PC leave On or Turn Off

[Coach17]

I am curious to see opinions on this. Should you leave your home pc on 24/7 or turn it off when you go to bed? What are the advantages or disadvantages?
Should you just turn off the monitor when you go to bed for the night? How much does it cost to run 24/7?
I can see if you go on vacation for a few days or a week or two to turn it off. I am sure there will be many opinions here.

[Steve R Jones]

This is an extremely common question on this site and all others....

I turn mine off if I won't be using it for a few hours....The thought of a little seven dollar fan failing while I'm not there is what motivates me.

And any electrical device that is turned on uses electricity...You could probably spend a ton of time...but you're looking at maybe ten bucks a month for the night time electricity when you're not using the pc.

[Train]

It is $10 if you are only paying $0.065 a kilowatt.

CRT monitors would tend to catch fire when they went bad.
Caught a couple at the stinking stage myself.
So concider fire danger also.

[Coach17]

So far it sounds like it should be turned off at night. I will look for other opinions.

[HAN]

Plus I'm a proponent of rebooting Windows every once in a while. It just seems to keep things running smoother.

[Train]

Plus I'm a proponent of rebooting Windows every once in a while. It just seems to keep things running smoother.

A lot of us shut down at night just to be able to do that.

[Coach17]

I can understand the rebooting part of it which is what I would do anyway. Currently I shut my machine down at night.

[Train]

The savings for me will pay a months electric bill for me. At the end of a year.

[Coach17]

That is a pretty significant savings.

[Train]

$120 a year is what the local PUD worked out.

Lots of groceries can be gotten for that amount.

[SuperSparks]

I'm firmly in the turn it off camp:
1) Turning off the PC saves electricity, so it is good for the planet as well as the wallet.

2) Leaving the PC on 24/7 will suck more dust into it.

3) Leaving the PC on 24/7 will cause the mechanical parts (disk drives, fans) to fail earlier - all bearings wear out.

4) Leaving the PC on 24/7 (and especially a CRT monitor) is a potential fire hazard.

5) A lot of the unreliability that used to be reported in machines that were turned on and off regularly was caused by "thermal creep", where chips would gradually work their way out of sockets. The way modern circuit boards are made renders thermal creep a thing of the past.