Server Help :: View topic - Leaving your computer on for 24/7

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Trash Talk - Leaving your computer on for 24/7

Anonymous - Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:17 am
Post subject: Leaving your computer on for 24/7

I was wondering it is bad or harmful to your computer if you leave it on 24/7 or a longer period of time?

Dr Brain - Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:20 am
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I've left all of my computers I've ever owned on 24/7. It's never hurt anything.

Some people say that it's actually better to leave it on all the time, because the changing temperatures of turning it off and on can cause strain on the CPU and other components.

Maverick - Wed Oct 19, 2005 9:28 am
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I believe some components on your motherboard aren't designed to be on 24/7 and will fail after a few years of service.
(That's why servers have different motherboard and components.)

Anonymous - Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:08 am
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I have a Intel Pent.4 proceser and is 2.41ghz, and a nVidia64mb gfx card

Dr Brain - Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:32 am
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Maverick wrote:

I believe some components on your motherboard aren't designed to be on 24/7 and will fail after a few years of service.
(That's why servers have different motherboard and components.)

That's BS. I've left dosens of computers on for years at a time and I've never had a motherboard failure. I'm a part time netadmin for an elementary school, and all of the classroom computers are left on 24/7, and it's done them no harm.

The only reason to shut a computer off is the power savings. It'll save something like 10-15 cents a month.

Maverick - Wed Oct 19, 2005 10:39 am
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I have seen enough examples of motherboards that were fused out because they were being used as a server and on 24/7.

Mine GO BOOM - Wed Oct 19, 2005 11:15 am
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If you use your computer more than 8 hours a day, or you constantly go back to it at random times of the day, leave it on all the time. If you do leave your computer on all the time, and want to save on electricity still, set your hard drives to power off after an hour or so of non-usage. If your CPU is hovering around 0-2%, and your hard drives are off, your system uses very low power.

Me personally? My computers are always on. Even when I leave the country for two or more weeks, they are still on. Why? FTP, VNC and SSH (well, for the linux server, OpenSSH under Cygwin sucks). I enjoy having full access to every system on our network at anytime from anywhere. Hell, when I was in Poland visiting family, we loading up pictures we forgot to bring with us thanks to the magic of Wake-on-LAN and having my main system on (pictures we on my father's system).

Cyan~Fire - Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:44 pm
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I once had a Chaintech motherboard fail, seemingly for being on all the time. No trouble with the ASUS I bought to replace it, though.

Quan Chi2 - Wed Oct 19, 2005 3:47 pm
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Hey, MGB you leave the country for weeks.. are you in the army or something? just wondering..

Mine GO BOOM - Wed Oct 19, 2005 4:08 pm
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Quan Chi2 wrote:

Hey, MGB you leave the country for weeks.. are you in the army or something? just wondering..

Mine GO BOOM wrote:

when I was in Poland visiting family

Please, PLEASE read things in the future. Reading helps you understand what people say.

D1st0rt - Thu Oct 20, 2005 2:00 pm
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I have to turn my laptop off every once in a while when taking it to class, or when this happens:

My guess is the RAM.

Quan Chi2 - Thu Oct 20, 2005 3:54 pm
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MINE GO BOOM wrote:

Me personally? My computers are always on. Even when I leave the country for two or more weeks, they are still on.

MGB, please, PLEASE read every sentence of your own posts before reponding to my comments on it. You said 'when I visit family in Poland' afterward and it had nothing to do with the sentence from a readers point of view.

Cyan~Fire - Thu Oct 20, 2005 4:00 pm
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Definitely RAM. Wow, I feel old knowing what parity is. If you want to risk it, you could also just turn of the parity check somewhere in the CMOS, but then you may get some nasty failures.

(Deactived B l a h e r) - Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:35 pm
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Quan Chi2 wrote:

[..]

MGB, please, PLEASE read every sentence of your own posts before reponding to my comments on it. You said 'when I visit family in Poland' afterward and it had nothing to do with the sentence from a readers point of view.

