, yes. That was the case at some point. It seems ASUS has declined as a brand though, and treats their customers terribly.
Dddfuzz@reddit
Same, I’ve been burned on asus twice. One was the crosshairs 990 and the other was one of their ultra light laptops ux303. Since then I flip flopped between Msi and gigabyte. My only real complaint with gigabyte is the software is kinda trash and will do dumb things from time to time but beyond that, it does what it says on the box
Zarathustra-1889@reddit
Admittedly, I prefer MSI’s UI and software to Gigabyte’s but at the end of the day it works so it’s what it is lol. Gigabyte’s UI did receive an update not too long ago and it definitely looks a lot better than before, more user friendly too.
Due-Attorney-8387@reddit
Been using a b650m asrock mobo paired with my R5 7600. Got a gigabyte one first but it had horrible coil whine
No issues at all, fast boot up times, works perfect. It was cheap too
pdoherty972@reddit
Funny, because I buy nothing but Gigabyte motherboards, due to their overbuilt components and large copper content in the PCB layers (improving durability, conductivity and temperature dissipation). And they run for years.
Geog_Master@reddit
No joke. Since 2010, every part of my laptop has been replaced besides the case, CPU, and board. Still works fine as a general internet machine and to open word documents, powerpoint, or Zoom.
Own-Drive-3480@reddit
I have (had?) you beat by a year. Got a desktop in 2000, didn't upgrade a thing, finally converted it to a NAS in 2016.
Geog_Master@reddit
I'm probably going to retire the beast this year, soon. Unfortunatly Windows 11 is just to much for it to handle, and just opening a browser uses a lot of CPU resources. May just make another Linux machine out of it.
DemSumBigAssRidges@reddit
Which laptop would this be?
Geog_Master@reddit
Dell Studio PP39L
Generoh@reddit
Same I’ve had a home computer from ?2006 that had every part except the operating system and Logitech speakers replaced. The original was XP service pack 1 and I’ve been riding that free upgrade ever since.
land8844@reddit
Yes... "Free" "upgrade"... 👀
Generoh@reddit
I’m still salty because I bought the XP Pro and then when it came to upgrade, all I got was the Home edition. My Remote Desktop days were over
land8844@reddit
My dad gave me a W11 Home license a few days ago... I run W10 Pro, won't update to W11 until it's matured a bit.
I don't know what to do with this license, because I won't be using it 🫤🤔
hoodgothx@reddit
lol sell it to someone. I’m surprised ppl buy windows
Generoh@reddit
Serious question, how does a lay person get windows for free
Redditenmo@reddit
Microsoft supply the iso for free and provide a tool to allow you to turn it into a bootable USB key.
You'll be presented with a "enter your CD key" prompt during installation, but Microsoft also provide a "skip this step" button, allowing you to install Windows without one.
You'll then have ~30 days to use windows entirely unrestricted. Once that's up, there'll be an "unactivated" logo in the bottom left and your desktop background will be disabled.
You're able to continue to use windows in that condition, with full access to windows updates for as long as it takes you to purchase and enter your CD key.
Life_of_i@reddit
So you replaced what, the battery, display, keyboard, and ram?
Geog_Master@reddit
Screen (Wifi antenna), speakers, battery, keyboard, battery, RAM, fans, hard drive, CMOS battery, etc.
S_H_O_U_T@reddit
Out of curiosity, how come you didn’t just purchase a newer laptop? Surely the price of all the replaced parts is equal to or at least close to the price of a new machine no?
Richard_Thickens@reddit
My current laptop was originally released in 2012. It has a socketed CPU, so it was really cheap to throw an SSD, a decent HDD, a much better CPU, a 802.11N card, maxed-out RAM, and Windows 11 at it. I have a decent desktop that I built a couple of months ago, but this old-ass Elitebook does everything I need when I can't use my regular computer.
In short, a laptop with similar features brand new would be a pretty penny today. Mine, even with all of the mods, cost me < $200.
Geog_Master@reddit
A few reasons. First, I bought a Surface Pro a decade ago that I used for a while so I wasn't using this one as my primary. When that started to wear out, I got a desktop, and another desktop after that. My only need for a laptop is a portable internet machine that I can use for meetings and streaming. As a graduate student, I couldn't justify an expensive one ontop of my desktop upgrades.
The Laptop upgrades I did were about 200 dollars and now I have a machine with 8GB of RAM and a 1TB SSD. It has Ethernet ports, a DVD burner, and such that aren't available on some modern laptops. Its airflow is pretty good, and it sits on a cooling pad that keeps it running okay. For the 200 dollars in parts, which mainly was the harddrive, the laptop works better then a 200 dollar one I could get at the time, and probably now.
I have this one running Windows 11, and two other laptops running Linux Mint. As my professional work is all done on my desktop, I haven't felt the need to splurge on a new laptop.
Synaps4@reddit
Not usually no. Especially if you can get it done under warranty. Often you can get replacement parts under warranty to install yourself even if they won't do labor or shipping. Source: have replaced 2 motherboards, a screen, 2 chassis, ram, GPU cooling, CPU cooling...
tedxtracy@reddit
Mine as well. It was a Dell Inspiron 14R (popularly known as N 4010) with 3rd Gen i3 from 2010. I've replaced the screen, keyboard, charger, battery, RAM, HDD, random connectors, removed DVD Drive, all by myself. When it refused to die even after a decade, I gave it away to a relative in need. I guess it's still working fine.
GerardoITA@reddit
Theseus' Laptop
BenisDDD69@reddit
"It's a phrase that's been passed down through generations of laptopers; "Look after your laptop.""
"And your laptop will look after you?"
"No, it's just; "Look after your laptop."
Warriorfromthefire@reddit
I just lost the lcd screen on mine. It is now tiny tower that sits on my desk fan with an external monitor, mouse and keyboard plugged in. So that's fun
snail1132@reddit
You lost it? Like you woke up one day and it was missing? Or did it break?
Warriorfromthefire@reddit
Lost it like a fallen comrade. It cracked under pressure and died.
Hobbit_Hunter@reddit
Ok, Laptheseus is the name of mine now
MWink64@reddit
So true. In my decades of PC repair, I can only recall one instance of a CPU spontaneously failing. It was a Pentium 4 (Northwood?) running at stock speed, in a pre-built HP. Back then, CPU failure was more commonly caused by improper heatsink installation, resulting in cracked cores.
kruegerc184@reddit
Meanwhile my 4790k pushes midhigh-hogh settings in damn near everything with a couple paste reapplications as temps rise
HighPurrFormer@reddit
4790K gang checking in. Still going strong, still able to push most games.
dontgimmenolip@reddit
I have a 4790k from my first build still. Been slowly buying parts for a mini ITX build as they go on sale. Guess which CPU I have bought? A 14700k, and I can’t return it since it’s been too long 😵
HighPurrFormer@reddit
Yeah, I almost went with a 13700K on my current build. I settled with a 12600K until the issues get worked out, or until the next gen shows sustained stability. I just fired up a test run and everything worked perfectly, BIOS posted in about 3 seconds. Good luck with your 14th gen. I feel your pain.
Scasne@reddit
Young whipper snappers, some of us still ragging a 2600k.
pdoherty972@reddit
2070 gang here!
gogoolgon@reddit
Just replaced mine a few months ago with a 7800x3d. The 4790K was probably one of the best CPUs I've ever owned.
TommyWilson43@reddit
That’s a great little chip, second to only my Celeron 300A as my favorite ever
pdoherty972@reddit
I tormented one guy that used to come to LAN parties we went to. He'd gone to all of this trouble to try and overclock his AMD system - water cooling and the whole thing (this was back in about 1997 so pretty rare back then). I did a Celeron 300A overclock to 450 (50% overclock) on air cooling only. His face when I mentioned it to him and his AMD was (IIRC) getting a 25% overclock was classic.
knightcrusader@reddit
I had a Celeron 1Ghz Coppermine through college, that thing was a trooper and served me well into the P4 era. It wasn't until Core 2 machines came out that I finally replaced it.
Swede_in_USA@reddit
I had the 300A paired with an Abit mobo. The good ol days. Just retired my 2600k 6-8 months ago to a 12700K
Roderto@reddit
My current build has a 2500k in it (13 years old). I’m currently doing a new build with a 13600k. I’m looking forward to comparing the benchmarks.
Swede_in_USA@reddit
cool, should be a good upgrade! I built my daughter earlier this year a 12600kf-system. Feels very snappy.
TommyWilson43@reddit
Yep, had to have that ABit motherboard so you could OC it.. I had to open the case up and blow a box fan straight onto the mobo to keep it cool enough or it would overheat and lock up.. those were good times
Swede_in_USA@reddit
I had an AOPEN case with it, Compaq monitor…these brands are pretty much gone today.
Unusual-Activity-824@reddit
Isn't compaq part of hp now ?
Swede_in_USA@reddit
yes they are. But I dont think the brand exists to end consumers anymore.
Terrapin2190@reddit
Stock 4790 here with a GTX 1080 and love it. Wouldn't mind an upgrade to push the 1080 to it's maximum potential, but being able to play RDR2 and No Man's Sky on med-high at 1080p, 60fps is more than fine by me. Shadow of the Tomb Raider runs maxed out. All in a VERY old gaming case with 1 intake and 1 exhaust fan.
dfm503@reddit
Eventually you’ll have to delid and reapply paste under the IHS, but the OC potential goes up when you do that. Haha
kruegerc184@reddit
Great tip, ive only ever done the top face, im pretty sure the thing is actually on stock speeds iirc. I havent checked bios besides to reorder drives in years lmfao
dfm503@reddit
I only ever did on my 8700k, but it ran cooler at 5ghz all core after, than it did at the stock clocks before.
kruegerc184@reddit
It’s still in a place of literally perfect temps even under game load. Tbh any game i care about that would push the limit, i just get on ps5, but even then its like 1 game out of 5….my steam library is…..unfinished we will say lolol
dfm503@reddit
That’s my struggle too, I have so many unfinished games and I end playing Valorant more than anything. Lmao
majoroutage@reddit
The memory controller in the 4770k in my sister's computer, running bone stock DDR3-3600, died before mine did while running 2x16+2x8 @ 2400. Go figure.
Tommy_____Vercetti@reddit
Same lmao. Never understood the anxiety to consume more
StarTruckNxtGyration@reddit
What is this!? I have an i5-13600k. It’s been great so far, what’s the problem?
putter_nut_squash@reddit
Oxidation and voltage related problems causing higher than average failure rates. Might be more of a problem for the 13/14900 series.
KioTheSlayer@reddit
This is concerning since I literally just purchased a 14th gen i9 this morning…
kelkemmemnon@reddit
Absolutely cancel it. The only Intel purchase you should make right now is a 12th gen or an i3.
Kojetono@reddit
Cancel it. The microcode fix is still not out and using the CPU without it will degrade it. There is also no guarantee the microcode update will fix the problem.
You should probably wait for AMD's Ryzen 9000 to release and get that.
Inprobamur@reddit
Either keep it in a box until there is confirmation of best mitigation measures or return it if you want to be completely safe.
slapshots1515@reddit
Intel confirmed today it potentially affects any 13th/14th gen CPU with over a 65W power draw. So quite a lot of the main gaming ones.
Rare_Evening@reddit
Yes its 13th-14th. Was worried when hearing the news at first but im 12th gen so we good.
clownshow59@reddit
Here is a good video from Gamers Nexus on the issue. 13600k should not be as concerned as i7/i9 owners but unfortunately still affected. Just stay on top of BIOS updates for the next few months tk be safe!
https://youtu.be/OVdmK1UGzGs?si=Tijjce7aG8TTM937
OGigachaod@reddit
Glad I went 12700k over the 13600k.
locoghoul@reddit
Facts
knightcrusader@reddit
Same here. The bundle at Microcenter was a better price and now I am glad I went that route instead of the 13th gen.
