On my last PC i had a separate 12V brick psu for the fans and pumps. You lose the control over the fans, unless you use LNA adapters, but you can shut down or sleep the PC without shutting down the loop. Saves some power at least, and when i do shut down the loop, i can set it up and running before the PC is switched on, and make sure its all flowing properly and no leaks. Probably be carrying it over to the new one. I dont trust the Motherboard/Bios to take care of all the fans, and pump. Will be connecting it to a fan controller this time though, 100% fan 24/7 is loud. Good for cooling, but loud.
2014, was a WD Red that was just out of warranty, this specific 2TB sku had 2 versions, one with 4 platters and one with 3, the one with 4 platters had a relatively high history of failures.
Inrush current happens occurs for only a few milliseconds, besides this isn't 1998. Components are built to handle/reduce inrush current effects. No way a single power on a day is going to hurt components more than leaving them on forever. Although turning on/off many times may cause some detrimental effects but that's not realistic. I prefer to power on my PC when needed.
Having the same hardware for 7 years now ( only upgraded the GPU for performance reasos ), I shut it off. Simply because that's my lifestyle. Do't use it? Shut it down. Electricity is expensive as it is, here in Belgium. Nearly everything has a powerbrick with a switch. I'm even annoyed by the fact that my 3930k consumes as much energy as it does. Being a bit of a hypocrit because I do use a 1080Ti and a G-sync screen. But eh, that's only when I use 3D progs.
I had quite an elaborate setup before, involving multiple systems and external case configurations. I gradually scaled things down, and my current workstation system is the only one that still has a custom loop (my gaming PC is entirely air-cooled). This will probably be the last water-cooled system I build, as I see little reason to water-cool anymore - modern-day air-coolers do just as well and isn't as much of a hassle (trying to sell a GPU with a water block is tough, and used pumps and radiators aren't popular - at least where I've looked). The extra cost and maintenance also isn't worth the geek factor and I rarely overclock anymore (I run my PCs 24/7 and need them to be absolutely stable).
Off when not used, off at night. A 1000Watt PSU adds up when left on, dies fast when on. I unplug my power brick to my display, to keep it younger.
Obviously off when I'm not using it due to the following reasons: 1. Excess power usage, electricity ain't cheap 2. Excess dust buildup, would have to clean filters way more often 3. Pointlessness, I don't leave the TV on all day, or the car, or the dishwasher
My plex server runs 24/7/365 (4790k, 30tb, 16gb, ) But i am old school and schedule a restart once a week. My gaming pc i shutdown manually all the time, but if i forget it goes to sleep after an hour. I get worried (for nothing) if i have to use a pc for anything than browsing or videos and it have not been rebooted. I could let it run, but i need the fresh feeling of a newly restarted os. (And i reinstall the os twice a year even if it is not needed. For some reason i get calm when reisntalling fresh). I live in a country where the only thing that is cheap, is electric power. (Hydro and wind. You get a cookie if you guess witch one, no nuclear or coal plants).
I don't see a reason to not turn the PC off. Sure there may be arguments for either side regarding longevity; but you'd last more than a few hardware generations and be able to upgrade way... way before anything remotely is about to happen. If you eliminate the longevity argument, everything would be against leaving it on.
I've had a 4770K setup for over 6 years now and it's on most of the time. I don't turn it off but only put it to sleep when I am heading out or going to sleep myself (though for whatever reason something's almost always waking it up). Everything still seems to be fine (as matter of fact I am passing the PC on to my parents as they're still on my ancient +10 year old i7 920 PC). The only thing that is starting to have some issues was the original HDD that I built the 4770K system with. With my new Ryzen build I've been turning it off though since I figured it does boot up pretty quick. My understanding with putting PC to sleep is that the current state is being stored in the ram so everything is as is when it wakes up; does that hurt the longevity of the memory at all?
Pros and cons to both approaches. Been a long time since i saw that it made much of a difference on the life of the parts one way or the other.
Putting your computer to sleep does not actually clear the memory only by resting or shuting it down. Allocated memory was wrriten to disk so no wonder your hard drive failed. Pc also runs faster on boot so after 6 years i imagine it was running like crap.
Haha I do actually turn it off time to time. I always thought putting it to sleep simply stores everything onto the ram so when you wake it up it goes back to exactly the state it was in haha. But yea the PC (and HDD for that matters) did really well considering the age and usage. Like the HDD itself is still alive just some bad sectors I think; only found out as I was transferring files to new PC that few files were corrupted lol.
Next time it wakes on its own open a command prompt or Powershell (Admin) and type in "powercfg /lastwake" (without the quotes). It should then tell you what it was that woke it up.
I agree. Never had a problem here. With all peripherals shut down as well, i am saving money on my power bill.
