Tip: Leave it on or Turn it off?

An age old question about PC power consumption vs. wear and tear.

Author: Neil Patterson :: 2024 Expertek
Views: 1423 - Updated 6/23/2015 10:10 am Print this tip

We get a lot of questions about PCs and whether to turn them off or leave them on, regarding power usage and the wear and tear related to power cycling. Windows updates, as well as anti-virus programs perform their updating and scanning overnight in most cases. When the PC is turned on, there is a small surge, and then the fans start up and cool your system components. Hard drives heat up, the CPU heats up, and the Heat sinks (and the case itself) help keep things cool as long as the fans are moving air across them and throw that heat outside the case. Knowing that, here are the facts:

Surge: The surge related to starting your computer is not real high, unless you're running a server, (or have a large power supply WITH more than 2 hard drives, or a gaming video card), so daily starts and stops should be handled by your average power supply without causing issues.

Power: Power consumption of the average desktop PC is about 400 watts per hour. Running 24/7, it will use about $4/mo @ .12 /Kwh. That's 1/4 of your average hair dryer, and less than 1/20 of what your oven uses.

Dust: Dust restricts and inhibits air flow in whatever system you are running(and it's worse with laptops). When fans stop moving, or air stops flowing through your PC and it's many heat sinks, things overheat and burn up.

Updates: Updates can occur at any time, and need to be applied to keep your system hacker and bug free. Most of these updates and scans take place overnight while the system is not in use, and it is important that they complete properly. If you miss a scan or update, it's not usually critical, and can be performed the next time you reboot. It is always better to wait, than restart during an update.

Our Final Opinion: Updates to the Windows operating system and Anti-virus programs and other activities such as lengthy downloads should be about the only thing you leave your system on for. If an update has started, it doesn't usually take very long and you should let it go. You can leave it on overnight periodically, or come back in a little while to make sure the update completed properly and that the system restarted okay.

Laptops should be not left on overnight (if you can avoid it), because they simply do not have the air flow that desktops have.

So our verdict is the same as "Dad's" , turn it off, if you're not using it.

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