Rare_Evening@reddit
12900k here. Had a nice microcenter deal. Mobo and ram with it. Super smooth so far. Upgrade in 5 years or more if having issues hitting frames. Paired w 4070 ti super.
BigWheelThaGod@reddit
there's a beta bios for my msi z790 board and i wonder if i should update i've had no issues or crashes for the past year that ive owned the rig
lwwill@reddit
Maybe undervolting might help reduce the oxidation issue? Idk
OniKanji@reddit
I got a 13th gen am I cooked :c
Ordinary_Player@reddit
Actually dodged a bullet on that one. Was gonna go Intel for a more jack of all trades / do everything build but this sub circle jerked me into Ryzen.
Inprobamur@reddit
I guess all the people worried about Intel cooking too hot were right.
Ordinary_Player@reddit
Intel burnt the platter for real
Southern_Opposite747@reddit
Planned obsolescence
Trick-Ad-8442@reddit
I'm so sad because I own an Intel 13 gen. I spent 35k on my PC😭
Allthingsconsidered-@reddit
35k?!
Trick-Ad-8442@reddit
Yes, the prices in Norway are insane!
Allthingsconsidered-@reddit
My god. I hope your PC runs like a spaceship lol
mahanddeem@reddit
It was obvious day 1 pushing 1.5v and beyond to a CPU would cause a catastrophic damage on the said CPU over time. Either user needs to be educated, or own a console (or an entry level CPU).
Wet_Water200@reddit
or a windows 11 laptop...
seriously though sometimes mine gets really goddamn hot for no reason when it's sleeping and apparently it's a widespread issue that's been around for years lmao
land8844@reddit
laughs in ryzen
Jenn_FTW@reddit
Shit, I just got a new computer that has an i9 13900kf, should I be worried? Is there anything I can do to mitigate the risk?
slapshots1515@reddit
No one has confirmed guaranteed ways yet. Logically undervolting the CPU and avoiding heavy load should help, but I saw videos showing an undervolted CPU requesting too much power on startup, so it is not guaranteed.
Here’s what we do know:
-If your CPU is having or does start to have stability problems, it’s physically damaged. RMA with Intel.
-Intel says they’re releasing a microcode fix in mid-August to their board partners, who will then add it into a BIOS update, presumably within a couple weeks after Intel releases the patch. Stay on the lookout for that update and apply it as soon as you can.
-Intel claims once you apply the update, if your CPU isn’t damaged at that point you are safe. Of course we can’t guarantee that for sure, but at that point it should be safe to use.
Jenn_FTW@reddit
Thank you so much for the detailed response! I’ll try to figure out how to undervolt it to minimize damage before the BIOS update. I suppose you have to access the BIOS to be able to undervolt right?
I haven’t figured out how to even access the BIOS yet because it boots so fast that by the time my monitor comes out of power save mode, it’s already on the login screen, so I can’t even see what key I’m supposed to hold to access it 😅 I’m not great with computers obviously.
Assuming I am able to get into the BIOS, do you know by how much should I undervolt it in order to make it safe enough for gaming?
slapshots1515@reddit
Yes it’s a BIOS setting. DEL is usually the key, though it does change by motherboard manufacturer. Occasionally I have had computers boot so fast that I at least have to use a wired keyboard.
I don’t have an exact number to undervolt, I don’t think I’ve seen an agreed upon amount yet and I don’t normally mess with that. I wouldn’t go too low, an undervolt can introduce instability too-maybe just 0.1V or so. I do have a 13700K so I am following this issue, but I’m lucky enough to have an older 11700K system I can use too so I’m just keeping my 13700K off until the update.
Jenn_FTW@reddit
Thank you, I think I had tried holding DEL and it didn’t work, but I’ll mess with it some more and see if I can get there. I don’t suppose there’s any way to tell it to restart & boot into BIOS from within Windows 11 is there?
I’m feeling a little relieved because I looked up the company I bought my PC from (NZXT) and it apparently comes with a 2 year warranty, which seems like a decent amount of time for issues to crop up if they were ever going to.
I might still temporarily undervolt though, at least until the BIOS update releases, just to be safe. And thank you again, I really appreciate you taking the time to help out a technically challenged gamer like me 😂
slapshots1515@reddit
To go straight into BIOS, no. You can reboot into BIOS though. Open the Start Menu > Power (Power Icon) > Hold Shift and select “Restart”. The device will restart to the Recovery Environment. Go to Troubleshoot > Advanced options > UEFI Firmware Settings > Restart. The system will restart to BIOS Setup. I will warn, I have still had this not work before when I ran into a display issue, but usually it should. Also, sometimes the key to enter BIOS is F2 or some other key (you’d have to look up your motherboard manufacturer-not NZXT, but the maker of the board itself.
NZXT should warranty, yes. If they don’t, Intel would anyways. It might get a little confusing with this current situation. Intel did advise to contact their customer support directly, for what it’s worth. Also if there are issues from this, they’d happen as soon as the voltage damaged the chip-it’s not a delayed over time sort of thing. So if you can get through the update, supposedly you should be safe.
And yep, of course! Good luck with it.
clownshow59@reddit
Just keep your BIOS updated, that’s the most we can do for now.
Jenn_FTW@reddit
Oh shoot, I don’t think I’ve ever done that before 😅 I’ll have to look up a guide on YouTube. Thank you for the advice!
Bhaaldukar@reddit
Or 4090.
DSM20T@reddit
side eyes my 1 month old 14700
Sylentt_@reddit
did I miss something? my friend’s been having issues with a 13th gen intel i9
DiMarcoTheGawd@reddit
My 7800x3D purchase looking better and better every day lol
Bigdaddyuk666@reddit
I'm glad I wen 12th gen i9 now lol
jgainsey@reddit
In that case probably just don’t turn it on period
edgemaster191@reddit
Yeah the only mechanical thing in my machine are the fans. If a component fails it was probably going to fail anyway regardless of power cycling it.
pdoherty972@reddit
SSDs wear out. I killed one from use just a few weeks ago and replaced it with a magnetic disk.
anewreddit473@reddit
I guess it depends what you consider obsolete. My PC managed to die well before I intended to replace it, performance wise it easily had another 5-10 years in it.
Wet_Water200@reddit
eh, my old pc is decent but the SSDs (at least the c drive) are dying and causing issues. it's kinda shit compared to what's out there rn but it can run stuff like cyberpunk on low settings just fine.
Nicolello_iiiii@reddit
Do not overlook this, run a disk test to make sure and please buy a new ssd. Also which ssd are you using?
Wet_Water200@reddit
nah idrc I've mostly switched to my laptop atp all I use my pc for now is some unity stuff that isn't v important.
Idk what ssd I'm using but I'm pretty sure they usually start to degrade after 5-10 years and it's been like 7 so i don't think the brand/model matters too much anyway
cosmicosmo4@reddit
But what if the power button wears out???
Vanrainy1@reddit
None whatsoever.
zulu970@reddit
2 of my PCIE Lanes ( x16 and x8) on the MSI Z97 Gaming 5 motherboard (purchased Dec 2014) confirmed spoilt a few days ago. So if I were to put my dGPU( RTX 3060) on either of those two slots, my entire pc will freeze crash with no signal. I am forced to upgrade my PC because my mobo pcie lanes have died lol.
However my HDMI port for the motherboard is working, currently running my PC through i7 4790k's integrated graphics (HD 4600) output.
omnichad@reddit
Those lanes are pretty much just wired directly to CPU pins. If the motherboard isn't physically damaged then it's very possible that your CPU is at fault.
To confirm, buy the cheapest used Celeron that is compatible.
singelingtracks@reddit
In the early 2000s I would turn my parents PC on and off multiple times a day as it had to be off when we didn't use it.
The only issue was a hdd wearing out , but it wasn't that big of an issue / never happened in years of on and off.
With modern SSD and computers there's nothing to go wrong turning it on and off whenever you want as long as it's not doing an update.
TheWeetcher@reddit
That used to be true with older hard drive tech. Booting requires a lot of reading to be done from the HDD so it would wear them out faster if you booted really often.
Now the opposite is true. It's usually better to turn your PC off completely when you're done using it. Leaving it in sleep the computer doesn't actually turn off. Over time you can bloat your cache and cause unnecessary wear and tear to components, leading to slowdowns.
isamura@reddit
I turn mine off every night. Less power consumed, and it’s not exposed to internet when it’s not on.
Knightslong@reddit
Unless you physically disconnect WiFi adapter or remove Cat cable, unfortunately it is exposed to The Internet.
omnichad@reddit
You should probably make sure your router and computer has at least a basic firewall, like almost all of them do.
XaZa_Real@reddit
Allegedly
isamura@reddit
How do you figure?
XaZa_Real@reddit
Motherboard stays powered even when pc is off. I just like seeing my ethernet port light up despite being off
Gerald_Lanz@reddit
Most probably the Wake on LAN feature.
DEM0SIN@reddit
I always close my PC at night and when I'm not using it. Electric isn't cheap.
Routine_Cake_842@reddit
People talk about hard drives because, yes, they spun, but the rule was applicable for all pieces of hardware. Fans spun too for example.
Turning the pc off wasn’t the real red flag; disabling sleep mode is required for screensavers to properly function for example and booting from sleep mode used to run a risk of corrupting your temp folder so people opted for a total shut off especially if their fans were loose (sometimes pcs would boot themselves out of sleep mode to pump their fans which is another example of risky computational loading)
Awkward-Ad327@reddit
This is actually very valid, I found this problem last with the 2008 dell Inspirons 530 or whatever it’s called, recent pcs and especially custom builds don’t have this problem
Few_Example9391@reddit
Sleep is the best. It allows your PC to near instantly get going again. Shut down is equivalent to you being sedated or hybernation, so expect your PC to be groggy at restarting any start-up programs. Physically turning off is like putting a patent into general anesthesia so you can do open body surgery on them. I only turn off if I plan to dive inside my PC case to upgrade it.
AMetalWolfHowls@reddit
Lead-free solder causes dendritic growth on power cycles. It’s why you get seemingly random hardware failures over time. Small stuff just shorts out and degrades until too many minuscule parts fry themselves and the component quits.
Power cycles are also hard on capacitors. Are they designed for it? Sure, but electrolytics wear out around ten years and leak DC, which will also fry circuits. If your rig runs hot, capacitors die exponentially faster. It’s why data centers have such crazy AC systems. For every ten degrees warmer, the component lifespan decreases by half. Caps rated for 100C might live 10 years at 50C, but 5 at 60 and 2.5 at 50.
So… the answer is that it’s complicated, and you need to balance dendritic growth against managing heat. If you can keep temps way down, leave it on. If you do something crazy that taxes the cooling system, turn it off.
pdoherty972@reddit
You mean at 70 there at the end, I believe
AMetalWolfHowls@reddit
Fixed, thanks
HopelessAndLostAgain@reddit
Wears out the power button
OG-Boostedbeard@reddit
Your starbucks intake may go up on the electricity you save monthly.
chunkymonkey922@reddit
My work laptop works way better if I turn it off at the end of the day than just putting it to sleep. If I put it to sleep the next day I usually have to end up restarting it anyway to get it to function properly.
draken2019@reddit
You can turn it on and off as many times as you want to.
thewittman@reddit
I turn mine off once per day. I've been doing this since the 80s never had an issue. However power supplies don't last forever, kinda depends on the quality of your equipment. I spend a little more on a better higher end psu. Psu's are a pain to replace with all the cables.
TheStuffle@reddit
I have been shutting windows PCs down daily for 20 years without any issues. You'll upgrade/replace the hardware before it actually wears out.
Fortune_Cat@reddit
Meanwhile the opposite is true for me
Leave my pc running 247
pdoherty972@reddit
By running it constantly you're doing less wear and tear I think (which is why I do the same) since you're letting the heat level reach equilibrium and from there changing only mildly. Also no shock to the system (pun intended) from turning on the power to a cold system all of the time.
