I'm just curious how many people leave their computers turned on all the time. All four of my machines (my sig is out of date, by the way) stay powered on 24/7. I'll probably get biased results asking at an enthusiast site like this, but, I'm curious if I'm an anomaly or not.

I get the impression (no real research to back this up) that most "consumer grade" components are still engineered to be turned on and off many times... at least I've read this about hard drives.

Matt

Hi, my computer is turned 24/7 Welcome in the club of computers working 24/7!

But of Course!!! ...


I Fold... 24/7 ...






Regards
Pete

I do it from time to time. I have stopped now as our electricity bill just doubled from the last one - not because of the computer (I had done it for several months in summer/autumn) but because everyone is keeping a beady eye on anything with an on/off switch!

No, both my desktop and server are only turned on when I am using them (same goes for the router and the modem). Everything gets turned off at the powerpoint.

My desktop takes 30sec to boot, and my server takes 3-5min why wouldnt I turn them off?

My computer is on for 24/7 and it's located 1.5 meters from my bed.

I keep it on for many reasons. Main one is that I am in irc all the time. Secondly I just don't see a point in turning it off. My electric bill is included in the rent, so it doesn't have economical effects.

Does "turned on" include being in sleep mode?

yup, always on, unless i'm outta town for a few days. i'm pretty environmentally conscious, but i justify my pc always being on because:

1. it's running folding / SETI (so it's not just sucking electricity... it's helping the world!)
2. it doesn't use that much juice (around 60-70W) w/o monitor on, monitor shuts off after 10 minutes or so.
3. i conserve electricity in other ways... i use all CF bulbs. so my bill is still very low even with the pc on.
4. it's probably better for the components (debateable... but many think the fewer temp cycles are better)
5. so damn convenient when i want to check something online.

i do turn it off when i leave town, just in case my psu decides to explode or something. just my $.02

What a timely thread! Coincidentily, just today if figured that running my computer 24/7 costs me around 23 Euro per month. That's 276 Euro per year! I still find that hard to believe - I'll verify that again in the coming days...

I wasn't aware that a computer could be turned off...

I think you are way off...

I had wrote a long reply to this thread and then accidentally closed the tab with wrong shortcut .

Anyway I counted the price for you to be 140 euros a year. I used the low power draw P4 from spcr to compare to your computer, it's very similar. http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html

* Intel Pentium 4-2.8C
* AOpen MX4SGI-4DL2 motherboard
* 2 x 512 mb OCZ PC3700 DDRAM
* Seagate 7200.7 120G HDD
* Seagate Barracuda IV 40G HDD
* Matrox P650 VGA (dual head mode)
* Seasonic Super Tornado 350W PSU
* Asus QuieTrack CDRW
* 6-in-1 card reader / floppy drive
* 3 low speed fans

126W AC pcmark04 and 71W AC idle. Price of electricity in Germany for households is approximately 0,1875e/kWh.

If you game for 6 hours a day your power usage would be
24x7x52 = total of 8736 hours
2184 hours of gaming and 6552h idle
2184h x 0,126kW + 6552h x 0,071kW = 740kWh
740h x 0,1875e/h = 139e in a year.

Price in Finland would be 78e
Sweden 103e
France 88e
Denmark 170e
Greece 50e
UK 85e

Source for prices: Eurostats, Household electricity price in Europe
- household 1st of January 2005 / 3 500 kWh/a

With the same formula F&H 24/7/52 would cost 188 euros a year in Germany. I drew the 18h idle, 6h gaming from my hat and these prices are just average prices so YMMW.

Mine is only turned on when I'm using it. The only thing that is on 24/7 is my Reserator.

No. Why have it on if it's not being used? It just means more money, more power stations and more pollution.

Yes because they're folding.

I dont fold at all. my temps on the clawhammer were rediculous. I just didnt want to bother having to cool that.

But my comp is on 24/7.

I play mud

I might not find aliens, but I certainly can slash them with my sword!

i run all my systems 24/7. cost of power isnt even considered. heat generated is a bigger concern. i find that the computer room is always at least 10c warmer than the rest of the house. in the summer it can get quite warm if i dont keep the AC turned down low.

mostly i leave them on for convienence. i'm always getting on and off them throughout the day, i dont wanna wait 3-5min every time i wanna just check somthing on google for 2min. i use the computers for everything now. paying bills, buying products, checking my bank accounts, chatting to friends, playing games, surfing the net, checking on movie times etc etc etc. their is rarely a day where i dont hop on the net for at least a few min every hour. also my computer is the main source of music for the entire house, which plays all day and all night.

i try to keep the monitor turned off when not in use, but i forget about it alot.

