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Tom's Hardware > Forum > CPU & Components > CPUs > What's the longest you had your high-end PC turned on?

What's the longest you had your high-end PC turned on?

Forum CPU & Components : CPUs What's the longest you had your high-end PC turned on?

Enermax

Just curious.

I know PC's before can actually fry when leaving them on for long periods of time but that isn't necessarily true anymore today right?

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Message edited by redness on 12-21-2011 at 11:15:34 AM

Reply to redness

My current PC to encode videos for almost 72 hours straight; 100% load.

If you don't want to turn off your computer, then you don't have to. The CPU and GPU automatically down clocks themselves when there is little to no load.

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I rarely shut down my PC. Currently it's running 11:21:00:52, so close to twelve days. I think my "record" is over a month.

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Reply to FinneousPJ

jaguarskx wrote :

After your 72 hour encode, there wasn't any noticeable performance defects or anything?

FinneousPJ wrote :

I rarely shut down my PC. Currently it's running 11:21:00:52, so close to twelve days. I think my "record" is over a month.

You don't worry about your unit frying or anything?

Message quoted 2 times

Reply to redness

Leaving a PC on all the time is fine as long as they are not overheating (which if there built right they won't). It used to be more the case that turning on and off damaged components more (and still could be but its a long time since I have heard it said).

Reply to simon12

Left mine on about 3 days straight running 3DMark 11 as a stability test (I was away for the weekend/long weekend, parents made sure nothing went wrong).

Worked fine. A lot of stress but hey, computers components are designed to go through stress.

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Reply to joytech22

3 days rendering a 3d animation. If you have quality components, the only time you will see decreases in performance is in a few years.

------------------------------ Nap time!-amdfangirl
Reply to amuffin

17day 19hours and 31 mins as of posting this.

gaming, benchmarking, video editing, web design and hosting a few game servers.

not been turned off and wont be till it needs a reboot for an update or something like that.

Reply to Spoony

lets consider servers for a second. Granted they don't usually run as fast as some desktops or have massive GPU's, but they are often stuck in tiny hot spaces with MANY other servers in tight quarters. Then there are the super computers with thousands of HOT GPU'S running straight for days or weeks at a time crunching numbers for complex formula's and such. Chances are a home PC has "a good life".

Are you noticing a problem with your computer? I have had instances where a side bar gadget in windows 7 was causing memory leaks and slowing my machine down after being on a while. The gadget was for the weather network...

Reply to ru_1980

I have left mine running for months, never any problem except cooling fans.

Solid state parts can be left in a "power on" mode for literally tens of years before any significant degradation may occur.

Mechanical parts, on the other hand, like hard drives and fans, which have moving parts relying on bushings and bearings, have a definite lifespan that correlates directly to hours in use. If you leave your PC on all the time, these are the parts, especially fans, that commonly can, and do fail in a time period ranging in months instead of decades.

I nearly never shut my PC down. Maybe once a month I restart it for update purposes.

------------------------------ The voice of REASON
Do NOT feed the TROLLS!
Always a DEMON!
Reply to 4745454b

I guess if we count my home security system (which is basically a computer, well the inside of the security box looks like one) I would say like 1 year (Since last power failure).

But we aren't going to count that because it's not high end. LOL

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Reply to joytech22

There is almost no problem leaving PC on, my is on from time i wake up to when i go sleep. I just use sleep mode on win 7, it wakes up in second.

The problem of not turning PC off that components what will probably fail sooner are the fans. Also PC will suck in lots of dust if its on 24/7 and if you don't clean it every few months you can get screwed.

I seen PC's and Servers so dusty they fried themselves

Reply to duxducis

I generally leave mine on all the time. I think the longest uptime I have noticed so far is 37 days.

That's an i7-950 at 4.3Ghz with SLI GTX460's which are set to performance mode so they do not down clock when idle.

Reply to coroder

redness wrote :

You don't worry about your unit frying or anything?

Nope, I don't. It's usually just idling or downloading stuff.

Reply to FinneousPJ

redness wrote :

Just curious.