Fortune_Cat@reddit
It did dry out the thermal paste of my gpu. I was throttling for half a year until I realised I just needed to repaste it and doubled my frames again
MyStationIsAbandoned@reddit
same. everyone who just leaves theirs on 24/7 always ends up with a super slow PC.
DeadGravityyy@reddit
Tell that to server owners who maintain servers that are running 24/7. Computers (and servers) are made to be run constantly, they won't randomly get slower over time because they're just running.
iApolloDusk@reddit
Many of those 24/7 servers are Linux based. Not saying they don't exist, but it's very unlikely to find a newer Windows server that hasn't been rebooted in years. Windows is notoriously bad when it comes to memory, updates, etc. Reboots are inevitable.
typefasterplease@reddit
I work as a server administrator for a well known company running online services (games).
We've got both Linux and Windows servers that have uptimes of well over two years.
Restarting memory consuming processes causes much less downtime than restarting a whole server.
DeadGravityyy@reddit
I didn't say they weren't linux based, and I also didn't say they NEVER get rebooted.
Thank you, Mr. Knowitall.
Memes_have_rights@reddit
Someone woke on the wrong side of the bed.
iApolloDusk@reddit
Just saying something that's not a given in your comment. Not looking for an argument, guy.
OpenRaincloud94@reddit
Oh no someone made a minor correction on the internet they must personally hate me I better say something smart and snarky quick!
Vioret@reddit
Uh no. That's not how that works.
TheStuffle@reddit
My media server uptime is currently 199 days. I just shut my windows gaming machine off when I'm not using it because noise/power/heat/why not?
I also never turn of my macbook except to update because mac handles sleep states much better than windows.
Tudor_I3@reddit
Those parts with time become obsolete, especially if using Windows, or Apple Operating system for pc. Because those and their updates. Are sometimes notorious at how bad they can be. Fortunately today, if they screw it with those, the fix is released in a short time. Your father referred at the consumption, or wanted you to help with something, or something else. Just to not spend time on the pc. If now you are no longer live with him under the same roof. Or if you took the responsibility of being the landlord of the household, and electricity it pays herself from sustainable source. You do not have that concern about "pc breakdown" if always on. As well, with parts from today that concern is long forgotten. Especially if you invest in above midrange components for that expensive "adult lego set" named as "PC" as well. Have a brighter day!
Nine2Samurai@reddit
if i am not mistaken there is an original edison bulb still on and functioning at a NY fire department....because they never turned it off.
with older soldering it has the potential to micro fissure, and enough of them will cause board issues...see GPU oven baking to soften back up the solder.
Also there was a thing called 'chip creep' the heating up and cooling down would cause bios chips to unseat themselves.
these are all issues that have been solved or made obsolete.
also until technology plateaus, like others have said, you'll replace it before 'it' goes bad.
danuser8@reddit
The only harm is you will save some money on your electricity bill every month
tarkata14@reddit
Yep, this is my main reason for turning off my computer when I'm not using it. Not to mention it boots back up in less than a minute, so why not save a few bucks here and there?
Vioret@reddit
Because you won't save a few bucks. Power use is almost nothing with modern stuff.
Buldozer_Wizard@reddit
My 4080 rig would like to disagree.
broome9000@reddit
Yeah but your 4080 isn't running at max load overnight so again it wouldn't make too much of a difference on your power bill. Either way if you can afford a 4080 I'm sure a couple $ extra on the power bill isn't hurting you.
mjl777@reddit
When matter increases its heat energy it expands. Different materials expand and contract at different rates. This can cause different substances to separate after repeated heating and cooling. The idea is to keep your components at the same temperature to prolong their life.
MemeyPie@reddit
While temperature cycling does have its effects, that lifetime is long enough to not be a concern for the average consumer. This would matter more for extreme cases like prolonged aircraft use or something
mjl777@reddit
I do agree with you. Computers are not built the same way they were in the past. Before you had many chips just press fit into sockets. As they thermal throttled they would work their way out. The original apples had this problem to the point that it was advised to bang the computer strongly by Apple and this indeed did solve the problems.
Critorrus@reddit
No harm exists, and it really hasnt for 30 years. It is a misconception because a lot of failures happen on startup. It can be broken already and operating, but it doesn't become apparent until startup. It has nothing to do with hard drives vs. ssds like a lot of people are saying.
CorgiBebop3141@reddit
I have a primary laptop. I usually put it to sleep and only reboot 1-2 times a month. Most of the time I put it to sleep when it is not going to be in use. I just wouldn't leave it on if I am not going to use it within an hour. There can be memory issues if you don't do restarts which is why I have 32gb with low end dedicated graphics.
Heat is the main enemy of laptops. Which is why I do a full disassemble and cleaning every other year including reposting the thermal paste and new high quality thermal pads. I use Thermal Grizzly Kryonaut Extreme for laptop CPUs and GPUs. And Gelid Ultimate thermal pads. I also use canned compressed air on all the fans, vents and heatsink every other month to maintain airflow.
I will only use gen4 nvme ssds in 17" or larger laptops with a thin aftermarket heatsink (w/thermal pad), and gen 3 nvme with anything smaller than a 17". I'll still use a thin heatsink if there is space for it. SN850X is my choice for gen4, 970 EVO plus for gen3.
The 3 biggest mistakes I see people making with and computer they rely on is
1 not having a good heat management plan and taking heat as a serious issue 2 not having a good cleaning plan, this also ties into #1 a bit 3 not paying attention to their system like they would their vehicles. They take their vehicles in for scheduled maintenance but not their computers
Bonus 4 not having a good data backup plan and then freaking out when they lose pictures, videos or worse work documents
All machines eventually break down. But with a good plan you can meet all of your needs for years to come. Save money, save yourself stress, save files you want in the future by actually having a well thought out plan for when your system fails or SSD fails. Ignoring the reality and expecting a computer and all its components to last forever is like hoping for the immaculate conception.
OldeSaltyBeard@reddit
I mean, electronics flex as they heat and cool. There is the argument to be made that leaving your computer on all the time keeps everything warm and stable. The counter argument to this is that playing almost any game nowadays will turn up the temperature of your your CPU, your GPU, your memory, as well as different areas of your motherboard. Joe, if your goal was to prolong the life of your equipment by keeping it at a constant temperature, you wouldn't be able to play games or really do anything that used an excessive amount of any part of your computer. Joe, with consumer electronics it's probably not that big of a deal.
On a similar note, based on that understanding, a light bulb should never burn out. If you never turn it off. Now that's actually something that is real and you can see in your own home. You can learn about the world 's longest running light bulb and you may find that quite interesting. I've had a light bulb running in my house non-stop, minus power outages, for the last 12 years and it's still the same bulb. Running a light bulb doesn't burn out. The light bulb. Turning it on and off is actually what breaks it. But no turning your computer off doesn't cause any real issues other than maybe missing a Windows update or something. And frankly that's probably not such a bad thing lately.
Nuttybuddy2611@reddit
Fun thing most people don't know about windows. Restarting and shutting off a windows computer are two different things. Restarting your computer also shuts down and restarts windows kernal. Shutting down does not, it just takes power away from everything including motherboard. Windows never refreshes fully if you just shut down your computer.
Personally I restart my computer 2-3 times a week. Or if I'm lazy I don't restart it until it starts causing me issues. I use my computer everyday and I have a game or two running 24/7.
To answer your question as others have mentioned. The reason your step dad said not to turn your computer on and off everyday was mostly because of the HDDs. Technology has come a long way and you can leave your computer running for a long time before any mechanical issues come, especially with a SSD since it has no mechanical parts.
Yeetus_McSendit@reddit
We're in the future now. It's fine.
It's actually company policy at my job that we all must shutdown our work laptops at night because our network is under constant attack from hackers and leaving a machine running overnight unattended I guess is a risk. We got hit with a ransomware attack during COVID and they showed us how many attempted connections are made when it's day time in Europe and Asia.
So other than that, it's just good to shut down and restart the computer regularly to clear the system memory or w.e. for a smooth operation. Leaving background processes running indefinitely can cause stability issues too.
So I would recommend you shutdown every time you're done using it. There's no risk in modern computers.
Burchard36@reddit
"They cant hack us if we turn out computers off!"
starcrescendo@reddit
I mean this is somewhat true... they can get on the network but if the computers don't wake on LAN they aren't going to be able to do much as far as getting data/files
D3PyroGS@reddit
if you're storing all of your important files locally instead of on the network, one day you're gonna wake up to some Very Big Problems
RealNiceKnife@reddit
When an errant cup of water can bring down a whole company.
solo_living@reddit
Do you have any idea how upset the IT guys in movies and TV shows would be if they could read?
Yebi@reddit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u8qgehH3kEQ
NoDoze-@reddit
WTF kind of IT depth is that!?! LOL sounds like they had absolutely no network security in place! Sheeesh "Turn off your PC so it can't get hacked" is 80's level network security. LOL
kelkemmemnon@reddit
Can't have some half asleep moron click on a phishing link in a "work email" if the PC is shutdown.
SirLesbian@reddit
Meanwhile I don't think the computers at my job have been shut down at all this year. No sleep mode...just constantly running all day and night. My coworkers don't seem to give a shit but it bugs me deeply lol.
pdoherty972@reddit
If it makes you feel any better all of my computers in my house run 24x7
Vioret@reddit
It shouldn't. Turning them on and off constantly is fucking stupid.
lambruhsco@reddit
Your workplace cybersecurity policy is to turn off your laptops at night as a defense against attacks? That’s hilarious. Do they also ask you to change your device name to “PersonalHomeComputer”?
Yeetus_McSendit@reddit
Yes shutting down when not in use is part of the overall security strategy which includes multiple VPNs tunneling with MFA, antivirus, remote monitoring, and remote IT deployment. And backups of our backups.
IT can track everything we do on our computers, that's how they were able to show us all the attempted connections from Europe and Asia that attack our network EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. So yeah, shutting down reduces risk because it one less point of access.
After all it's about risk management. Just one laptop was compromised during COVID and it spread through the network affecting about half the system and it encrypted some of the servers. Which ended up getting purged and restored from the backups. After that is when rolled out the remote monitoring and remote deployment and added MFA to get on the VPN to access the network.
DelirousDoc@reddit
Off topic but I have an "Old Stuff" folder on my work computer. It is mostly for one-time projects I did, forget to properly organize at the time and didn't want to bother going through it to properly organize it. However we are required to keep records on certain things for a set amount of time so in case those projects fell into that category I hang on to the file in the "Old Stuff" folder.
(Usually I try to organize a folder and location before I start because I know if I wait I will not get it done right.)
Hyperslinky9@reddit
I find that computers run like trash when you don’t shut them off.
pisachas1@reddit
None. I’ve turned my computer off every time I’ve finished using it for like 20 years. You will replace the computer from getting old before it does any real damage. The only computer part that has ever died on me was my graphics card burnt out once years ago in the middle of playing a game.
Maybe if you turned it on and off a bunch every day for a long time but not normal use.
pdoherty972@reddit
I just wore out a less-than-3-year-old SSD (Samsung 870 EVO) and replaced it with a magnetic disk for longevity.
pisachas1@reddit
My m.2 I bought in 2019 is still running. I just bought a new m.2 drive on prime day to upgrade to because it’s twice as fast.
M0RT4LW0MBAT@reddit
Would you leave your car running always? Things have a lifetime…. And while starting up and stopping tech can negatively effect that lifetime , we are starting to see research about cars that turn off at stop lights and then back on when you go, causes more harm than good.
More_Definition_1498@reddit
With modern power supplies it's no problem turning it on and off often, multiple times a day.
Vioret@reddit
There's also no reason to.
