Lesson Learnt

[WillH]

At home I use a tower PC, have done for about 25 years. I rarely switch it off and then only for an immediate restart or for de-fluffing, so no more than an hour or so. Even when we are away in the van for a few weeks the PC is left on at home.

We were going away recently for a few days and I arranged for an electrician to fit a new Consumer Unit in the house along with inspection and testing of all circuits. Before leaving I shut down the PC.

It died.

Diagnosis was 'Thermal Shock', it was so used to being on and running that when switched off and allowed to cool right down it packed up. Required a new motherboard and processor, fortunately not a huge cost. Memory, hard drive and other peripherals were fine.

Having said that it was probably six or seven years old, and running on Windows 8. I now have a clean machine running on Windows 10. But, lesson learnt, I shall now be shutting down each night and re-booting in the morning.

 

[Podney]

I’m like that if I go out in the cold without me flat cap on.

 

[icantremember]

Are you sure it wasn't just a failure of the CMOS battery?

 

[WillH]

Not the battery, the processor was failing to initialise. Couldn't get a decent new CPU to fit the old board so fitted a new board.

 

[DaveandJen]

A small reduction in your electric bill will hopefully follow. I’m much the same running my desktop all day but I do turn it off when I go to bed and fire it up again for the news in the morning.

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[Vanman]

Strange logic to my mind. It lived well for several years and died when it was turned off. Now you want to turn it off every night and give it the chance to die every day ...

In my experience all electrical items are at most risk when powering up.