I know PC's before can actually fry when leaving them on for long periods of time but that isn't necessarily true anymore today right?

You do understand that servers can be up for years at a time? I have seen and administered numerous of them. They don't however run Windows. Those normally get rebooted at least once a quarter for updates.

Now a loaded high end desktop I have had running at 100% for months doing Seti and Milkyway. The only time they get shut down is once every 3 months to get the dust bunnies cleaned out. Funny thing, the more air you pass through your case to keep it cool the more dust it collects. It does work great as an air filter though as long as you clean out the dust outside the house.

Reply to ahnilated

So long, I seldom bother to check.

I don't feel an obligation to shut down for anything more than changing hardware, though I do from time-to-time, primarily for manual updates. I do switch-off monitors.

If you are not 'sleeping' at 5w or so, with HDDs and fans spun down, you aren't doing it right. You should be able to set your power button to wake your rig, and/or you can enable a wake for a USB kb/m, or/and you may 'Wake On LAN' and/or with the 'PME' function (power management event).

There are few motherboards these days from all OEMs that don't have exceptional low-power modes. My router, switches and modem pull more 'juice' than 4-5 computers at 'Sleep'.

Reply to Wisecracker

remember running it at 100% load at stock is just whats its meant to do, its not like a car engine. Providing you can get rid of heat there is no issue, you'll know if you are getting rid of enough heat as temps will stabilise.

Reply to 13thmonkey

It's actually wise to avoid turning your pc on/off too much. The temperature of everything inside your pc changes from when it's on to off, and that is what can cause parts to slowly degrade over time, numerous temp changes.

Reply to holdingholder

I only shut down/reboot my machine, when too many programs have hogged memory, even though they're closed.

Poor programming often means that my computer is using 3Gb memory just running Windows, instead of the 780Mb it uses from cold boot.

When my gaming performance drops, I restart the thing. Longest period without shutdown or reboot on my current machine is around 8 days.

When Burning Crusade came out for WOW, I know a guy except for a few minutes to go to the bathroom or get some food he would stay in game for almost 98 hours straight to level up. The only problem is once he hit level 70 he logged up to sleep and his account got hacked and they deleted his character. By the time that Blizzard was able to restore his character most of the rest of us has gotten up to level 70. That was on a new Intel® Core™ 2 Quad based system so as long as you have a cool running system shouldn't be a problem.

Christian Wood
Intel Enthusiast Team

Reply to IntelEnthusiast

My old PC - online for 4 and a half years
My new one - till now since july

Other than the occasional restart to update windows or some other programs, I don't turn off my PC.

I think I had around 76 days online on my old PC once, if we're comparing event viewer statistics.

Reply to sephirothmk

i always shutdown my home PC if not used, maybe the longest uptime is +-6 hours during my WoW crazy time

Reply to machvelocy

redness wrote :

Just curious.

I know PC's before can actually fry when leaving them on for long periods of time but that isn't necessarily true anymore today right?

I have an old CAD box that now does duty as a file server....except for replacement of HD's after failure, and a CPU upgrade, it's been running 24/7 since 1999....and it's running NT4

And actually the opposite is true ..... electronic components, like light bulbs life is is for the most part limited by on-off cycles rather than run time. Reason being thermal cycling is what kill all electronic components. The continued thermal expansion and contraction can fatigue solder joints for example over time.

------------------------------ If a man speaks in the forest and no woman hears him, is he still wrong ?
Reply to JackNaylorPE

I run folding@home on all 4 cores of Q9650 and both gtx470s. I left the system running at 100% load for a week when I went away. I used the afterburner app to keep track of the GPUs to make sure they were staying at normal temps. Normal for my system at 100% is all 4 cores at 65 and both gtx470s at 90.

Ideally if the computer is assembled correctly and you have decent heatsinks and fans it should be able to run forever.

Reply to bucknutty

redness wrote :

After your 72 hour encode, there wasn't any noticeable performance defects or anything?

No performance issues at all. My Q9450 is overclocked to 3.0GHz and I have a Tuniq Tower heatsink (huge and around 1lbs. and 12oz.). The highest core temp was 59C or 60C.