More_Definition_1498@reddit
There kind of is if you live in a third world country like south africa, and tou have the power going off multiple times a day. It's much safer to just switch it off when the timetable says it's power off time. Also as somebody who lives almost on the beach. It's better to not have your pc on unnecessarily when not in use, as it sucks in the salt air which corrodes everything , trust me I know. From gpus last a year and motherboards gone in a year. Lol. I hsve to clean my pc atleast once every 1 to 2 months to make sure salty dust doesn't hang around eating my stuff
bdanahy319@reddit
I just posted this because I couldn't find the exact bit of info I'm looking for, but I would like to leave my pc in sleep mode when not in use, because the wait time to be able to use it is SO much less than when powering all the way on. Is it bad to do this?
rinova@reddit
Just going to throw in here that with modern windows, it doesn't even really fully "shut down" anymore unless you're holding shift when you click shut down
humanmanhumanguyman@reddit
I sleep in the same room as my co.puter and it has an old high wattage cooler master power supply that isn't exactly quiet so it turns off every night
Seems fine to me. Most of my hardware went 7 years this way, hdds failed first, AIO got replaced with a air cooler, upgraded from a 980ti to 2060, but that's about it.
Ratiofarming@reddit
Your stepdad was/is an idiot. While theoretically it's not ideal to put things through thermal cycles by turning them off and on, he doesn't account for mechanical wear by having components run for much longer timespans than they would otherwise.
Let alone that the reduced lifetime would be on a timescale that won't matter to begin with, because you will have replaced those components long before any of this becomes a factor. Turn it off when you don't need it.
lagerea@reddit
Amazing to see the historical telephone game happen here. As someone already deep into tech in the 90's there was no parking drives, that's at least a decade late. I would honestly attest for the durability of drives in the 90's and say the weakest spot for drives were the mid-late 2000's.
SwordsOfWar@reddit
You'll be fine. Just do what you want.
There is some truth to this though. Basically doing something intensive that would cause the components to heat up, then immediately turning it off could potentially cause premature failure. It comes from the expansion and contraction of components when they heat up and cool back down too quickly. After doing something that pushes the PC hard, leading it to heat up, allow it to idle for a while and slowly cool down before cutting it off completely. This use to be a HUGE issue with gaming consoles that would eventually cause them to fail. Probably not an issue on a decent desktop PC, but it could still be an issue for laptops, which have worse cooling solutions.
thatguydrew20@reddit
I never shut mine off one newer hhd and 3 ssds, zero issues. Just keep the cpu cooler and gpu clean and maybe every few years clean and reapply the thermal paste.
ProperCat1772@reddit
Stupid question, but do people actually NOT turn off their PC when done using? Like when sleeping or so. I know sleep/hibernate would be faster when you need it back on, but I mean power bill...
Sc00pidyw00p@reddit
i just keep mine turned on for the whole day even if im away from it, i only turn it off if im not home for longer than like 30 minutes or so, otherwise if im at home, ill keep it on
RevTurk@reddit
I nearly always tun my PC off at night. I would only leave it on if it was doing something.
I would see leaving it on all the time as giving it the opportunity to have a lot of little errors running in the background slowing things down.
Turning it off and on is like a daily pre-emptive bit of health care for your PC. It resets the PC and gets rid of any problems that developed while it was on.
criticalnom@reddit
Same. I also don't want to pay for electricity that I'm not using.
kermityfrog2@reddit
Yeah but computers these days are really stable. I just sleep/hibernate my computer daily to save power and it only gets rebooted when a Win update forces it to. The low power state is almost equivalent to being fully off. My home server/HTPC never gets turned off and runs 24/7 aside from updates.
gizmogadgetdevice@reddit
Why bother with hibernate though if most computers startup on seconds these days if the operating system is on an ssd?
kermityfrog2@reddit
Because all your apps are still open and everything is exactly as where you left off. You don’t have to launch anything.
psimwork@reddit
Same. I shutdown a little more commonly before I got my Ryzen 7600 machine, but with AM5 taking my bootup time (from power-button press to windows login) from like 10 seconds to about 40 seconds, I pretty much use sleep/stand-by exclusively now. I'll reboot when it's required as part of a Windows update, and/or about every week.
kermityfrog2@reddit
Pretty spoiled now - I remember when work computer and laptops would take about 10 min to boot so you had to get coffee or something.
psimwork@reddit
That's kinda how I feel when folks are complaining about ~1 minute boot times on an AM5 machine. I don't think I ever had a 10 minute boot time as I started in the i486 days, but I definitely remember clicking on my 486/66 and it would take roughly 3-4 minutes to fully run through the Config.sys and Autoexec.bat and then have it boot Win3.1.
pdoherty972@reddit
Heck you guys should have been around in the older days when we booted from floppies and didn't even have a hard drive. My Amiga 500 took quite a while to completely finish.
pdoherty972@reddit
I used to do Solaris and AIX UNIX administration back in the late 1990s and those things took forever to boot. But once running they had uptimes measured in months or years. One RS/6000 had been turned on when it was bought 4 years earlier (I think it was) and hadn't rebooted or shut down even once.
I_P_L@reddit
My work laptop still does because the VPN takes literal minutes to connect
pdoherty972@reddit
You can always do a Windows restart to get the same effect without the power shock of turning on an ambient-temp PC every day. There's also thermal benefit to bringing the system to operating temp and leaving it there (not like the swings that are produced by letting cool all the way down, only to ramp it back up each time you power it up and start using it).
Vioret@reddit
Or you could just reboot it every few days. None of what you said is a legitimate concern.
PCRefurbrAbq@reddit
I restart every evening when I leave work, so the HDD has time to reload Windows completely and do all its little fiddly things before I come in the next workday to a fast and useful computer.
Plini9901@reddit
Those "little errors" are handled and cycled nowadays. Memory errors happen all the time and yet PCs nowadays can run for months without issue. Even less likely to get errors on a DDR5 platform as DDR5 has ECC-lite built in.
Catgravy1965@reddit
I tell people to look at it this way: When does a light bulb usually burn out? When you're turning it on.
For my home PC, the only time I turn it off is if there is bad weather. Power spikes can kill a PC faster than anything.
stormhyena@reddit
Always turned my PC of when I know I'm not going to use it for a few hours or put it in stanby, never had a single problem, I've still got 2 HDDs for over 10 years in it, not a single problem.
BackwoodButch@reddit
My previous PC main components (CPU, GPU, MOBO, RAM) were my daily rig for 8 years. I turned it on at the start of the day if I was home, and turned it off when I went to bed.
I am now doing the same thing with upgraded components + I pay my own powerbill and I'm not keeping it on overnight or if I'm going to be out of the house for more than 2 hours.
The only time I have had a part 'wear out' was an old harddrive that got corrupted before I built my rig. The components of my old rig are going to be put into a new tower for my partner to use until the day it truly gives out.
pdoherty972@reddit
I haven't tried t break down my electric bill to determine how much it's costing to run all of my computers 24x7. I have a Mac Mini, a desktop PC, and a Linux server. But my combined has and electric bill most months is below $300 and this is in a two-story house with two AC units.
BackwoodButch@reddit
I live in an apartment with no AC, and on average spend about $45-50 per month, but I get spikes obviously when I use my fans in summer, often 10-20, and now with a more powerful rig, I don’t know how much that’ll differ but I prefer to save money where I can (broke PhD student lol)
pdoherty972@reddit
Understand. lol
Huma188@reddit
Actually, i recommend you to NOT ONLY turn off the PC, but also "reset" It every few days. Turn off and reset are not the same thing.
absurd_nerd_repair@reddit
None. I tell all of my clients to turn ALL devices of every day. [IT Crowd .gif]
Both-Fig-9295@reddit
is it ok that i unplug my 2011 pc with a hdd every time im not using it so it doesnt turn on randomly
AwwYeahVTECKickedIn@reddit
The biggest risk is that you may lose sleep worrying about it. Because there's nothing to worry about.
jackbarbelfisherman@reddit
None. Modern computers are designed to handle it, and the boot times are so fast now that it's usually unnecessary to leave it running or in sleep mode
pdoherty972@reddit
I leave them running so they can do work and be accessible (I use an iPad most of the time and access the other systems remotely in most cases).
Accomplished_Emu_658@reddit
Back in olden times there was some risk and wear and tear. Anyone saying that still applies is crazy.
pdoherty972@reddit
Call me crazy then.
buttscopedoctor@reddit
I've been turning on and off my pcs since the 80s. None of them died.
Octine64@reddit
My dad has his (Mine at first) computer on all the god damn time! Uptime must be 8 months! What's the harm in that?
pdoherty972@reddit
None. It's what I do as well with all of my computers.
aithosrds@reddit
Electronic components in general don’t like being turned off and then started, so while it’s not likely to cause damage I’ve always been of the opinion that if you use your computer every day it’s better to let it run. I don’t even let mine go to sleep, the power use of an idle computer is so minimal it is insignificant.
pdoherty972@reddit
Same. It's worth it to me to let them run and stay at temp equilibrium and without constantly shocking them by turning them on.
KennyJacobs1@reddit
Turn it off, save on your power bill, I live in India and because of the power outages, we have to turn our computers off as the outages can last for hours on end. I've been turning my Desktop off every night for over 20 years now. About seven years ago I was still using hard disks and used to turn the PC off regularly and nothing has ever happened. As long as you shut it down properly and not just pull the plug out(Don't do that even now) your PC will be fine.
OwnSpread1563@reddit
The NSA suggests you completely shut down your phones included each week for security reasons. I would venture to guess this would be applicable to home computers as well. https://www.zdnet.com/article/the-nsa-advises-you-to-turn-your-phone-off-and-back-on-once-a-week-heres-why/
pdoherty972@reddit
A computer can just be rebooted without needing to "shut it down" (aka power it off).
DeerOnARoof@reddit
None
turkoid@reddit
Prepare yourself for a long answer:
No, it will be fine. As others have said, by the time it does become a problem, you're already looking for a new computer. If you're not using an SSD for your boot drive, then boot times will obviously be a negative.
Conversely, leaving it on 24/7 is totally fine, even disabling sleep/hibernation. Obviously, this will affect your electric bill, but you can mitigate it by making sure to have a quality power supply. Going from Bronze to Titanium can make a good amount of difference for efficiency. However, gold is the sweet spot for affordability/savings.
Turning it off or leaving it on all day depends on your preference and use. I keep mine on all day because I work from home 2–3 days a week and like to have the ability to remote into it. Leaving it on all the time will not slow your computer down, either, unless a program running has a severe memory leak.
Nougleft@reddit
I turn it off everytime I dont use it but I press shift while turning it off
Onsomeshid@reddit
That wasn’t really an issue in the early 2000’s either. I guess you could eventually ruin a hdd but that would still probably take a LONG time.
Lets google instead of trusting 20 year old opinions from random ppl
pdoherty972@reddit
Turning on the PC causes a jolt of electricity across all of the components, which is usually when things break (think of light bulbs - when do they break? Right when you're turning them on)
Turning the PC off and on a regular basis undermines the equilibrium that is reached, where the PC components (motherboard, RAM, video card, power supply, hard drives) all reach their normal operating temperature (where the temps they produce are met by the ambient temp and cooling apparatus installed in the case).
The temperature equilibrium mentioned above is likely to make the system last longer because constantly letting the system fall back to room ambient temperature, then heating it back up to operating temp could make soldered areas brittle and shorten their lives.
CeazyAlex@reddit
you gotta disassemble the whole pc if you wanna be safe
Kayash@reddit
Seems an engagement farm post. HDD's and SSD's have no issue turning off and on now, HDD's spin down on their own when idle.
Kvpe@reddit
id think its better to turn off your pc when you’re not using it:
-ram usage drops down
-milion processes don’t run
-less power than sleep mode (?)
RavenDancer@reddit
Absolutely not, turn that shit off.
shotgun4hire@reddit
Hard Drives didn't like being turned on & off, also shortened life of psu's
Cactiareouroverlords@reddit
I do the same because my brain equated it to a lightbulb blowing a fuse and since then it’s just been a habit
macksters@reddit
It turned out to be a hoax. No PC of mine went bad because of the daily on and off routine. Some say HDDs didn't like it. No, one HDD of mine is 21 years old and still working despite being turned off at the end of the day.
