Do you guys leave your PC running all day and night, while you’re at work, sleeping…etc? Just curious. I’ve always kept mine on and restarted it maybe once a week.
Any ramifications from leaving it on all the time?
Unless it offers you quick media access that you can’t find on a mobile phone or controls a smart home setup then it would be better to not run 24/7
PSU’s are the first thing I could think of that will wear out.
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Yup. I turn my PC off.
I have main rig, ITX rig, laptop, HTPC and DIY/NAS server. My DIY/NAS server runs 24/7. Main rig for heavy usage and gaming. ITX for browsing and idle. Laptop is self explainatory. HTPC for videos.
I run both ITX rig and main rig on my main setup because my main sucking 120-180W on idle. My ITX runs at 20-65W.
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I turn mine off.
It’s an ancient power hog and space heater.
Yes ‘sleeping’ helps, but there still a significant amount heat even then.
Besides, SSDs mean fast boot times.
There’s two different camps in this and they’re both right imo.
Leave on: Power cycling, such as on/off, puts more wear on your components than just leaving them on all the time but idle. Your computer is accessible from other devices such as when used as a shared folder, Plex server, etc.
Power off/sleep: even if idle, left on all day uses a small amount of power. If you aren’t using it, why waste power? Additionally, even if you aren’t putting much load on it, some stuff like fan bearings or mechanical hard drives will accumulate wear faster than capacitors would if left on all day compared with the potential wear on capacitors from power on/off. Your computer isn’t on when you aren’t monitoring it, so you’re less likely to suffer security breaches compared with being on all day.
I personally turn mine off or put into sleep state when not in use. Don’t like the fans just spinning for no reason.
Nope, I leave mine on 24/7.
I tend to leave my work open since no one comes in and out. Whatever requires that level of security, I will lock the screen before going anywhere.
And at this point its just due to habit. Doesn’t cost much more to leave it on vs turning it off.
It doubles as a mini space heater during this time.
I rarely turn my PC off. I only really restart it for critical updates including ones from Microsoft. Other than that, It’s always running.
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If it isn’t actually doing anything overnight (like Handbrake encodes, for example) then you might as well shut it off - or at least let it sleep - so you aren’t pointlessly running up your electric bill.
But if you’re concerned about reliability, don’t be. For almost 20 years now my desktop computers have been running 24/7 (of course, it hasn’t been the same PC all 20 of those years). When I’m not playing a game they’re running Folding@Home and I haven’t had any failures. So if you have a reason to keep them on overnight, go ahead.
Turn mine off every night. I also tend to use hibernate a lot.
I turn my computer off quite frequently. It takes 18 seconds from pushing the power button to being in fully booted Windows, so why waste the energy leaving it on all the time?
I agree with what was said about frequent turning on/off puts more strain on your PC than leaving it on. But I do care about my bills so this is what I do.
On weekdays, I turn it on in the morning to play a bit of WoW and when my work shift comes. I turn it off. I turn it on again after my work shift to play and turn it off before I go to bed.
On weekends/holidays, I pretty much leave it on the whole day. I turn it on when I wake up and I just leave it idle when I go out to eat or something and then I turn it off when I go to bed.
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I may let it run for a full day but that’s rare, I often turn off my PC.
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I normally leave mine on and have it automatically go into sleep after a period of time. I need to for all the remote connectivity I do.
In the past, I’ve lost HDDs to that dreaded clicking sound during power cycling so I can confirm the downsides to turning it off.
Leaving a computer on all the time is less stressful than turning it off and on several times a day — but it is constant stress. Every time a computer powers on, it has a small surge of power as everything spins up, and if you are turning it on multiple times a day, it can shorten the computer’s lifespan.
PS
It uses more more power starting back up then it would sitting in sleep mode for hours.
I power mine up at 7am every morning and turn it off at around 7pm when I get ready for bed.
My phone has been on 24/7 for years though
My computer stays on 24/7 as well. My system is used primarily for work. I tend to have many windows/files open and it is much easier for me to pickup where I left off when I leave it on.
My work laptop won’t function correctly after waking from sleep. It also likes to just log out randomly and then force me to hard restart it.
Such a piece of trash.
Use hibernate when shutting down. Its like sleep but instead of keeping the ram on and storing it there it creates like a save state with anything you had open 
Do you have any data to support any of this? Like, how long does it have to be off before the extra power required to boot is less than the power spent being in sleep? How much extra power is used to boot? And what exactly is getting worn down?
I am highly skeptical. I have heard people say the same things you just said about internal combustion engines and yet auto manufacturers now have many engines literally shut off at a red light because of the power savings. Not exactly the same thing as what we’re discussing, but pretty close
IIRC it’s mostly physics theory that makes sense but probably nobody has put any time to test out how much in real life it actually matters.
Big corporations have probably done this type of testing, but whether the power savings is there or not may not matter if there’s some other benefit for leaving systems on all the time (such as remote access, etc.). They probably don’t really care how long systems last as they generally have contracts anyway. So it’s probably small enough a difference that it doesn’t really matter.
I’d say it’s not a big deal at all. I turn my stuff off because I have tested the idle wall power at around 160w for my entire strip. In contrast, my light bulbs use about 13w a piece and that’s already the entire budget of my always-on household light bulb power usage.