Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

[Pentium4]

Personally, I by far prefer to leave any system running 24/7, I think it's so much better for the power supply and especially the hard drives but I want to hear what other people think. I just absolutely can't stand when someone turns on a computer for like an hour then shuts it down, pet peeve of mine....

The only issues are they get dusty FAST and ups the power bill quite a bit. My server has a motherboard that is from 2004 (used daily since) and it's done fine running 24/7 for years with OST caps (LOL)

[retiredcaps]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

I just absolutely can't stand when someone turns on a computer for like an hour then shuts it down, pet peeve of mine....

Then you would hate me. I turn my computers on and off multiple times during the day via power bar. I use hibernate mode so boot up time is pretty fast.

All my computers and hard drives are second hand/used.

edit: I have been doing this on/off since the days of IBM XT. Back then, you had to manually park the hard drive heads with a command before turning off the PC.

[Rob Northen]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

I also just turn mine on when needed, always done that. No issues yet

[Pentium4]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

haha :P I'm not hatin on you guys, everyone has a preference!

[Topcat]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

I leave my home system on all the time. Office machine is shut off at night....and of course the server is on all the time.

I am the anti-green. My systems are power hogs too!

[shovenose]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

My servers are on 24/7.
Some of my other computers are on like 18/7.
^Folding@Home on servers and some computers
And some are only on while I'm using them.
^not folding@home

[Pentium4]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

I leave my home system on all the time. Office machine is shut off at night....and of course the server is on all the time.

I am the anti-green. My systems are power hogs too!

Nice Yeah I have to admit my home probably uses a ton of power. the 2 machines that run 24/7 are a Celeron D and a Pentium 4, and I'd say my Core i5 comp is on 16 hours a day average. Them my HTPC's are on a lot too but I like to get lots of use out of my computers

[Pentium4]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

My servers are on 24/7.
Some of my other computers are on like 18/7.
^Folding@Home on servers and some computers
And some are only on while I'm using them.
^not folding@home

How many servers do you have and what are the specs? I doubt anyone cares but my main server is a Celeron D 3.33GHz, 1GB DDR400, 2.5TB storage, Antec EA380, 6600GT (just for kicks) and my Linux box has a 2.8GHz P4 not HT, 768MB DDR333 and a 40GB WD. I might slap a S370 with a P3 933MHz and 512MB PC133 just because it could do the job and would save a lot on power

[shovenose]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

Server 1: (windows server 2008)
AMD Dual Core 2.2GHz (4200+ I think)
2GB DDR2 (2x1GB)
2x 250GB Seagate SATA (some special enterprise editions)
300W "GPS" Generic ATX PSU
Rosewill MicroATX case
DVDROM

Server 2: (same OS as #1)
Same CPU I think
1.5GB DDR2 RAM
1x 160GB noisy (failing?) Seagate GDD
Unknown PSU (I think it's a 250W liteon IIRC)
HP case
DVDRW

Server 3: (Windows Server 2003)
P4HT 2.8
1GB DDR
80GB IDE
Dell (200w?) PSU
Dell Dimension 4600 Case
DVDROM

[Topcat]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

FWIW, my wife's iMac is on 24/7 (its been polymodded). It goes to sleep completely after 20 minutes being idle, so in that state, its using hardly any power. Infact, if the grid power hiccups or kicks off for a couple seconds (common during a storm), it won't reset her system....and its not on a UPS.

[Evil Lurker]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

I used to leave my system on 24/7 but its a power hog and with all the 80mm cooling fans in my old case it sounds like an idling 747 on the tarmac.

Now I just hit the hibernate button whenever I'm not using it if for no other reason than my sanity.

[shovenose]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

Got the 3rd server up and running. Now I have 3 Minecraft servers, all running folding@home two SMP and one Uniprocessor...


Why is my Windows Server 2003 only showing one thread in task manager?????

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

eh I used to have 4 machines on.

The pfsesne box
My fileserver
Mythtv Backend and frontend
Workstation computer

All of them on 24/7 but money is tight these days, so recently I have pfsense box setup with a cron job to do a wake-on-lan to the mythtv boxes to turn on at 2:30PM and cron job to turn them off at 2:30am on the weekdays. On the weekends I have them set to not turn off on saturday early AM and run to monday and shut off at 7am.

The workstation is set to sleep 30minutes so it not using much.

The fileserver has to run 24/7, too many hard-drives, I'm afraid that the spin down/up cycle will eventually wear it out and kill a drive which is bad for a raid array. It's running other applications like xen which run my web, pxe and WSUS *Windows Server Update Service* and also a thin client server experiment.

Waiting to see what my power bill is...

[Mad_Professor]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

Got the 3rd server up and running. Now I have 3 Minecraft servers, all running folding@home two SMP and one Uniprocessor...


Why is my Windows Server 2003 only showing one thread in task manager?????

lol you need to load the correct kernel in windows setup, I think the key is F7.

[Uranium-235]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

My Media box (C2D 6600) is on 24/7
my laptop, sleep when I close the lid
gaming box power off and unplug every night
poweredge 1800 24/7
pfsense router (recapped with rubycons) Athlon 1ghz t-bird /w ECC DDR 24/7

[Toasty]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

3 systems, 24/7. One is the file server and in effect the NAS.

Another older Dell is in hibernate most of the time and wakes up to handle X10 control.

Everybody's on UPS's.

[c_hegge]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

The price of power is rediculous around here, and over $200/month is not unusual at all, so we can't afford to run PCs 24/7

[Pentium4]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

3 systems, 24/7. One is the file server and in effect the NAS.

Another older Dell is in hibernate most of the time and wakes up to handle X10 control.

Everybody's on UPS's.

What are the specs?

And dang Uranium, that Poweredge 1800 must use a lot of power xD

[Pentium4]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

The price of power is rediculous around here, and over $200/month is not unusual at all, so we can't afford to run PCs 24/7

Ouch, that is ridiculous! I feel bad for you Computers want to run!!!

[momaka]

Re: Do you leave your computer on 24/7?

Personally, I by far prefer to leave any system running 24/7, I think it's so much better for the power supply and especially the hard drives but I want to hear what other people think.

I'm not really sure about that.

Perhaps true for PSU. Bet even then, I doubt it would matter over the useful lifetime of the PSU.

As for HDDs...
From what I've seen at work, most Seagate HDDs that have bad sectors are the ones with over 10K hours, and we have mostly 7200.7 and 7200.8 models. Most also have a low Power Cycle Count as well (200-500 usually).
In contrast to this, my family's computer has a Seagate 7200.7 HDD with 9k hours and 5k power cycles - that's 10x the power cycle count of the ones we have at work - and yet it has 0 bad sectors.
Of course, this is only my observation for the Seagate 7200.7 and 7200.8 HDDs. I'm not sure how other drives will do.

Either way, I never leave my computers running 24/7. The noise just bothers me too much, even if the computers aren't in my room. I like my house as quiet as possible.
Another factor is that as a kid, I was raised during the 90's crisis years in Easter Europe, and back then my parents have always thought me to turn off stuff if I'm not using them. It's still in my mentality, and definitely not a bad thing.

I am the anti-green. My systems are power hogs too!

Don't worry man, I'll be compensating for you. My computers are mostly Pentium 3s that don't use more than 60W of power, if even that much . The only power hogs are my CRT monitors, but there's no way in hell I'll be changing those for some flimsy LCD crap with inferior colors and refresh rates.
I've had people call me "not green" for using CRT monitors. I say, fuck 'em. Sure they use more power, but at least they've lasted me for a very long time.