Morkinis@reddit
I only heard that if you also turn off PSU via switch (or unplug wire for some reason) then it can wear capacitors more.
mymechanicalmind@reddit
If you're doing that outside of necessity or emergency, then in my opinion you're asking for trouble 😂
GA_Magnum@reddit
What I'm going to comment used to be part of the conversation during covid, crypto boom and the big component scalping time, where all you could get were either ridoculously overprices scalped cards, used cards for mining and used older gen cards from gamers, also ridiculously expensive.
I have not veryfied this myself or had any experience with this. Just a little log of information.
A lot of people back then would argue that, if the mining cards were not abused, and kept running in a controlled and cool(enough) environment, they'd be perfectly good and could last for years and years, maybe even better than a used card from a gamer.
One of the reasonings given was the temperature cycles of turning on and off the pc thousands of times during it's life time, could have physical wear on the components, frome xpanding and shrinking due to the temperature. A mining card generally runs the same all the time and is never turned off, so this would not affect them.
Again, I dont know how true this is, but your post just brought back a memory about this.
Top-Conversation2882@reddit
Hard drives when turned on "parked" basically the shiny disca inside got scratched slightly when parked and unparked.
Older disks had low park-unpark cycles before they die.
Newer disks have much more cycles available so not really an issue.
And moreover basically all new systems use SSDs which have no moving parts. So no issues regarding turning on and off.
cclambert95@reddit
I would argue there’s more damage in leaving it on 24/7 and also running up your electricity bill slightly.
Is it better to not shut our cars off and leave them running? For reference my current build has been added too but the original hard drive, motherboard, ram, cpu, are all 8 years old and have been overclocked on the parts that can be.
On/off probably 2-7 times a day when I leave the room for an extended period of time it goes off; boot up time is almost non existent anyways.
Finally upgrading this weekend and doing a completely new build but it truly doesn’t matter that sounds like some old timer wise tails to me personally.
“Your blood is actually blue” kind of thing; just a common misconception that spread before the days of information being readily available to check.
Moo8ey@reddit
Modern computers are designed to handle this no problem.
oRavenTi@reddit
My PC is only off when there's a power outage. Most night I put it into sleep mode, during the day it stays completely powered. It's more practical for me that way, so I can see any new notifications on Telegram, email, Steam, etc.
didamangi83@reddit
None.
ModernManuh_@reddit
It stresses the memory at worse but the difference in SSDs lifespan (or even RAM) will be negligible even if you reboot 12 times per day. Now, what you DON'T want to turn off and on is the PSU, many good PSUs can and will take the hit with no trouble but there's always a chance they don't, unless you have an UPS. A broken PSU, even if "half broken" (it buzzes or doesn't deliver as much power as before the damage) is always a bad idea to use, eventually they can even blow up.
"But what if I need to turn it off"
You can turn it off, but there's no benefit in doing it every single time, only risks. You need to turn it off? Unplug the power cable from the wall (NOT from the PSU), then hold your PCs power button, you will notice it will "try to turn on", keep holding the power button for about 20 seconds, you should hear a few clicks coming from the PSU, indicating it discharged. The best way to do it is just unplugging the cord (again from the wall, not the PSU) and leave it there for a few hours, then to make sure it is not loaded do the same 20 seconds thing.
Do NOT operate on your PSU to clean its inside or swap any part of it, leave it to professionals (which, if you are then you know better than me). Power supplies are always dangerous, even if unplugged and discharged, mainly (and maybe only) because of the capacitors, they can hold power for a long while and you don't want that running through your body
Aesthetic_Perfection@reddit
Well, if i'm not mistaken, when you press the power button, to turn on your PC, your power supply suges the motherhoard with high voltage to "wake it up" and get it started. If you turn on and off your PC a lot, those surges could damage your motherboard and stuff attached to it, so it's a gamble.
fasti-au@reddit
In reality it’s about moving parts and thermal up and downs but there’s less now and capacitors are better so it’s more of a in the old days type thing really.
No it doesn’t really matter it’s just an old person thing
illuzian@reddit
There is emotional distress while waiting for the Ryzen series to train DDR5. Maybe potential wear spinning any high speed fans up and down but probably negligible.
GeneralSpectatorTots@reddit
I've had my laptop for for about 12 years now and it still runs good. I swapped out the HDD for an SSD a while back and mainly put my laptop into hybrid sleep when I'm home.
captains_astronaut@reddit
Mine's been going strong for about 10yrs (i5-2500k) with daily on/off cycling. Original psu, mb, ram... Hdds have never died, though I have upgraded along the way.
ADAMOXOLT@reddit
What should be wrong with doing it? I've been doing it for the past 8 years and nothing happened, why should it?
Archy54@reddit
Warming and cooling cycles in the electronics can be an issue but most likely not for like decades. You should be fine. You can sleep mode too. I usually leave it in due to laziness but sleep mode works too. You can turn it off though, get a kill a watt meter to see how much power it uses sleep mode. I wouldn't fret about it once or twice a day. I reckon it would be more just annoying booting 10* a day.
I've got mini servers that have been on for a year, a sprinkler server rpi for 8 years that auto turn on after black out. Home automation too. Id probably let it idle after a game to cool a few minutes before turning off. Rapid cooling is probably the biggest risk. And loss of power before HDD or ssd saves info so get a ups. True online real sinewave if you can. Backup your data too. 2 additional copies plus one offsite in case of fire if you want the best backup.
Sudden loss of power, brown out, rapid heat cycling, and jolts to HDDs running are no good. Or power spikes. Static can be an issue but modern stuff is resilient but touch the case with it grounded via power cord before components. Enjoy your PC.
motoxim@reddit
Eh nothing I guess.
animeman59@reddit
I've been turning off my PC for over a decade now, and never had an issue with startup.
Modern sleep on the other hand? That shit aggravates me.
Terrapin2190@reddit
I shut down, flip the PSU switch, and the surge protector switch every night. So far so good! PSU is still somewhat new though, about a year old. I assume the PSU switch could fail before anything else. You just don't want to force shut down with data being transferred - especially to HDDs, but SSDs are probably included in that as well. End up with corrupt data and unrecoverable sectors.
BestTyming@reddit
No issue
But I keep mine on for days at a time even when I don’t use it. Might not be the beset for energy consumption but I will restart it every now and then just to clear memory and thats it. Longest I’ve kept it on for was 2 weeks. But before all of this, I turned it on and off multiple times a day for over a year. No issues
Logical_Two_9463@reddit
I usually do this to save electricity unless I have a lot of stuff open that I need to continue the next day.
bluegreenwookie@reddit
It was fine turning it off even back then as long as you were turning it off the correct way and not just using the power button
Thunderbolt294@reddit
I always keep my computer off when not in use, I've had zero issues and I never have to worry about some app or updater running a muck unsupervised.
TeddyBear312@reddit
Back in the day, powering off worked a little differently. Sometimes the hard drive would still be doing something, and powering off cut the power directly, potentially corrupting or damaging the hard drive or other components that still had processes running. When I was a kid and we got our first home PC, it had an HDD light that would flicker when writing or reading data, and I was told only to shut it off when the light stopped flickering. I'm not sure how accurate that was, but we never had a problem.
Nowadays, powering off doesn't happen instantaneously. Processes are closed down, and when the PC has finished everything, it powers off. This usually only takes one or two seconds, which is why on Windows at least you see the spinning wheel, and it says something like "closing programs" or "powering off" — I can't remember what it says exactly, but it's a process now instead of a hard power cut.
D3PyroGS@reddit
It's now safe to turn off your computer.
phoenixcinder@reddit
Hell I don't ever turn it off and I don't even go into sleep mode. Just shut the monitor off. Will stay that way for weeks/months. If I leave the house for a few days I will shut down and unplug
WittleJerk@reddit
It’s an old wives tale from the 90’s. It never damaged your computer. Just like ESD never actually killed 99.9999% of circuitry.
Source: I’ve bare-handed open racks in many server rooms. Just don’t stand in a puddle of water while you’re doing anything. Remember, hot + cold = wet.
Jazzlike-Reindeer-44@reddit
It doesn't kill it but it damages it. Every switch in the world has a cycle life span.
Jazzlike-Reindeer-44@reddit
Everybody is giving you wrong answer here. Every electronics, every electric devices are experiencing strain when turned on and off. That's how switches degrade. A switch is a super basic component but is under stress when turned on and off. It's inevitable. If your equipment supports it you can turn it off and on sure. But know that it decreases the lifespan of the electronics. Typically you'd change a PC before it gets worn down by switching it on and off so there's not much negative here even though you are effectively shortening the life of your equipment by turning it on and off.
faithzeroxp@reddit
the on off switch have limited lifetime, I have replaced my on-off switch for my 4 year old pc
DirtDevil1337@reddit
I hate the clicky switch and had one fail already (have to press really hard for it to work) on my HTPC, I find cases with the springy spongy switch, they rarely wear out, I've had my case for \~10 years and still works, the reset is clicky though and I never use it anyways.
happyjunki3@reddit
Sleep mode in windows 10 and 11 both randomly turns itself on anyway so now i just always shut down
skylinestar1986@reddit
The only harm is failure of the computer power button.
grubbapan@reddit
The only problem I’ve had turning it off and on was when I blew the caps in my psu cycling the power button on the back of it. It was a high end psu so no way should the caps blow from that but they did. Got a replacement and added some cash to get a higher capacity one. Leaving the pc on now is just pointless if it’s idling since by the time my monitor turns on I’m already in the login screen if I just turn it on/off. Plus electricity costs money
Putrid-Balance-4441@reddit
As others have said, the boot up process involves a lot of reading, which means for a spinner, that read head thrashes around a lot. It does add wear and tear to an HDD.
If your computer uses an HDD, then yeah, listen to your dad.
If you're booting off of an SSD (regardless of what kind), then reading does basically zero damage. Writing can impact longevity, but reading won't. Further, with modern SSDs, you'll barely notice the difference between the time to boot and the time to wake from a sleep state. This is in part because "off" on modern Windows is basically an elaborate sleep state.
chrizpii93@reddit
Your dad was full of shit. Probably parroting some shit he heard from some other idiot who was also full of shit. As we get older we realise our parents weren't these all knowing beings we thought they were and in fact, many of our parents were straight up just a little bit stupid.
Turn it off if you want to save on your electricity bill.
jeffreysynced@reddit
I turn mine off every night. I’ve had a few too many incidents of waking into my home office to a BSOD to leave it on anymore.
When it comes to monitors though, I definitely subscribe to the ‘don’t turn it off and on a lot’ rule. I have had many monitors fizzle out, but since leaving them on, not a single issue for many years.
Warriorfromthefire@reddit
As it was explained to me, the power surge of turning them on and off slowly damaged parts over time, but equally does leaving them on all the time burn them up. Note, extremely slowly. Degradation will happen either way. You just get choice in how you do it! :D
TheChuck321@reddit
I haven't shut down my computer in years. It will restart when there are updates, but I just shut off the TV and call it a day... lol
Natedawg120@reddit
I have a few old spinners in my desktop cause why not, SSDs all primary.
The OldTimer is a WD 80GB 7200rpm drive that has 48,120 hours on it or 5 and a half years.
I shut my computer down when it serves no purpose other than turning power into heat.
Lord_Gwyn21@reddit
These days, realistically nothing. In the 90s, a whole fuck ton of issues.
dek018@reddit
I turn on and off my computer like 4 times a day, have been doing it for years and haven't had any issues at all...
I guess back in the day computers took more effort because of the HDDs were obviously all magnetic, as well as very unoptimized...
Maybe the operating system also takes some effort on the hard drives everytime it boots? I really don't know much about this, since I have a linux system with SSD's only...
awmartian@reddit
I hardly ever turn mine off except for cleaning. I schedule all the updates at night. I was taught that letting the board get hot and cool repeatedly wasn't good for longevity.
