When to turn your PC and other equipment off 3

[stduc]

This thread has prompted me to ask this question.

When should you turn off your PC and other PC related devices in order to optimise both power saving and the life of the device? I am strictly thinking of home equipment here because offices have policies and I don't want to muddy the waters by going there!

I have long come to the conclusion that although a tricky equation, there is a simple 'rule of thumb' and my rule, for what it is worth (and this is what want opinions on) is this.

If I'm going to use my home PC again early the next day I leave it on overnight. I have no power saving enabled as it caused too many issues when I tried enabling either sleep or hibernate. Probably because I have a RAID array. I do turn the monitor off however - even if I decide to watch TV for half an hour. The key phrase here is 'early the next day'. My reasoning is, that every power up shortens component life but so does leaving it on unnecessarily. My policy means that it tends to get left on from Friday night to Sunday evening. Money to Friday it gets powered up when used and turned off at bed time. I turn off the whole power strip after shutting down, so the sound amp and switch also power down.

The printer, scanner, webcam etc are off and unplugged except when needed.

My router is left on 24/7 (a netgear DG834) except during vacations. This is because it is simply too painful if I boot up and forget to turn it on. Also as it has no switch there is simply too much groveling to do to turn it off (it's under the stairs!)

OK - enough of my set up. What do people think? Turn it off? Leave it on? What does a power up cost you PC life and power wise?

 

[jurgen36]

:nelveticus
No supercapacitors are actually very small considering their capacity. They even use a smaller 1 farad capacitors in torches. I took the spply apart and found one 5 farad on the 5 volt line and another 2 farad on the 12 volt line. It is a Sunflower supply 850 watt unit, about 3 inches longer as a standart supply. But fits ok in most towers. The size of the 5 farad supercapacitor is about like a packet of cigarettes. They are avilable in Thailand were I spend the last 8 years. As I said they use 1 farad units in torches, you chake them and a magnet recharges the capacitor. The led torches are quite cheap about 3 bucks. You chake them for a few minutes and have light for half an hout or so. So mdern supercapacitors are not that much bigger as standart capacitors. They come from China. They also use banks of them in delivery vehicles. But I would not know the cost. Look up super capacitors in Google.
Regards
Regards

Jurgen

 

[jurgen36]

Further more, I just did a google and found that the biggest they manufacture at the moment are 2700 farad. Also very small and can be fitted on a pc bord.
Regards


Jurgen

 

[Ed2020]

2700 farad capacitors that will fit on a PCB?!

Ed Metcalfe.

Please do not feed the trolls.....

 

[CiscoGuy33]

I just had to Google it -

http://www.eetimes.com/news/98/991news/ultra.html

UltraCaps rev up hybrid cars, power palmtops

By Ron Wilson
SAN DIEGO -- Farads can now fit in the palm of your hand. That's the message of Maxwell Technologies Energy Products Inc., a new venture here that is commercializing capacitor R&D funded by the Department of Defense. The company is using a proprietary activated-carbon fabric technology to produce capacitors ranging from a 15-farad can with a volume of only 2 milliliters, up to an astounding 2,700-farad cell that's smaller than a quart of milk and weighs only 800 grams..........


E.A. Broda
CCNA, CCDA, CCAI, Network +

 

[jlockley]

These things turn OFF???
Wow.

 

[SkipCox]

These things turn OFF???
Wow."

Yep, they do...read that on a forum somewhere years ago. I was suitably impressed that I had some control over DOS.

When Windows hit the streets, I found out that I didn't have to bother with the button...it's been automatic for 15 years or so.

Skip

http://skipcox.net

 

[wahnula]

Has anyone determined the average cost, per day, of a standard office PC w/ monitor?

I ask all users to logoff at day's end and their monitors all shutoff after 15 minutes, harddrives spin down after 1 hour. Of course server runs 24/7. I'm curious as to the power savings, my key people are in the office for a few minutes in the morning and I KNOW they want their PCs up when they get there, but if there is significant $$$ savings I, as the last one to leave, would gladly shut 'em off.

My home machines run 24/7 except for a separate VPN PC that only runs when needed. I never actually gave this a thought until right now. XLNT topic!

Tony

 

[attrofy]

I was just reading an article on Yahoo about a week or so ago. It was talking about "residual electricity" burning about 10% of an electricty bill. This came in the guise of devices that appear to shut off, but really only dim the LCD's on the front pannels. For home consumables, Dish boxes, cable boxes and some small appliances were the worst - burninig on average 30 watts while on, and about 27 when off.

Anyway, HP did a cost analysis on this very thing. Their big issue was the LCD monitors. This translated into a substantial savings for them. I will try to find the article, it was a good read.

I found the article that HP referenced, but can't find the Yahoo article yet.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/globalcitizenship/environment/productdesign/energyefficiency.html

"Our own experience within HP demonstrates the potential for energy savings from effective power management. HP inspected the settings of 183,000 monitors worldwide and found that almost a third were not set to take advantage of the energy saving features. They were reset to enable energy savings after 20 minutes of inactivity. Virtually no users complained and the change saved 7.8 million kWh of electricity in 2005, equal to more than $600,0002 in energy costs and more than 4,000 tonnes of CO2.'

