Report: Leaving the PC On Loses Money

[spoondigity]

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

And then overclock them heheh.

Not to mention the increased dust that clogs your fans if you keep systems on all the time.

 

[monkeysweat]

how does leaving your computer on extend its life? i have a computer that i used & abused for 10 years, never left on overnight (or at least while I sleep) still works,,,,I have had friends that leave their computer on all the time,,guess what? they all have to have their power supplies replaced & all of them lucky they were in the same room as the computer was when they exploded,,its dangerous to leave a computer on all the time

 

[amnotanoobie]

I question these 'enthusiasts' that the author has mentioned. I've had a good old Pentium 4 2.53GHz on an Asus P4S533-E with Kingston RAM. It's been running for a good old 6 years, and I don't see it giving up anytime this month or year. The only reason I would give up on the damn thing is because it's a hell of a lotta slow compared to today's computers.

What I've always believed is that if you buy crappy no-named brands, then that is what you get, crap. Investing in a good, solid brand with the right price (some of the good stuff could get really cheap), would help with the longevity of the system. There's a reason why brands such as ECS, Inno3d, etc, don't have that much publicity and reviews.

 

[spoondigity]

Oh and the one time I picked up a virus on my computer was at night when I left it on (the single night I have ever left a work computer going) and I got a virus through an MSDE install that didn't have a password (we thought it did). It just seems like leaving it on so long without being attended opens you up to more security risks. At least if you are there when it is on you realize there is a problem quickly instead of 9 hours later.

 

[fuser]

My computer is part of a bot farm that sends spam out for 10 hours per night. I leave it on so you can get your pen1s enlargement meds.

 

[edeawillrule]

Why has only one person so far mentioned standby mode? If the computers are fairly recent they will use much less energy than being left fully operational. And they will wake up on their own for patches and such if it is scheduled and return to standby when finished.

One thing that businesses and schools are doing that is really costing a massive amount of money is using pc's with Pentium 4's and old components that consume huge amounts of power and deliver horrible performance especially considering the amount power they consume. Then on top of power costs and bad performance is the cost of upkeep and maintenance on systems that are on their last legs.

Not all businesses are that way but the school that I work at is, especially with the bad economy limiting the budget even more than before.

 

[cablechewer]

At home I only leave my server running 24x7. It needs to accept connections from family etc at all times of the day. When it was built 3 years ago I selected the components so that it only consumes an average of 55 or 56 watts (measured with a kill-a-watt between it and the wall). All my other home systems are off when not in use.

Work is a different story. My lab machine remains running 24x7 in case I need to connect to the VMs it runs over the weekend or at night. My other work systems are turned off when not in use.

 

[czar1020]

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

You know I read the article name and went , well no shit Sherlock.

 

[grieve]

[citation][nom]fuser[/nom]My computer is part of a bot farm that sends spam out for 10 hours per night. I leave it on so you can get your pen1s enlargement meds.[/citation]
Lol that’s a post I didn’t imagine seeing.

 

[Guest]

I leave my pc on over night because my pc is my tv, my alarm clock, plays me music while im sleeping, hosts files, and functions as a phone (skype). Then I also have my Server which obviously is on all the time. I guess i am the doom of the earth, but when you consider that I don't have all those other devices "tv phone etc" im not wasting energy in that area. Everything is done on one single device. Doesn't that make more sense?

 

[Guest]

I have a 6 year old P4. Gets turned on->off every day (or put to deep stand-by). I call BS on the wearing out thing. Even if it does, after 6 years you're ready for a new PC anyway. Save some freakin power and shut down, unless you're folding.
And to jwl3 the guy who shuts down when he's away for more than 1/2 hour - why not use Sleep/Stand-by? Uses a couple watts to keep the RAM refreshed, everything else shuts off. PC leaps back to life in 2 seconds, a lot better than waiting 45.

 

[rooket]

won't the electrolyte in the capacitors start escaping if it is left on all the time, capacitors have a life span and as far as I recall if you leave the PC on for 3 years straight, the components with electrolytic capacitors will die. solid capacitors use electrolyte as well and last longer, but they don't last forever. i've never kept my system on overnight unless there was a reason to.

 

[ravenware]

If all of the world's 1 billion PCs were powered down for just one night,

you would save enough energy to power those one billion pcs for another night.

We have to leave ours on. My workstation needs to be on 24/7, at any time I may have to log in remotely and process a project.
We also have several file processing machines that need to be on, we can't waste time visiting with 30+ machines to power them on.

 

[Guest]

Anyone remember Y2K??? Our Novell server had years of up time until we had to do a Y2K patch install and full power down. Guess what??? Hard drive failure... I beleive many companies reported this kind of issue. Also, what about mechanical failure of a power switch? Yes, I've had to fix one of those before too. And for gamers, do you want your expensive nVidia card to have the chip stressed by the extra bootup/shutdown thermal issues that is already an issue? And why do people point only at nVidia when ATI is having similar issues with there packaging in the XBox 360 environment? Don't you think ATI provided MS with the specs for the required thermal environment? Maybe MS ignored them? Maybe graphics card makers ignored nVidia's thermal enviroment specs?

 

[Guest]

Xbox 360 problems were because of heat cycles. There's enough proof for me to leave my computer on.

 

[Guest]

For our corporate patching, in contrast to most of the companies commented above, our patches "Pull" during the bootup scripts. So I have to remind users to turn off every night, to satisfy both Power Savings, and Patches. If they leave their systems on, they waste power and if new updates are pushed out, they are not pulling them. I still constantly find users that leave their work systems on at night....I don't have keys to all their offices 😛

 

[goryachev]

I

 

[goryachev]

I never turn my PC off, because when I am not working, it does scientific calculations.

 

[jivdis1x]

thanks for the info 1E. What ever reason people have to leave their systems running is their choice. Computer component has a shelf life regardless if you have it on or not ie battery, cap, copper connection. Just do not give the bogus numbers about CO2 gas. When a studies has that as a statistic, I can only see a liberal agenda!!!

 

[Guest]

I don't think it matters that much leaving your PC on or not. A pc generally lasts for a good 5 years after which you'd throw it away anyways because of it's older hardware.
Second, modern hardware will shut the pc in a sleep state, so much as to completely shut off 90% of the motherboard's parts. Upon wakeup those parts will need to expand again as well as the pc gets powered out of it's sleep state.

Third, modern pc's who have a deeper sleep C6 state can use less than 10W idle; unlike eg an old celeron computer using 40W in standby.
Atom powered pc's and notebooks go even lower than 10W in their sleep state.

The difference between deeper sleep state 6 is the very core of the processor and perhaps a LAN card will remain active; as well as the powerloss through the power supply.
Having 10 computers on idle wastes as much as leaving 1 pc active all the time.
The 3 minutes boottime and shutdown time really won't make the difference, so I'd suggest for companies working 'till 5 to have a main switch shutting down the computer network at 5.30PM, and turning it on just before work starts.
The cost of such a switch and the work it takes turning it on and off every day is probably less than $150 per year.
The cost of electricity goes way beyond that!
Besides, as long as a computer network is provided with power it is vulnerable for attacs and people hacking in the network, stealing personal data.
Also a harddrive is breaking down faster when it regularly spins up at night (especially with Vista, which finds it necessary to defrag every 2hours).