MrVirgo_@reddit
Have had my PC for 10+ years, have turned it off and on anywhere between 1-3 times a day. Have experienced no issues at all. I think you'll be alright with how you're doing it now :D
MinotaurGod@reddit
None. Hell, leaving it on is probably more damaging. Power = heat = bad for sensitive electronics. That being said, unless you're crypto mining or otherwise running components and full capacity, the computer will likely outlive its usefulness. Random component failure is really common in computers, but that has very little to do with how much you turn it on or off.
Expert_Tip_7473@reddit
Power spikes on every start up. Degrades components faster.
ninjafromtheblock@reddit
Don't know. I never turn off mine 😅
AnApexBread@reddit
None
cool_slowbro@reddit
None, I've been doing it for over 25 years. Old hard drives don't like it but I never had a drive fail or anything like that.
op3l@reddit
None. Was to avoid having HDD spin up and down and for faster usability as computers tended to take a while to boot up.
Now I shut off computer if I'm going to be away for more than 2 hours
alek_hiddel@reddit
I work in IT specifically managing core infrastructure for a FAANG. The boot process is the hardest strain on your hardware. I have switches/servers/routers that have ran non-stop for 3 years with no issues. Let a power failure happen, and hard drives will die, and fans will fail.
Basically in use, a fan/disk spins and like medium rpm’s. At boot, that shit is running full blast. Like reboot a Cisco device, and prepared to not hear for a minute.
That said, a modern desktop running an SSD avoids a lot of those problems, so in today’s terms it’s really not a huge deal for consumer gear. Still nothing wrong with just letting it sleep either though.
Liesthroughisteeth@reddit
Have been upgrading PCs since the later 90s and building since around 2004. Never leave my PCs on unless I have a reason.
Haven't noticed any discernible failures due to the practice. Currently running a newer higher end gamer, a 126TB Unraid media server, a Home theater/light gamer PC and my wife's two laptops.
misteridjit@reddit
Might leave a wet spot.
Stewapalooza@reddit
I turn my desktop off every night. So, at least once a day isn't an issue.
Izaul13@reddit
Damn.. remember defragging your PC?
Thatweasel@reddit
One thing that powering on and off frequently might do is cause heat stress to components, as there's a slight power surge when powering on a PC - but it's basically negligible for typical use, you'd probably have to be power cycling hundreds of times constantly for it to make any real difference.
Accomplished-Art4664@reddit
getting a soar finger
ParaadoxStreams@reddit
I used to turn my PC off with the power button, until one fateful day my media server folder got corrupted because of how it turned off. Now I just do it through windows.
Ecstatic-Seesaw-1007@reddit
The only thing I would say is that the physically moving parts have a life span ~ 50,000 hours (rated) but can last much longer.
8,760 hours in a year, so I’d say roughly 5 years on moving parts (fans which keep temps cool and i damaged) is a good lifetime for most computers.
However, I actually think turning off is beneficial because you can extend the life of some components.
Also, my Nest thermostat allows higher temps while I’m at work, so I did often turn off my towers while at work in California. I haven’t been doing that lately but my last tower started with a 1060 and only recently crapped out (with a 3060), so, it’s anecdotal, but I do think there are benefits from turning off if you’re gonna be away for a while.
I’ve tried to track if there’s any difference in saving on energy bills but sleep modes (I think most computers are S1 by default) are pretty efficient now. I haven’t noticed a difference in my personal testing which is once again, anecdotal.
nxcrosis@reddit
I live in a country that has frequent brownouts especially during rainy season so I actually turn my PC off after I work/game. It's so bad that a random lightning strike not even remotely close would kill the power. I have it connected to a UPS and only actually unplug the UPS itself when I'm leaving the house since the power might go out when I'm not home and drain the UPS battery.
5 years and it's still good.
epanek@reddit
Thermal creep.
Complex-Effect-9518@reddit
Been using computers since 1996 and always shut down after using. Never had a problem.
Boofster@reddit
I would just keep it on 24/7
froli@reddit
I turn off my computer whenever I won't be using it for more than 10 minutes and don't need tasks to run while away. My PC boots in 12 seconds so it's not like I would save any significant amount of time hibernating instead.
Informal_Meeting_577@reddit
Never turn mine off, let em sleep and I've never had an issue.
invisiblecommunist@reddit
Forcing a shutdown (via the power button) can potentially damage the computer.
Lordgeorge16@reddit
Anyone who tells you that it's bad to power off/on your PC every day in the current era hasn't touched a computer since the 20th century. You'll be fine.
Stormer127a@reddit
If you turn it off the Goblins can’t smell your PC parts running while you’re away and steal them
roosell1986@reddit
None
Trypt2k@reddit
Why are you turning it off? Put it to sleep, or set it to sleep by itself after 30 minutes and never have to worry about the power button again, or surges, or electrons hitting from 0.
It's the opposite of what some people here say, HDDs in the past should be turned off as they are mechanical and will wear out if on at all times. Everything else, from motherboard power, ram, cpu, nvme is better off in low power mode, even the monitor is better off in sleep mode than off.
Keep it on 24/7, sleeping when you're not around (very low power), and restart the system once every couple weeks if you feel like too much ram is being used (if you have 32gb ram, under regular use, you'll see about 12gb used at start, but about 20gb after 2 weeks, this is fine but if you want, you can restart then).
Ancient-Range3442@reddit
Windows has awful sleep management. Best to just turn the computer off.
notislant@reddit
There was a whole debate on this a long time ago.
Both power on/off and constantly leaving something on are bad for it over time. Its pretty negligible though so just do what you want.
Personally I just leave mine on, a lot turns theirs off.
CentrifugalMalaise@reddit
Every time you turn a PC on, you are sending full power to every single component in the system. That’s what it takes to turn it on. Doing this many, many times will eventually cause damage to some components. However, you could probably turn on your PC hundreds of thousands of times before any damage is caused.
That is where the advice comes from that it is better to leave a PC running than constantly turn it on and off. However, this doesn’t take into account energy usage, with energy obviously being wasted constantly, and the price of paying for all of that wasted energy.
My compromise is that if I know it is likely I will use my PC again that day, I leave it on. Before bed it always gets turned off.
TeaandandCoffee@reddit
Most PCs (and parts) have decades of being designed as goods from the average household and average consumer.
If your PC's part producers had such a (weird) flaw they would have been review bombed ages ago and likely become entirely local or gone bankrupt.
You don't need to worry about things like that unless your PC is ancient or there's an electricity-proof rat inside.
groveborn@reddit
Not much harm, but it does wear out over time. You should be about to get about 10 years of use with occasionally cleaning the dust out and replacing the thermal compound every so often.
You could get more... But why? There is some stress on components with powering on, but they're built with tolerances for that. Shouldn't be an issue.
Omikron@reddit
Literally none at all.
cmdrtheymademedo@reddit
So regular hard drives that have moving parts don’t like to be turned on and off It causes wear on the motors and heads For ssds it doesn’t really matter
LordOFtheNoldor@reddit
I don't believe sleeping or shutting down cause any drastic issues but what would cause issues is removing power prematurely and reinstating power repeatedly
rocket___pak@reddit
None
ecwx00@reddit
None. I turned off my PC everytime I don't use it anymore for the day. going to sleep, going to the cinema going shopping, etc.
I do it on my PC, I do it on my laptop, I do it on my Legion Go.
I've been doing it from the time of my Sinclair ZX Spectrum, 8088, 286.. and still doing it like that. No harm.
baithammer@reddit
Early hard drives didn't have the means to safely stop the platters used to store data and OS at this point in time weren't designed around hard drives.
You needed to run software to park the heads of the hard drive on to a blank space on the platters, otherwise the heads would hit the data portions of the platters and cause serious issues.
To make matters worse, a fair number of hard drives had their own psu and power switch.
Latter on once the head parking became a non-issue, it was potential filesystem corruption that you needed to worry about, as the OS and hardware didn't have clean shutdown states or coherency checks - turning off the power while the computer was running could potentially lead to filesystem corruption.
Modern OS and hardware have a lot more safety involved, still advised to use shutdown rather than hitting the power switch - further, there really is no reason to turn off the computer except where power is either in serious demand or high cost. ( Also good idea to leave running in order to get updates to the OS, rather than running it when you go to use the computer.)
tducharme88@reddit
Just leave it on and reboot once in a while for updates.
Ryrynz@reddit
Carpal tunnel
Stunning-Employ1003@reddit
please stop grooming me. I am a minor :(
Ryrynz@reddit
Wild comment
psychoacer@reddit
Data corruption in the boot up process. Still highly unlikely but probable
FunFact5000@reddit
My pc is on a few hours a day, then off. No need to keep on, because why? If you need servers, just rent one online they are cheap unless you have some specific need.
No_Dig_7017@reddit
None. Actually it's better in terms of software afaik. As long as you don't unplug it from the wall while turned on I think you're fine
didjeridingo@reddit
In my case as a an extremely poor dumpster diving PC builder back in the day (and now if I wouldn't get arrested for it... Lol but anyway) -
It's because every single PSU I've used has been janky or faulty .. even some off Newegg (perhaps a curse has followed me from the old times?)
CuckedSwordsman@reddit
Your dad's advice is outdated by about 20+ years. These days, the first component to wear out from excessive power cycling tends to be the power button itself.
I work at a repair shop, and I cannot stress enough how prone to issues sleep/hibernate features are for laptops and PCs. Every time a windows update bricks a computer, the culprit is almost always sleep mode. Fully powering down your PC will ensure your OS operates much more smoothly over the long run.
Boot times are so quick with modern HDDs and SSDs that there's really no reason to leave your PC on.
NV-Nautilus@reddit
Yeah it's bad just like how turning on the dome light while driving at night is totally illegal and will land the entire car in JAIL
Millkstake@reddit
It doesn't really matter. I guess you'll save a little bit of energy turning it off though.
Hexagon90x@reddit
I've been turning my PC off when not in use since my first PC in 1998 and never had an issue. What's bad is turning it off by a plug or power cut
majoroutage@reddit
None at all.
6950X_Titan_X_Pascal@reddit
it's very cheap now if it's got broken just purchase a new one
Just_epic1@reddit
Your PC you can leave it on all the time, this prevents dust from remaining in your PC and the air from continuing to rotate inside, on the other hand the case is high up because on the ground it will take all the dust, after me what I do I restart it from time to time and I've been doing this for 15 years and I have nothing, and in cleaning it's once a year and again lol
bloommyboyy@reddit
Didn’t realize until this year how hugely important this is, cleaning it helped my games not crash anymore and restored my pc back to a healthier state. Personally, I’m someone to also keep my pc on consistently so just keep this in mind as months go by as it really helps with maintaining your pc.
SpakysAlt@reddit
Just do yourself a favor and manually restart from time to time!
Plini9901@reddit
There's really not a reason to anymore. Doubly so if they have a DDR5 platform, as DDR5 has built in ECC-lite.
bloommyboyy@reddit
def will thanks for the advice i try to turn it off at night when possible!
Dumbf-ckJuice@reddit
Admittedly not much anymore.
I prefer to keep my PCs running. Part of it is an artifact of when I was growing up, and we had to do things like manually park the drives before turning the computer off, and the power button was mechanical. My dad drilled into my head that the computer should only be powered down at night. When I was done using it, I could turn the monitor off, but I wasn't to start shutting it down until it was my bedtime. Once PCs advanced to the point where they could go to sleep, we never shut our PCs down.
Even now, with all of my PCs using SSDs, I still don't shut them down. I reboot my work PC every Friday when I go home, and I'll reboot my home PCs as they need it for updates; there's no point to shutting them down, though.
Scoo_By@reddit
I turn off the family computer after every use, around 3-4 hrs per session with 6-12 hrs of gap in between. That hasn't been an issue for last 20 years of varying use. And parts changed over the years, obviously. Your pc will become obsolete before it dies because of shutdowns.