Hahaaa - found the Yahoo article:

http://biz.yahoo.com/special/allbiz101106_article3.html

 

[wahnula]

Good show attrofy...but forgive my ignorance, what does it come down to, dollars and cents, rounded to a lower and upper limit, to operate a PC in the "average" US city on an "average" day??? I can take these numbers to the bank, or at least the boss, and curry favor.

Those articles discussed the delta between on vs. standby for PCs, but no mention of $$$ saved beyond HP's gigasphere. Yes I could do the math 30 watt x 12 hours at Y KW/h...wait, no I could not. That's why I'm asking...

I'm talking 10 PCs here, not 100,000. What's a ballpark figure to run them in standby vs off for the night? A guess would be appreciated...thank you for your patience...

Tony

 

[attrofy]

LOL - I got thinking about that later after doing some reflecting. Even though interesting info, it doesn't really give you a direct answer. I got thinking about this a bit at home and did some googling. Most of these are personal opinion and estimates, but it should give you a good starting point:

http://www.overclockers.com/articles1364/

"It is quite expensive to run a reasonably high-end PC 24/7. Unfortunately, I rely on the services that my PC provides when I am not in front of it and therefore cannot shut it off while away from keyboard. However, I could shut it off while sleeping, which would save $15.27 / month in the Average Power Consumption state, and $18.32 / month in reasonably loaded state."

http://www.silentpcreview.com/article28-page4.html

Do some google searching and you will get some more opinions - many form Canada or the UK. Of course milage may vary, but it should give you a good starting point to figure out what your KW/h cost is.

 

[wahnula]

Thank you very much! Our power bill gets read at the end of the first week every month, I will initiate a policy of nightly shutdown then and will report back with real world data.

Tony

 

[stduc]

I seem to have started something here. Thanks everyone for contributing.

[navy]attrofy[/navy]
I have to weigh in - I too am a fan of turning things off. Despite the progress made by modern OS's, we are still using a hardware technology that contains of RAM and ROM. The one sure fire way to clear these caches and buffers is a power off. I find things consistently run smoother on PC's that I regulary shut off. The ones that are left on, whenever there are problems, the first step is to always reboot, this resolves about 90% of the issues....

I have only once come across a situation that was not resolved by a re-boot. That involved an old Bernoulli drive and the ISA card demanded a 3 minute power off to re-set! The issue was eventually resolved by a driver upgrade.
The only reason I can think of that would cause a modern PC to be less stable when left on is when connected to the internet and insufficiently protected from malware then turning it off when not in use reduces the time available for malware to attack it. I'm not in favour of allowing automatic updates either.

[navy]attrofy[/navy]
BTW, two minutes is only a long time when you are watching the boot screens - go pee, get a new cup of coffee, watch the birds at the feeder - it goes by much quicker....

Having been caught out many times missing an error at boot up - I like to watch!

I am all for power saving. I am not a fan of virtual power switches. I like off, to mean off! So, as an aside, does anyone know how much power a modern PC is still consuming when it is switched off? I guess it can't be much, just the NIC card and maybe an LED or two on the mobo. But still. So here's some supplementary questions.

[navy]Should you also pull the power cord or switch off at the mains? Is it better to leave it plugged in so the earth is still connected, or pull the power cord rather than just turn off at the mains.[/navy]

I would certainly like my PC to go into low power mode when unattended. But I have yet to get this to work. I always have some issue or other. For instance, network connections don't quite work after coming out of standby. There are other issues - but this post is already long enough. But I have not given up and I hope my next PC will do the following. (N.B. this is a wish list - not to be taken totally seriously)

Any cards at any time not in use will power off.
The CPU will throttle back if it is idle.

After no key presses for a user set interval:

The monitor will power off
The hard drives will spin down
The CPU will throttle back to some small % of full power.
Only enough RAM will remain on to support active programs

There are many reasons I don't turn my PC off if I am going to use it the next day. Amongst them are the fact that in the middle of the night it backs itself up and does a virus scan. That means these jobs are done and on the whole I am not interrupted by them.

Finally:- here is a personal experience of the joys of powering off - NOT.

I recently returned from a two week vacation. During that time my PC had been unplugged. It booted up just fine. After an hour or so's use I re-booted after installing some software & that was it. Dead. It refused to re-boot. I'll skip details of how I fixed it, except to mention a red herring caused by a stuck fan & a video card. The solution was a full re-seat of the CPU.

So I am sure you can see why I am not a fan of turning a PC off every night either. In fact - I don't think there is "A solution" but there is "your solution". i.e one that works for you.

Sorry for such a long post and thanks everyone again - I look forward to reading yet more comments now.

 

[Nelviticus]

does anyone know how much power a modern PC is still consuming when it is switched off?

I guess it depends on your motherboard and your power supply. The mobo will require some minimal power to 'monitor' the soft switches that turn it on - i.e. the button on the case and possibly a power key on your keyboard - and your PSU will have to supply this while remaining in a kind of 'almost off' mode. I suspect that some PSUs will draw more power than others while in this mode.

Nelviticus