PC Left On for 5 Years Non-Stop: User Shares Results
Original French Article:
Can leaving your PC on 24/7 actually be beneficial? One gamer decided to test this theory by leaving their computer on for five straight years. Here’s what they found.
For most PC users, there’s no real point in keeping their computer running 24/7 for weeks on end. But what if they decided to do so… for 5 years? One Reddit user decided to conduct this experiment. They equipped themselves with two machines: one was turned off every night, and the other stayed on continuously for 5 years in a row.
“It makes no difference”
The Redditor shared their experiment’s conclusions on Reddit. And their conclusion is clear-cut: “There is no difference, except that one costs me more than the other,” they explain, referring to the power consumption of the constantly running PC. And even on this point, they downplay the situation: “even the additional electricity cost of a PC on standby compared to a PC turned off is negligible. We’re talking about 4 cents a month,” they estimate.
However, as one might imagine, this person faced a lot of criticism, as not everyone agrees with them. “Situations such as memory leaks can slowly saturate RAM, and the only way to free it up is to restart the RAM,” explains another Redditor. “Dead threads can stay there consuming system resources while the parent program has ‘forgotten’ everything about that thread.”
Others question the veracity of his claims, since it would mean that the computer would not have been updated in 5 years: indeed, Windows requires, even under Windows 11, a restart for some major upgrades. It is possible to disable updates, but this is unwise.
“Once a week is enough”
In the face of criticism, the Redditor who initiated the experiment clarified their remarks. “You can turn off your computer from time to time, once a week is good, otherwise it doesn’t matter,” they summarize.
In fact, it is less necessary than before to turn off a PC every day, especially since SSDs have replaced hard drives. Windows is also optimized to minimize the risk of slowdowns over time. However, one can still question the point of leaving a computer running all the time, especially when it is not in use. However, it is a choice that is left to everyone, as evidenced by the many messages posted on this topic on Reddit.