Flipping powerswitch bad or good?

[mobeel]

Hi, to save energy, my father keeps on turning the back outlet switch off from my newly built pc.
I heard that it does save energy, but it could also ruin the computer.

Recently, my computer has been stuck on the motherboard screen while booting.
Also, when my computer turns on, it turns back off, then back on a couple of times then off, and the it finally boots. (all the LEDs/ fan turn off and also my whole computer.

is turning off the powerswitch from the back causing this problem?
if not, what could it be?

thanks and sorry english is not my first language.

 

[the great randini]

is that how he shuts the pc off or when its already shut down he flips the switch?

if its already shut down it should be fine. but if you take a look at this thread on tom's you will see the savings are very minor >$10 per year.

 

[bigbasedrum]

I suspect that turning the switch off is causing the issues. The reason for this is when you turn the switch off, the pc has to do a "cold" boot. Some motherboards have issues with this sometimes. If it will do any actual damage, I'm not sure.

 

[mobeel]

is that how he shuts the pc off or when its already shut down he flips the switch?

if its already shut down it should be fine. but if you take a look at this thread on tom's you will see the savings are very minor >$10 per year.

when it is shut off, he flips the back switch.
but ever since he's been doing that, my computer got those problems

 

[daswilhelm]

i dont think its necessarily a problem. i have seen certain combinations of psu's and mb's, that seem to cold boot like that. i beleive the bios is detecting items, and then rebooting itself for a clean boot. i wouldnt worry about it.

 

[pauls3743]

As long as the computer has been through a succesful shutdown it's not a problem.

It's only becomes a problem if the plug is pulled while the computer is still running because it can lead to file corruption e.g. the computer starts writing to a file, the power is pulled, the rest of the file is left unwritten, if it's a driver that the computer needs then it's only partly available when the computer boots up again, hence it crashes because it can't find the rest of the file it needs to run.

 

[bas94041]

I experienced seriously flaky boot issues like you describe on a pc with a Gigabyte motherboard. Flaky as hell when I switched off power at a power strip it consistently did not boot and hung as you describe.
What your father is doing should not be a problem but an unstable part ie. lousy gigabyte motherboard may in fact fail. Your experience is proof of this.

 

[daswilhelm]

happend to me with gigabyte and asus so i wouldnt go around bad mouthing gigabyte for no reason. prob has more to do with the power supply anyway.

 

[bas94041]

happend to me with gigabyte and asus so i wouldnt go around bad mouthing gigabyte for no reason. prob has more to do with the power supply anyway.

Same system components with Asus MB never failed in same manner. Not once. And I power off system and peripherals every night.
Gigabyte support (lack thereof) left a very sour taste that I have never forgiven. So yeah, I'm guilty of bad mouthing crappy company.

 

[daswilhelm]

so go rip their support. same thing happens to machines i have with asus boards.

what brand of power supply were you using when you had the issue.

 

[bas94041]

Dude, it's a long and largely irrelevant story.
The issue I had was NOT related to a Power Supply. I tried 3 different power supplies. It was the Gigabyte motherboard. Unstable POS.
I have built dozens of PC's. Given a choice I will never to use Gigabyte again.

The point of my reply is that, yes, you should be able to power off a PC at the supply but in reality some poorly designed component may just flake out. Simply put, don't do it if breaks something.

 

[daswilhelm]

its relevant to me, sounds like your problem is different than the one described originally. ive built thousands of pc's, but what does that matter?

just trying to gather information...

 

[raytseng]

when it is shut off, he flips the back switch.
but ever since he's been doing that, my computer got those problems

Let me summarize my thoughts:

There is a chance it is causing problems, and I think people will agree that that practice has no benefit. People are arguing just over if it is a possible cause of problems or not just to win a discussion on the internet.

Nobody would give the advice to shutdown the computer in that manner, there is nothing good to that practice. Given the choice, it would be better to shut the computer down properly. so please ignore those side discussions.


If he is still doing it, and your dad needs a physical button to press, you can adjust to have the front power buttons do a shutdown or sleep in windows. At least that will be gentler.