Late_Ear2739@reddit
Actually nothing, probably your setting on fast start is on so technically your computer was never off, if you go to your task manager you can see how long your computer been up
DisgustinglySober@reddit
Circuits prefer constant state and surges aren’t great for lifespan.
Mammoth_Year356@reddit
I've been turning PC's on and off multiple times per day for over 30 years and all of them were fine.
Systemlord_FlaUsh@reddit
What kind of harm should it give? Its 2024. Even turning the power switch off won't normally harm the PC, but may cause corruption or lost data. Thats why its not recommend to do so. You should turn the PC off if you pay for your electricity. I have noticed mine consumes over 15 W in completely off mode. Thats why I put a power switch on it. When I'm not using it I don't need 15 W permanent draw for nothing, thats like half of what my current homeserver consumes in operation. I calculated it would cost about 50 € extra a year to just have the PC off 24/7.
Tango1777@reddit
You can turn it on and off 50 times a day or you can leave it working 50 days at once. It won't make any difference AT ALL. Your step-dad is obviously the last person to listen to regarding computers. It was never a thing, not since the beginning of PCs, I've used PCs pretty much since they started to exist.
Cyber_Akuma@reddit
It shouldn't matter with modern tech, while technically it's better to leave it in, it's not something that would make enough of a difference to worry about, just as long as you are not turning it on and off like every minute.
ErikShank@reddit
I have been building PCs for about 30 years. I've used ASUS motherboards consistently and every one booted up first time except once & that was my fault for not connecting something up. Next one (my last) will also be an ASUS.
Curious_Mushroom_594@reddit
Just use sleep, and reboot when your OS needs to install updates. I've been doing this for 10 years on my current PC. Still working perfectly.
lovely_sombrero@reddit
I guess the relays in your power supply would only last for ~20 years if you turned your computer on and off 5 times per day.
This is a huge waste of power. Set your computer to enter sleep mode after like ~15 minutes of inactivity or just shut it off.
randomuserx42@reddit
PSU don't habe relays, otherwise you would here an audible click everytime.
lovely_sombrero@reddit
You can hear the power relay click on in most PSUs when you turn on/off your computer.
randomuserx42@reddit
+1 for sauce. I am wrong.
THCv3@reddit
Mine is turned off every single day. I only use SSDs. I've also had work PCs and servers not get turned off for months or years. My 2c, if you aren't actively using it, there really isn't a reason for it to be on.
Little-Equinox@reddit
I have a handheld PC, and turn it off and on at least 8 times a day, I can tell you, it's still alive.
DvKarl@reddit
I shut mine down just whenever I’m not using it usually before I go to bed and don’t have any issues
SarcastiSnark@reddit
I've turned my PC off even if I'm gone for 30 minutes. I hate running it. I use it approx 4 hours a day or so. It gets about 4 out of sleep modes a day. 2 of my drives are 12 years old. Mechanical HDD's 🤷♀️
Ymmv
Cando_Floz@reddit
You'll be fine... Turning it off is not a problem. Don't do what one of my colleagues used to do and force a shut down by holding the power button. He corrupted his RAID 0 array twice doing that. D'oh!
This was back in the triassic era mind you.
GoNudi@reddit
I turn off wifi, then blue tooth, then it off and unplug it. Every time. Been doing that for years/decades with all of my computers ~ no issues.
bcvaldez@reddit
I built a 7950x PC on an ASUS x670-e TUF mb to use at work. I shut it down on a Friday and tried to turn it on the next monday...it never turned on. I had to RMA the mb but of course I was screwed over by ASUS for Customer Induced Damage (even though I sent it in practically new condition (I've only been using it for 6 weeks)
DO NOT BUY ASUS products.
Cultural_League_3539@reddit
overused condensators, old resistors, overheating cpu, voltage peak, short circuit due to dust, moisture
No harm, people building those things to last for centurys, checking all the things that are used cant be wrong
Ancient-Sweet9863@reddit
For the most part I only turn the psu off if a storm is coming in or I’m going to be gone for longer then 24hrs.
Other than that I just use shutdown.
matthitsthetrails@reddit
i have an old seasonic 500w psu running fine that has been through at least 30 years of consistent on/off usage by my parents. i think the only component that went on the machine was the graphics card.
i think its more of a matter at looking at power consumption and using sleep mode
pomkombucha@reddit
Nothing, really. But if you want the boot sector to completely reload, you need to restart the computer, not just turn it off.
Neraxis@reddit
Back in the early 2000s we had this dell optiplex we turned on and off every day.
That shit lasted to 2012 until we finally got a new desktop and it was still working just fine.
So - the takeaway is 0 harm.
Oh yeah - this laptop daily used since 2012 is still on its original w7 install and aside from taking longer to boot up due to using an HDD, has been powered on and off every single day with literally 0 issues relating to the hard drive.
Just turn it off.
6volt@reddit
None better on SSD/ nvme hours
ZacZupAttack@reddit
Back in the 90s HDDs were the storage tech and they have moving parts. Each time you turn off the computer the parts stop moving and this leads to wear and tear.
However modern HDDs can handle this way better and a lot of pcs don't even use HDD anymore
Talented_BX_Tongue@reddit
None, I have done that for over 15 years. my comp is only on when I need it. Just make sure you save anything you are doing before turning it off.
Bad_Company_Sr@reddit
Back in the day (80's - 2005) it was a matter of mechanical wear and tear on anything that rotated. Now days that's pretty much only fans.
Mohondhay@reddit
No harm. I have SSD and HDDs in my system and i keep my pc off when not in use. Over 9yrs, not a single problem.
AnimZero@reddit
Most computer parts are more resilient than people realize. There should be no issue with turning a PC on and off on a daily basis. So much so that desktops these days can go into sleep mode, which puts most components in an extremely low power or even off state and then wake them all up within 5 or 10 seconds.
There's also usually no issue leaving a machine on for long stretches of time. This example doesn't necessarily apply because they aren't "consumer" components, but there is a server at my work that has had an uptime of almost 700 days without needing to be restarted. At this point we aren't even sure what'll happen when we reboot it! :)
gimm3nicotin3@reddit
My PC case has no window (as in, the acrylic got scratched so I just removed it and have been using it open-air).
It sits up on a shelf that it fills footprint-wise where the top is about 4 inches from the basement ceiling; so it's up away from dust and cats.
When I turn it off, more dust collects in it than if I keep it on with all the fans running. It's a very small amount of dust, but with it on it's basically no dust settling in there at all.
Otherwise I'd probably be turning it off at night.
itchygentleman@reddit
Even if you were building with a mechanical drive today, then it's okay to turn it off these days. HDD's are significantly more robust and reliable than they used to be.
itijara@reddit
As a developer, the harm to hardware from power cycles pales in comparison to the random memory leaks in crappy software. Reboot your computer to protect yourself from people like me.
neogrinch@reddit
I leave my desktops and laptops on 24/7 unless I go on vacay for a week or more. That way various updates and all that can run when I'm sleeping at night. One of my desktops is now run as a headless server, and never even goes to sleep (I hvae a lot of programs running on it that need to stay up). Its been on nearly continuously since 2017. I could probably save a few bucks a year by turning my normal desktop computer off at night or something, but it's more convenient to leave it on so its ready to rock and roll next time I use it. with that being said, I do also reboot all devices at least 2-4 times a month, including phones and tablets. This ensures things like memory leaks and such get cleared out when they occur.
I have heard that power cycling the PSU often can shorten its lifespan. I'm not sure how true that is, though.
I work in IT field, and I know that there are some servers in the data center that have been running continuously for many, many years, and that some of these don't turn back on after they've been turned off.
I have had computers for 25+ years now, though, so as OP mentioned it was pretty commonly held that pcs should just be left on back in the day. I guess I just got used to doing that, old habits die hard. And back then, windows took FOREVER to boot up as well, another good reason to just leave it on all the time in the old days.
one80oneday@reddit
The only PC I leave on is my server
salvageBOT@reddit
Turn it off at night. Bro why are you turning on and off your PC throughout the day?
Apprehensive-Ad4063@reddit
No harm in turning it off whenever, just go through windows instead of holding the button or turning off your PSU. Holding the power button should really only be used when there is an issue and you can’t use windows to power down.
You could also run some hardware monitor and compare the results of powering it down vs putting it to sleep. Maybe compare the temps and stuff when turning it on vs waking it from sleep.
Similar-Count1228@reddit
I'm pretty sure this is old crap people made up so they don't have to wait for their computer to boot. With modern machines waking from sleep is nearly instant. Don't turn off power management unless you have a really good need to and remember that even servers can use wake on LAN.
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
Depends on what you mean by "turning on and off". If you're just powering down from Windows, that's fine. You're just putting the PC into a standby state. But seems like a waste of time since you can just put it in sleep mode. Then it doesn't have to boot up Windows every time.
If you're talking about actually flipping the power to the PSU itself, yeah. That's dumb and shouldn't be done.
bashnet@reddit
So what do you do in a country with constant power outages?
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
You mean like the United States?
You deal with it. You get a UPS.
There's a difference between a rolling black out and skipping in and out of a room flipping the switch on the PSU.
I'd like to understand your point better.
bashnet@reddit
I'm talking about a third world country. Blackouts are a daily occurrence, lasting for a few hours. A ups would keep the pc up for a few minutes, enough for me to shut down, but that's just delaying the inevitable. So I either have to turn off the ups, or let it turn off once the charge is finished.
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
North America is a big country. California can't keep the lights on. Houston can't keep the lights on. Florida is out of power for a week minimum with every hurricane. Yes.. I know... power in India sucks. But it's not a "third world country" only thing.
When the UPS says there's no power, then you shut down. And since the PC will be in standby when you shut down, you'll get some serious life out of the UPS. Last power outage we had (just last week because sometimes the U.S. is a third world country), I shut down the PC (from Windows), turned off the monitors, and the UPS was still up 8 hours later. 1500VA/900W UPS.
There's some things you can't help. But turning the PC off when you simply don't have to doesn't make sense. You're not saving electricity or anything. The Energy Star requirements make your PC in standby more efficient than your phone charger.
Altruistic_Koala_122@reddit
Get a battery back-up, so you can safely turn it off when the power goes out.
Teleria86@reddit
Why shouldnt you flip the power switch? Any reasoning behind this? Inrush current or what do you think would be harmful? In fact Seasonic and Be Quiet said 2017 that even a power strip with a power switch is a total non issue for psus nowaydays.
MemeyPie@reddit
It’s not an issue, but it’s also not required and it’s usually easier/lazier to just power down from the OS.
Systems are rated for hundreds of thousands of power-up resets and the inrush is accounted for. As long as the inrush current doesn’t reduce voltage too low into a reset state or damage traces it’s fine, and it’s designed for that
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
I've never seen test report with power cycles in the hundreds of thousands. Because it doesn't exist. :D
MemeyPie@reddit
Ok maybe not rated, because it costs time and money beyond what’s already an adequate test, but it doesn’t really mean it’s not capable. Kind of like expiration dates on drugs, that’s just how long they were shelved for
I’ve personally put a card through 20,000, which is already more than people would reasonably see, but it doesn’t mean it’s inoperable there
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
I think we're just talking different levels of product. Consumer ATX power supplies, even from reputable companies like CWT, High Power, etc. have cost constraints that don't allow for the use of the most robust parts. Unfortunately, consumer grade power supplies have become a commodity and people are even shocked to learn that they might have to get something that costs over $100 just for a decent 700W PSU that won't fry their components over a couple years time.
MemeyPie@reddit
Fair, significant cost restraints at the consumer level. I was also thinking more pcb components themselves rather than PSU.
Despite the stresses, a consumer doesn’t have to fear power-switch related failures from the PSU over a normal use case unless it is utterly cheap
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
I'd like to see where they say that because that's not really true. There are a limit to number of power cycles the primary side are going to withstand before they fail. Especially in regions with higher mains voltage.
