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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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).

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.

We've had that happen too where I live.

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.

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.

[quote author=LoRd[nK] link=topic=12383.msg122621#msg122621 date=1122832545]
...  There is, however, another side to this issue, the electrical costs will be outstanding ..[/quote]
It is actually very cheap to leave a computer on 24/7 with residential electricity rates..
Thanks for your input everyone

[quote author=Tazo link=topic=12383.msg122712#msg122712 date=1122910843]
[quote author=LoRd[nK] link=topic=12383.msg122621#msg122621 date=1122832545]
...  There is, however, another side to this issue, the electrical costs will be outstanding ..[/quote]
It is actually very cheap to leave a computer on 24/7 with residential electricity rates..
Thanks for your input everyone
[/quote]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.

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

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

Are you sure? According to this it costs ~5.18cents/kWh for Dominion Power in VA.

So: 350 * 24 * .0518 = 435.12

I assume since that's in cents I'd divide by 100, so $4.35/day, $30.45/wk, $1583.4/yr. That sounds pretty extensive.

http://www.washington.edu/nebula/power.html

What about the graph on there?

Mac's?

Hmmm... ~$130/mo@5 cents/kWh does seem rather off... does someone else know another (more accurate) algorithm to calculate such costs?

Also, what does a Mac have to do with anything in regards to this?

Edit:
Oh yeah, I forgot... your powersupplies aren't a full kilowatt; they're only 350 watts... so it's more like:
(Supply Wattage / 1000) * hours left on * ($/kWh).

Comes out to about $13/mo for you, which sounds *much* closer to your real price to leave a 350 watted computer on for a 30 day month.

Edit2:
Also, remember that unless you're doing some really major stuff with your computer, you're probably not using the full 350 watts of your PSU, so the ~$13/mo is around the max you should set aside per month per single computer... but should expect leftovers. In fact, you're probably only going to need 1/3 at most... maybe even only 1/5 of that, from average gaming use + lots of idle time.

I compromise: All my monitors go to standby after 10 minutes idle. The computers stay on. :)

My laptop gets hibernated if it needs to be moved. I don't leave it connected when it's fully charged unless I'm playing WoW.

I usually leave my computers on.

I've heard the consensus that Mac's suck electricity like mad, but I've never checked it out :-p

What about as far as clearing of the RAM & virtual memory & killing un-needed processes?

After a while won't that stuff just build up & cause the computer to go much slower?

I would leave mine on but all my fans are noisy and the LEDs are bright, so I hibernate.

[quote author=CrAz3D link=topic=12383.msg123194#msg123194 date=1123266286]
What about as far as clearing of the RAM & virtual memory & killing un-needed processes?

After a while won't that stuff just build up & cause the computer to go much slower?
[/quote]

Don't use faulty programs and you won't have to worry about memory leaks.