Quan, please, PLEASE read every sentence of your book on how to become smart, if you do you will become more avalible to vocab around you and less of a idiot and maybe learn some day your dumb. lol

Quan Chi2 wrote:

[..]

I'm so stupid and I want a hotdog

Some times I wounder about you and your strangeness

Dr Brain - Thu Oct 20, 2005 5:56 pm
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Quan Chi2 wrote:

He said he went out of the country for long streches of time. Then gives an example of a time when he went to Poland. Then you ask where he goes, and complain when people think you look like an idiot. How do you not see the problem we're all bitching about?

Solid_Fire - Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:19 am
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Quan Chi2 wrote:

Hey, MGB you leave the country for weeks.. are you in the army or something? just wondering..

Quan...your serisously dumb as hell...the boards would prolly be much better without your noob junk spam...

Me personally, i leave my computer on all the time, nothing has went wrong.

Purge - Fri Oct 21, 2005 5:14 pm
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Unless you have an old computer, your computer will live if it's on 24/7. I had an old computer and I left it on 24/7 and its power supply failed. I assume today's power supplies are better?

Donkano - Fri Oct 21, 2005 8:53 pm
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My computer I leave on 24/7 and I took off the side so it is at room temprature and it runs fine.

Cyan~Fire - Fri Oct 21, 2005 9:57 pm
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Taking off the side is probably the stupidest thing you can do for the cooling of a computer.

Donkano - Fri Oct 21, 2005 11:35 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

Taking off the side is probably the stupidest thing you can do for the cooling of a computer.

Not when it has 1 shitty little fan.

Contempt+ - Sat Oct 22, 2005 12:25 am
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I'd have to agree with Don for once. I had my side panel on my computer and it would get a little warm. Took it off, and it's cooled down quite a bit.

Cyan~Fire - Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:08 am
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1 fan? As in one in the power supply? Or one on the CPU? Either way, I have trouble believing you.

Removing the side panel reduces the air temperature inside the case, so it might not feel as hot, but it actually increases the temperature of the parts because cases are designed to pass air through the entire case, passing every part that needs cooling.

And "a little warm" is normal and perfectly OK.

newb - Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:28 am
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Isn't also dangourous to leave the sides off while your exposed to electrical parts?

I wouldn't think of doing that.

Maverick - Sat Oct 22, 2005 9:35 am
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It is also stupid because dust can go into the power supply, processor and all of the electronic parts of your computer. Dust heats up the computer even more because it stops airflow and warms up.

(Deactived B l a h e r) - Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:42 am
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I'm actuall going to agree with not taking off the sides this time even thought I like to experiment. You shouldn't do it like every one eles here said because it gets more dust in the fan, on the CPU, on the circuts, power cords, cd, it can get on the platters of the hard drive, and also it looks very un-neatly anyways. If you want to have your computer cooler just put a filter on the fan (even a thin sock will work like I said befor so dust can't get in there and it will cause less of a air blockage on dust and can cool down faster.

Anonymous - Sat Oct 22, 2005 11:50 am
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My pc is on twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. I run a php service for all my friends through AIM's Share Files ability.

If I remember correctly, I think that right now, my Mp3 Collection statistics are something like:

~35 gigs

~7500 Songs

But yeah, it won't damage your components.

D1st0rt - Sat Oct 22, 2005 1:22 pm
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Cyan~Fire wrote:

Wow, I feel old knowing what parity is.

There was a long ass question on the IB HL Compsci exam where I had to write like three different algorithms to do a even parity check on a 2d array and fix the bit that was incorrect. I crushed it using abs(x - 1)

Cyan~Fire - Sun Oct 23, 2005 10:41 am
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@newb: The electricity isn't dangerous. All the exposed metal maxes around 12V these days and at quite a low current, so no reason to worry. Now back when computers had real switches on the front it was a different story...