Leaving your PC on vs. Turning it off

[Tazo]

What is your stand on this, or what do you reccomend?
I have heard that turning it off induces 'thermal shock', any truth to this?

P.S. I calculated that it would cost me $2.76 to leave my computer on for 1 month.

[CrAz3D]

if you tuned it on & off constantly in a short amount of time it might screw something up...I'm sure it'd be ok to turn it off nightly

[hismajesty]

I don't see a big deal in leaving it on. Even turning it off will still cause it to use small amounts of electricity, and from what I've read leaving it in hibernate or sleep mode or whatever has hardly any difference in the amount of electricity used. I just turn off the monitor since I don't really care to wait for it to come out of sleep.

[CrAz3D]

I ALWAYS hibernate my laptop, takes WAY too long for it to boot otherwise

[shadypalm88]

I just put my Mac to sleep, it takes less time to come back up than my PC's CRT screen does.

[Eric]

It's a debatable issue.  Have you ever turned on your light only to watch it power on and then almost instantly burn out?  It's the same issue here.  When turning your computer on after it's been cooled down, the system will heat up very fast and it's at it's greatest risk of overheating.  Component-wise, it's best to either leave your computer on all of the time, or off all of the time.  There is, however, another side to this issue, the electrical costs will be outstanding, you'll have to make sure that your system has a proper cooling system, and there's a risk of an electrical fire.

[Yegg]

My electrical costs are not too high for having 5 computers all hooked up with online access (24/7). The majority of the bill is from the air conditioning (and heating during winter).

[hismajesty]

air conditioning is a bitch. We've had power outages in the city due to the power companies being overloaded by people using air conditioning.

[Yegg]

We've had that happen too where I live.

[CrAz3D]

right now it is too humid for our a/c units to work (we all generally have swamp coolers here cause the humidity is generally low).  but when it DOES get humid it works better to just turn off the water pump on the a/c & let it blow air.

[Lenny]

As Lord said, its a debatable issue.  The main argument for leaving the computer on constantly is the fact that powering on and off have been shown to reduce the life of the CPU.

But leaving a computer on constantly when it's not being used also leads to wasted CPU life as well as higher electrical costs.  You'll also be making a room much warmer than it needs to be during the summer time.  And leaving the CPU on at high temps will also reduce CPU life.

[Tazo]

...  There is, however, another side to this issue, the electrical costs will be outstanding ..

It is actually very cheap to leave a computer on 24/7 with residential electricity rates..
Thanks for your input everyone

[tA-Kane]

...  There is, however, another side to this issue, the electrical costs will be outstanding ..

It is actually very cheap to leave a computer on 24/7 with residential electricity rates..
Thanks for your input everyone

I don't know what your rates are, but it costs me about $30 per computer to leave on 24/30.5. Multiplied by seven computers plus two A/C units, that comes out to quite a hefty electricity bill.

But all in all, I leave my server running because... well, it's a server... it wouldn't be a server if it wasn't on all the time. 
I leave my main computer on because it's running things that the server can't (being newer *and* a completely different architecture).

It *is* nice to only wait for the computer to login and load the desktop (about 20 seconds), compared to a full boot (~3 minutes). I do turn off my 2x LCDs when not in use.

[hismajesty]

How do you find out how much it costs to leave your computer on?

[tA-Kane]

(approximation): supply wattage * hours left on * ($/kWh)