I really can't see the point in having a computer on 24/7. It seems wasteful when it can be put into standby or hibernate state and be back up and working in 5 - 10 seconds......

My computer uses 75w at idle and in standby or hibernate 16w. I still can't understand why my motherboard requires 16w when its switched off? Does anyone else have measurements for standby power consumption?

Yes during the winter, but during the summer the extra heat warms my dorm room too much for our crappy air conditioning to get the temperature in the room below 70F, so I leave it off.

No, I don't keep either of my 2 PCs on 24/7. My electricity bill is already high enough at around $90 per month and around $110 during the summer months.

Then again, I have 2 Athlon XP machines. But upgrading to newer PCs won't change much since they will both be dual core PCs. So after upgrade, my bill will be about the same or slightly more.

I can say that dual core 4200 runs really cold. its the chip to get I feel.

I would think that it wouldnt use much more than your xp system, except on load of course it would use more, but that is unoften.

I just tested mine. It draws 4w when "off", 6w in standby, and 100+ when running. That seems odd that yours would draw so much power in standby.

As for myself and this poll, I leave mine on all the time. Mine is in my closet and the "wake on keyboard" doesn't seem to work with a USB keyboard and mouse running through my monitor as the USB hub. It's kind of a pain to go in to the closet, open the front panel of the case (It's a P180) and hit the power button. What can I say, I'm lazy.

Technically, yes, my computer is on 24/7, but the tower and monitor both go into low-power mode after around ten minutes. I'd like to think my undervolted PC is pretty efficient (at least considering the hardware), but it still pulls around 60w idle. STR makes a huge difference in idle power consumption at little cost to "wake-up" time.

Bitter Jitter: 16w does seem high. What are you specifications and what peripheral devices do you have hooked up to your PC?

This machine is a PVR, so it needs to be on to make recordings. The only compromise here is to use WakeOnLAN to turn it on at the right time, but that requires a different machine to be on 24x7 ...

It is real money, though. At 80W idle and $0.18/kWH, that's $0.56/day, or $15/month. I wonder how that compares to my refrigerator ...

thank god, no it's not ! What's the point ? For people that work outside thier homes, it's plain silly.
And that's also why I complain so much about boot times (2minutes !!!).
i would use hibernating mode, if I was sure it worked, or STR mode provided it did stop the fans from spinning !

According to the little power efficiency star sticker on the front of my fridge it's rated at 540kw per year.

If only I could store beer in my PC....

Anyway, I turn my PC on when I wake and off when I go to bed. It's set up to go into hibernate when left unattended.

I have 2 machines on 24x7 - one's a PVR and one's a web/mail server, and feel slightly guilty about it.

The power draw may be quite small (about 60W for each), but 24x7 really makes it add up. I'd like to get a more efficient system for at least one of those, but there are other environmental costs to consider. Computer manufacture is really nasty for the environment.

I can't believe the number of machines that are left on in my office overnight for no reason whatsoever, and the number of lights left on in rooms where nobody is. The culture of waste is ingrained, especially in the US. My work machine draws 140W on idle (! - 2 Xeons), and I shut it down when I leave. I use Wake-On-LAN to activate it when I want to VPN into work from home.

That's what i'm afraid of as a European, especially since I read the first posts on this thread !
Very glad to see that at least a few americans are aware of these issues.

I have my P2P-box/LAN-server/WWW-server on 24/7, it contributes to heating my room

I'd love to utilize it better, by running F@H, but it glitched up last time, and my lazy ass hasn't gotten around to trying again to fix it.

boot time wouldn't be a problem, it's up in like 30 seconds (winxp on a 1gig duron, don't ask me how).

Whereas my main comp is on something like 15/7, basically all day, but I turn it off when I sleep, just because I don't need it on. however it (despite being a 3200+ with 2 gigs of ram) takes 3 minutes to boot, so i like having it on.

at the moment, the work my server is doing is worth the electricity cost, but I'm still considering a possible more effective solution with time

The US has the full range - from the most thoughtless wasteful rednecks to radical conservationists. The ignorant rednecks are just the loudest, and in power. In spite of apperances, there are lots of intelligent, educated, thoughtful people in the US, just as dismayed.

I think in Europe most people knew some level of economic depression almost continuously from 1914 until the 1960s - so the deep awareness of waste is ingrained either directly, or from their parents. Conversely, only the grandparents and great-grandparents in the US knew the great depression and the short, minor blip of economic hardship of WWII (I'm not belittling the non-economic sacrifices).

Still, when China decides the time is right to stop propping up the dollar and the economic house of cards collapses, we'll learn.