Report: Leaving the PC On Loses Money

[exfileme]

A report by 1E says that businesses and general consumers save money by shutting down the PC when not in use. Unfortunately, tech-savvy consumers know better.

Report: Leaving the PC On Loses Money : Read more

 

[Judguh]

At my company, we always leave our PC's on overnight mainly because we have patches and other updates that are run and installed along with antivirus updates, file backups, etc...

 

[deltatux]

Odd, from what I know, leaving your systems on 24/7 hurts the system through heat generation and system throttling. I've been working with computers for 75% of my life and all these systems have a good 7 years lifespan so, I don't see why people say to leave your system on 24/7. Even if, you'll end up spending more money on energy than on a new system throughout its whole lifetime and its damaging for the environment so best to turn off your systems regardless if you believe leaving your system on 24/7 is a better idea.

 

[haricotvert]

"Extending the life of your PC" is a horrible argument for not turning it off when not in use. We don't leave our cars running all day long, even though turning them off and on does the exact same sort of expand-contract damage to the engine.

Out of all of the PCs I've owned or used at work - both pre-built and those I built myself - none have experienced motherboard failure as a result of turning them off at night and on during the day. Hell, none of the motherboards in them went out to begin with.

Keep in mind most retail motherboards have a 3-year warranty anyways - if it goes bad, get it replaced! If you can't get 3 years out of your motherboard even when turning it off and on every day, then there's something else wrong with your system.

 

[haricotvert]

"Extending the life of your PC" is a horrible argument for not turning it off when not in use. We don't leave our cars running all day long, even though turning them off and on does the exact same sort of expand-contract damage to the engine.

Out of all of the PCs I've owned or used at work - both pre-built and those I built myself - none have experienced motherboard failure as a result of turning them off at night and on during the day. Hell, none of the motherboards in them went out to begin with.

Keep in mind most retail motherboards have a 3-year warranty anyways - if it goes bad, get it replaced! If you can't get 3 years out of your motherboard even when turning it off and on every day, then there's something else wrong with your system.

 

[grieve]

We leave all out units on @ night so we can push down patches with Patchlink..

I have discussed turning the machines off at night with our IT Director to save money, but nothing will come of it I’m sure. We run patches very rarely (1 every 2 months) and programs like anti-virus pull from the server…

There is just no reason to leave 800 units running 24/7. We do turn the lights out when we go home….

 

[DXRick]

I always turn my home PC off at bedtime. After 3 years of doing this, it is still going strong. It will (or already has) become obsolete long before it dies.

 

[ph3412b07]

I'm actually incredibly skeptical at any PC builder that thinks turning off their computer decreases its life cycle significantly. With today's PCB manufacturing processes the mobo is surely not going to be the first to fail. As an avid overclocker I put my rigs through thousands on/off power cycles needlessly at high temp/volts. Thats because components can go through upwards of 40,000 on/off cycles with no effect nowadays. Never had any component fail, except for a hard disk. Leaving a PC on keeps hard disks spinning with no purpose, creates excess heat stress, wear, etc.

 

[grieve]

[citation][nom]haricotvert[/nom]Keep in mind most retail motherboards have a 3-year warranty anyways - if it goes bad, get it replaced![/citation]
When I have a hardware issue in our business environment I get the unit replaced by Lenovo, QUICK! Service agreements pretty much cover everything.

I just pull a new laptop/Desktop from the back, image it and set up the user locally. Then I secure data disposal the HDD on the broken unit and ship to Lenovo. They send a replacement unit whenever….

 

[coopdog]

How much would it cO2 would be created by manufacturing a new system and shipping it to you when the old dies early? More or less than that single system creates while being left on?

 

[coopdog]

How much co2 will be created by manufacturing and shipping a new system due to your old one dieing early?

 

[jwl3]

Idiotic. Mythbusters did a study on dispelling light bulb myths. The myth that turning on a lightbulb uses more energy than that which is saved by turning it off. The breakeven point was like 1.5 seconds. That is, if you're going to be away for greater than 1.5 seconds, turn off the freaking light!

I always power down my PC when I won't be using it for over 1/2 an hour. I'm able to because I've defragged and streamlined my start up programs so that it only takes 45 seconds from pressing the power button to start button access. Office computers usually take 2 minutes + to start up so it really causes people not to bother shutting it down. SSD's will help in that respect. You'll have no reason not to shut down if it can be turned on in 15 seconds.

 

[haricotvert]

[citation][nom]coopdog[/nom]How much would it cO2 would be created by manufacturing a new system and shipping it to you when the old dies early? More or less than that single system creates while being left on?[/citation]

Unfortunately the article makes no mention of the supposed increase in failure rates due to turning off computers, probably because it would be extremely difficult to determine if that was indeed the precise reason for a motherboard failure.

Even if the failure rate of a motherboard was say, doubled or tripled by the practice of turning the system off and on, having everyone in the world turn off their machines at night for one day would, as the article said, save enough energy to power the empire state building for 30 years. That's a lot of power, and a lot of CO2 not generated to boot. Whomever these "hardcore PC builders and repair shops" are, they need to provide some statistics to back up their claim that the supposed increase (if it is even quantifiable) in failure rates would require more power to repair/replace those boards.

To quote Wikipedia - [citation needed].

 

[fatedtodie]

The next article headline going to be "Report: Water found to be wet"

 

[klonedesu]

What about people like me who leave their PCs on overnight to Fold@home? Are we "wasteful power hogs"?

 

[Onus]

As pointed out, in some environments, PCs must be left on to receive patches and updates. As more and better power-saving features are built into the BIOS and/or OS, and as PSU efficiency improves, the issue of waste should diminish considerably. So leave it on.
Thermal cycling might eventually work the RAM chips or even the CPU up out of their sockets on the original IBM PC, and other similar models of that "era," but this has also become a non-issue. So turn it off.
Which way do you go? I'm all for being more green, but I don't think this discussion is the place to spend the effort. Go get CFL bulbs. Turn your thermostat down in winter and up in summer. Insulate your attic. Walk a block or two each way, or at least combine all those little trips into one. There are so many better ways to expend the same amount of effort to save energy and reduce waste.

 

[cruiseoveride]

... or we could just get low power phenom CPUs

 

[eqdarkleaf]

For the home enviorment, either point is pretty argumentative. However in a corporate enviroment, it means large savings. My company uses 1E software to power off machines that are left on for greater than 9 hours, which saves aprox 500k a year. These computers also have a short lifespan in the corporate world, as many companies lease their computers. Our lease period is 2 to 2-1/2 years, hardly enough time to cause long term damage, and if it does, its under warranty.

 

[rsud]

What is even more maddening (to me... 🙂 ) is that everyone runs screensavers that spend the entire night floating things around on the screen. The CPU use results in even more power being wasted.

I actually power down monitors as I walk out of the building. Of course this was worse not to long ago when CRTs were common.

 

[thedipper]

For the companies that roll out patches and backups at night, you can set the machines up to sleep and wake up remotely.