MemeyPie@reddit
It’s not dumb other than it’s usually more physical work. “Shouldn’t be done” is a stretch. You can absolutely power-up reset your system that way for its entire life assuming quality design and test
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
Not particularly. Especially on newer PSUs that have to meet IEC 62368-1 which require a bleed resistor to drain the bulk cap whenever the PSU is disconnected from the mains. The repeated power cycling creates and in-rush that in time most certainly does damage the PSU. There is stress to the bulk cap, stress to the in-rush current limiter... after so many cycles, these parts can and will fail.
On older PSUs you used to get away with it more because a PSU with zero to no load on it could hold a charge for hours. That's why they tell you to be very careful when opening a PSU. But even just the +5VSB load on the PSU should eventually drain the caps in a PSU in a few hours or so.
MemeyPie@reddit
That discharge helps to power down the rails faster to their necessary stages during the unexpected power loss seen by the voltage monitor, and a holdup cap is designed to maintain those components for that amount of time.
The inrush won’t reduce voltage to a reset state or damage traces if designed well. It will stress the caps over time, but it is not a timeline that is relevant to the average consumer, especially at ambient temp.
I do this exact testing over tens of thousands of cycles, which is more than most people will see, and it can go beyond that rating. RAM is really the only thing that is reasonably limited by uncontrolled power downs, but that doesn’t equate to unexpected power loss with today’s designs.
Point is that it’s kind of silly to only power down that way, but it’s perfectly fine for the average consumer
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
I'm sure we're not talking about PC power supplies here.
The bulk cap is to remain at bus voltage in order for the PSU to properly regulate, of course. And hold up time is how long that cap can hold that voltage before draining completely. That's why if you have a lot of brown outs, a PSU with a good hold up time is essential. Thought it was pretty funny that Intel actually REDUCED that required hold up time for ATX 3.1 under the assumption that "everyone has at least a line interactive UPS, so this is fine."
The discharge was implemented as a safety. Nothing more. Has nothing to do with the T timings or anything. There were a lot of changes going from 60950-1 to 92368-1 and not just the implementation of the bleed IC. And I have seen my fair share of blown NTC thermistors caused by constant power cycles. Yes, there are some inrush current limiter components used in industrial and server that can withstand 10s of thousands of power cycles without batting an eye. But sadly, for the consumer level product, they're not implementing these parts. "Too expensive".
FreakiestFrank@reddit
I’ve heard the same thing. The heating and cooling causes parts to expand and contract causing parts to fail. Possibly true but what I do is if I’m gaming, I’ll turn on my PC and let it warm up, especially the GPU, before I throw a full load at it while I’m getting ready to game. I also shutdown every time I use it. I slowly warm it up and let it cool down before I shut down.
MrCatSquid@reddit
I’ve had the same computer for 8 years and I probably boot it up and shut it down 2-3 times a day. Have done that for years. It’s well beyond my expected lifetime for it, so it’s allowed and expected to die anytime now, but it just won’t.
zyper-51@reddit
It probably won't harm a modern day computer but it will have an impact on your electricity bill compared to setting it to sleep. Shutting down the computer turns everything off which effectively makes your computer pull no electricity but turning it on takes a lot of energy because it needs to pull your OS from storage to RAM and run all the software you have setup to run on start. Counterintuitively letting your computer pull a small amount of electricity by putting it in sleep mode allows it to maintain RAM and thus allowing you to get to work faster and saving money on electricity.
You can more or less see this in real time if you time how long it takes for a percent or two to drop from your laptop or your phone and then turn it off and on again and see how much it dropped. Often it will shave a few percentage points off in a matter of seconds/minutes.
Lionel-Hutz-Esq@reddit
Today there's no harm. When computers used HDDs, turning it on and off frequently could've potentially harmed the HDD.
seamew@reddit
too much exercise for your finger(s).
TicTac_No@reddit
How many times can a switch be a switch, before you try and it 's not?
How many times can you force the tubes, full of electrical balls that are hot?
How many flicks can that switching switch take, before it flicks no more?
How many times can the juice slam through, before your boards are floored?
How many yes, and how many no can the gates withstand I don't know.
But this I do know, that when powered down low, and switching back to on, that is better.
How many times? Yes. If not, that's a mess. I'd rather be safer than sorry.
jackspeaks@reddit
None?
Beefy_Crunch_Burrito@reddit
I always turn on and off my PC almost every day and I have yet to have a PC or Mac die on me. I always end up replacing them because I just want something newer after 5+ years.
Super-Link-6624@reddit
I hate reopening all my apps so I just don’t..
SolaFide94@reddit
That's causing lots of errors, eventual bsod, programs/tasks crashing.
Not just because windows is bad at managing that, but take adobe suite. Try to ask that thing with a heavy premiere pro project stay open for a week in the sleeping ram. GL
Super-Link-6624@reddit
Oh yeah I don’t have any issues but I don’t use any adobe or anything
Gold-Chemistry-5747@reddit
Yep the hard drive could skip and lose data/ corrupt if you hard powered off by the switch. Always had to shut down
smackythefrog@reddit
I put it on standby throughout the day. Sometimes two or three days of standby/sleep/whatever it's called now.
But typically when the weekend is over, I'll shut down for the new week. If I remember, I will shut down once or twice overnight during the week.
I'm not sure I've experienced issues either way. But with my MacBooks that I use on the go, they pretty much get put in standby/sleep for weeks at a time.
caufield88uk@reddit
Heating up and cooling down multiple times CAN damage components within ALL computer parts. Unlikely to happen but it puts stress on the metal components of the PC parts
kearkan@reddit
It doesn't matter in the slightest.
Bolwinkel@reddit
As others have said, any computer built in the last 15 years shouldn't have any problem with being turned on and off multiple times a day. It's still fine to leave the PC on 24/7, but it will start to slow down the longer it's been on for, which is why it's recommended to let the PC fully shut down at least every 2-3 days. I personally will turn my PC on in the morning once I get up, leave it on all day, and when I'm done for the day I just turn it off. No reason to leave it on all night, and it also prevents me from needing to worry about windows updating at bad times.
Clintre@reddit
No, there is really no problem doing that on modern computers. With how fast it has become to boot up, it is not even all that different from starting from sleep/hibernate.
I, personally, don't do it most of the time because I generally have jobs running on my system overnight. On my laptop, I generally power off versus sleep, before putting in my laptop bag simply because I have had too many times when it decided to wake up while in the bag.
AirWolf231@reddit
I would worry more about the life-span of the power button than having a problem with the software and hardware part.
qeratsirbag@reddit
coming up 9 years on my HDD, been turning it on and off almost everyday since.
lNuggyl@reddit
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with turning the pc off and on a couple times a day. You’ll be fine
Ziazan@reddit
There's no problem doing that, turn it off when you aren't going to use it for a long time. A proper shutdown or restart is beneficial to smooth operation. Always using sleep mode is bad for that.
James-Kane@reddit
You'd have to measure it, but many computers only draw one additional watt while in sleep mode versus being plugged in but powered off. Over a year you'd see maybe 300 watts of power. If I'm doing my math correctly, the cost savings is about $1.20 per year in the United States.
Tsunamie101@reddit
On that note, what happens if i don't restart my pc for some random and arbitrary amount of time like 18 days?
MemeyPie@reddit
It’s perfectly fine, assuming stable temps and power. You’ll just consume more energy, and lose out on resetting potential faults or clutter. Regular-ish resets can improve performance in that manner
MemeyPie@reddit
No harm, just don’t yank the cord while on.
Systems like controlled power-downs, and even most designs today can execute that with unexpected power loss. RAM usually has the lowest lifetime tolerance for uncontrolled power down conditions.
It’s perfectly safe to power down in a controlled manner, and even from unexpected loss, assuming quality circuit design
Door_Little@reddit
Can’t turn my pc off aniways my motherboard battery is drained if i shut it down i need to unplug almost everything to start it back up bought a new psu , meanwhile it was a 2$ battery Minus 150$ psu , and im still not gonna buy that 2$ battery just gonna keep the pc on sleep mode at night
KabuteGamer@reddit
I came from this mindset, and trust me, it will not hurt your PC.
If you have no problem with your electric bill, leave it running. If you have a Mac though, that's a different story
TheRacooning18@reddit
Turning on and off is good. Especially if you turn off Fast Boot. Just shuts off your system resets everything. Its good.
WiggyOSRS@reddit
I usually have my computer on at all times (sleep mode when I havent used it in a couple hours). I turn it off if im gonna be gone for a couple days or weeks. I bought a new computer back in 2018 with i7-8700K and 1080ti, had it for 5 years and is still working, but my friend is borrowing it atm since I bought a new computer in 2023.
But the pc from 2018 was on night and day basically, and had no problems with it. You might have to clean it for dust more often since the fans are sucking in dust 24/7 (usually cleaned it for dust once a month)
mechcity22@reddit
None lol I turn mine off and on everyday.
randolf_carter@reddit
It really doesn't matter, its just personal preference. PCs are pretty great at using very little power when they're not not actively doing anything, but you'll still save some money on your power bill if you shut it down.
If you have tons of apps that load on startup and starting takes a while, not turning it off for the convenience is fine too. Personally I only shut my PC down when I'm going to be away overnight.
mentive@reddit
The better question is... Is it worse to put it into hibernation multiple times per day? Bcuz I do.
My WD Black m.2 probably hates me.
evanlee01@reddit
I never heard of this, but to be fair I was probably too young to understand how computers worked back then, but I've been turning my computer on and off daily for probably the last 10 years. No issues.
Autobahn97@reddit
none today, but it can save power so I turn mine on/off once or twice a day.
Nyuusankininryou@reddit
The biggest harm is sadly that you will save money on electricity and we all know that's a big no no.
Timelord_Sapoto@reddit
I actually consider turning it off to be healthier nowadays.
jrduffman@reddit
I turn my work PCs on and off every day and they're all freaking 10 years old lol
Rostunga@reddit
No harm if you shut down properly.
Meatslinger@reddit
I always shut my computer down when I’m away from it. My area gets occasional blackouts - just a blip in the power but enough to shut off things around the house - and so I wouldn’t ever want to leave my computer in an operating state or sleep mode lest something be lost when it couldn’t be restored from RAM, or just the potential for Windows itself breaking due to a power loss when system files are loaded up.
CtrlAltDesolate@reddit
Fast boot off yes. What you're referring to is only possible with that enabled, with that off (and given I turn off at the wall) can assure it's fully shut down.
mythxical@reddit
Heat/cool cycles increase wear, but it's not as bad as it used to be. This was always worse for spindle hard drives.
stemota@reddit
Nothing
Plane_Pea5434@reddit
Nowadays there’s no harm at all, electronics are a lot more robust than they were before so it’s better to turn it off while not in use to save power. You can power it on and off all day with no issues
Mykidsarebrats24@reddit
No harm 🤣🤣 Your father's a fool
Mashic@reddit
That's the correct answer, lol, but it's unpolite to say it.
Consistent-Lead6650@reddit
that was uncalled for
yParticle@reddit
Two things: Soft power switches are a lot safer for electronics than the old mechanical switches which actually created a small surge every time they were flipped. But hardware failures still happen and most of the time they happen when voltage is first introduced, so you're statically more likely to have such issues when you're power cycling frequently.
And in a business environment, the answer is that you leave your equipment on so that maintenance (system updates and scans plus whatever corporate might need to push to your workstation) can run off hours rather than disrupting your work during the day.
KillMeNowFTW@reddit
Exactly. Soft off = Yes. Yanking the power from the PSU = No.
OP didn't clarify.
DG25047@reddit
There might be a problem of inrush current, but in your use case, it might not matter.
Anything else you gotta worry about thing related to this?
Nope.
eduardb21@reddit
If you take care of your PC, it will live way past the time when it's no longer able to run modern games at decent fps even with minimal graphics.
tervit1989@reddit
Did he maybe mean turning it off and on at the socket and not powering it down ?