I’ve heard the initial jolt of electricity is hard on components
Should you turn your computer off every night?
The initial surge until it regulates itself could take a toll on the components over time, but unless you turned it on and off multiple times a day, then perhaps you would reduce the life of the components by a noticeable amount versus just leaving it on all day, or perhaps just turning it on and off once a day.
Otherwise, I don’t think it’s really something to worry about.
i shut mine off once every other week or so. some computers(including laptops) can actually overheat even when on, which i find poor. if that’s the case for you, then i think it would be a good idea to shut it off more often.
Opposed to overheating whilst off?
…and if you find it poor, you’ve got no-one to blame but yourself really, improve your cooling.
I don’t think that is true at all, what kind of electrical engineers would they be if they let an ‘initial jolt of electricity’ beyond the allowed specifications get anywhere into the system.
Think about it in relation to cars, it actually is a little hard on cars being shut off and turned back on multiple times a day, but you don’t see anyone recommending you instead just leave them on all the time do you? That would be ridiculous.
Computers have moving parts too, fans, hard drives, all of which can only move so much before they fail. They also have other components that can fail the longer you leave them on, one example being capacitors that have a longer life at a lower temperature, and every computer is hotter while running then when turned off.
If I’m not going to be using my computer for an extended period of time (a few hours), then I turn it off. I recommend everyone else do the same.
[quote=“Greeny, post:4, topic:437704”][quote author=DEFET link=topic=540406.msg3957604#msg3957604 date=1332911863]
i shut mine off once every other week or so. some computers(including laptops) can actually overheat even when on, which i find poor. if that’s the case for you, then i think it would be a good idea to shut it off more often.
[/quote]
…and if you find it poor, you’ve got no-one to blame but yourself really, improve your cooling.[/quote]
He was talking about a laptop, there isn’t anything you can do about a laptop’s cooling besides keeping it clean, or maybe getting one of those awful, bulky and annoying ‘cooling pads’ to set it on, which don’t always work well or at all, depending on the laptop’s design.
It’s not about an initial jolt of electricity, its more to do with heat stress wearing out cheap shitty caps/cracking boards - but its way overblown and not something to worry about. Save the power.
Tests have determined that HDD’s are far healthier by being on 24/7 rather than using power-saving features to spin down.
why waste the power though on a component that is destined to fail anyway
[quote=“Mopman, post:8, topic:437704”]why waste the power though on a component that is destined to fail anyway[/quote]Because the power usage of a HDD is so tiny you won’t notice a difference in your power bill for the lifespan of the drive? 
Good reason to build a NAS. You don’t really want the rest of your computer on purely for the hard drives.
[quote=“Speljohan, post:9, topic:437704”][quote author=Mopman link=topic=540406.msg3957875#msg3957875 date=1332953207]
why waste the power though on a component that is destined to fail anyway
[/quote]Because the power usage of a HDD is so tiny you won’t notice a difference in your power bill for the lifespan of the drive? :P[/quote]
now multiply it by the people on the earth who own a computer
exactly, so just turning yours off wont save the world
oh here we go…
yes, how dare people be mindful of their energy consumption
if you’re not using the computer it’s better to turn it off, you’ll save a considerable amount of electric long before any component wear
the initial jolt as you said is will not do much damage to your computer as you think, since when the system was designed it must of have gone through testing for stability in initial condition and for BIBO, non the less over prolonged periods of time the circuitry will wear down and the hardware will not work as efficiently as it should to protect your computer from the transient response, but thats after very long time (a time when you probably want to throw out your comp)
I don’t think that circuitry actually wears down, it’s usually specific components, probably capacitors most of the time, but the hardware should always work as ‘efficiently’ as it ever did.
[quote=“Moparisthebest, post:17, topic:437704”][quote author=SETO link=topic=540406.msg3959159#msg3959159 date=1333094921]
the initial jolt as you said is will not do much damage to your computer as you think, since when the system was designed it must of have gone through testing for stability in initial condition and for BIBO, non the less over prolonged periods of time the circuitry will wear down and the hardware will not work as efficiently as it should to protect your computer from the transient response, but thats after very long time (a time when you probably want to throw out your comp)
[/quote]
I don’t think that circuitry actually wears down, it’s usually specific components, probably capacitors most of the time, but the hardware should always work as ‘efficiently’ as it ever did.[/quote]
you should know that most of the degradation is proportional to Temperature and change in Temp
An interesting viewpoint, not only limited to the topic of energy consumption. What you are saying is comparable to saying that your vote doesn’t matter, because one vote doesn’t make a difference. Quite a depressing worldview.
But we’re not mainly talking about saving the world here. The point of this topic are the costs of having to replace your HDD and other components more often because of a power jolt, compared to the money you save because of less energy consumption and less wear of those components.
Note to thread: When I say power jolt I dont mean like a power surge or an excess of power being pushed into the component. Im talking about the first time the circuits and stuff get electricity flowing through them after being inactive can be very intense. When I heard this is was about a tv. Turning it on and off wears it down quicker, but a tv monitor isnt really the same as pc hardware.