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I shut mine down daily, I don't see a reason to use the electricity for hours on end if I am not at the computer. My server runs 24x7, but not my workstation.
I shut mine down daily, I don't see a reason to use the electricity for hours on end if I am not at the computer. My server runs 24x7, but not my workstation.
I've been using a computer for over 20 years and I shut it down every night. I have never had a computer go bad. I believe that shutting done clears the memory if anything is lodged there. I can't be certain about the newer computers, but I do know that a few years ago that used to be the case. I can say for certain that sometimes when things don't seem to be working right, a re-boot can fix it.
I personally shut mine down every nite and have ever since i started computing, but i know people my brother for one that runs his 24/7
I don't think it will have much affect on a computer's life over time. I think it would be more of a personal preference. I shut mine down at night, because I never saw the point of running a computer overnight. I obviously won't use it while I'm sleep, or the next day while I'm at work. I'll turn it on for a few hours at night, and that's it. Only my WHS box stays on all the time.
I did some pretty careful calculations about the power consumption on my PC, using known rates and a Killawatt device to measure consumption.
I pay 13 cents per kilowatt hour. My PC is idling most of the time and turned on about 11 hours a day. Taking all that into consideration, it uses about $39 in power per year.
If I were to leave it on all the time, it would use over $80 per year.
That alone is enough to get me to turn it off every night and whenever it might not be used for 3 or 4 hours.
Several years ago, I read a bunch of pros and cons about 24/7 versus nightly shut downs. Starting up 500 times a year may put more stress on components than starting up 2 or 20 times per year, but I can't recall anything that suggested the cost of the stress was greater than the power consumption reduction.
If you boot daily and have a certain hardware failure rate, who is to say that the failure rate would be lower if you booted less frequently?
I shut my computer when ever I not using it. With today's quality power supplies their very little surge if any. Any use of electronics takes away a little of it's life small bite at a time. Yes a shutdown and restart sometimes fixes little problems and does a ram cleanup. For a one or two computer household I don't think you will see a difference in the electric bill one way or the other. To me it's like leaving a light on in a room you won't be back to for a hour or so; why. The put a switch on the wall, use it. It only takes a minute or two to do a Start Up on a hard disk and a lot less with ssd. Go to the john, crack a beverage, kiss the wife or what ever and you will never notice that short period of boot time. Heck it take me that time to get to the kitchen for a fresh cup of coffee. If you leave your computer run 24/7 and are not using it you now have a vacuum cleaner sucking in all the dust bunnies.
Is that 13c including transport costs? And is that your top tier pricing?
We have split electrical/transport costs here and tiered pricing. Right now at my current top tier usage I am at 33 cents kwh all told! Every little bit you save come off the TOP. (And conversely every bit you add goes ON the top)
I'm in a neighboring state and used to live in Northern Cal.
That's a grand total per kilowatt hour. It varies depending on time of day and month of the year, but the 13 cents is an overall average considering all of that. Some months I pay 6 cents. Other months I pay 21 cents, etc. I keep a monthly spreadsheet breaking it all down.
I'm sure you are right about 27 to 35 in California; all the more reason why the state has been going downhill for decades. I imagine there are a lot of taxes in that total.
Clearly, the more you pay, the more reason to shut down a PC whenever possible.
I spent 20 years shutting mine down every night. A couple years ago I switched to using S3 sleep and haven't looked back.