Just out of curiosity, how frequently do you turn off your computer? I've noticed there are several "schools of thought", if you will:
Well, that is surprising! I was under the impression that a lot more people would leave it running for a lot longer than that.
Thank you all!
Other. I shut it down at end of each session, usually an evening. Though recently was trying to use 4g in morning. Started wonderfully then went south after a couple of hours. Router sent back to seller and am moving to Fiber in April.
A more accurate response for me would be I shut down several times a week but not necessarily every day.
Electricity is expensive in Denmark, so to save money I shut down my computer often. Sure I could put it to sleep instead, but I think it's a habit thing.
Mainly because I'm on a notebook and it eats battery on suspend. If I want to have battery available, much better to shut down completely.
Whats my computer uptime so far?
I did some research on how to maximize longevity. Believe it or not, but depending on your temperature extremes, turning your computer off and on all the time, causes the computer to go through cold and hot cycles, which wears them out faster.
Its actually better for a computer to maintain a constant warm temperature, and not to put it through shock loads of hot/cold/hot/cold. Since laptops use far less power then desktops, power usage left on, running stock CPU/GPU speeds is not a big deal.
When I was still using a desktop computer, when the room temperature was in the 40's/50's due to lack of heat, to prioritize high priority rooms to receive heat while sleeping, after I got up and turned the computer on, it wasn't able to boot!
I had to leave the computer on for at least 10 to 30 minutes, then reboot it, till the computer actually booted, and the fans sounded like the bearings going out. Thats how I learned to leave a computer on at all times. I just make sure laptop runs at idle stock or energy saving underclock mode, and a screensaver for the monitor too.
When I did that with my old computer from 2012, the Acer notebook, I had no problems with longevity, its over 10 years old now, and a family member uses the computer now. I am using the same SOP with my new computer, an MSI GE-76 Raider from 2021, no issues!
That seems reasonable, never thought of it. Does this affect some components more than others? I'd assume that battery on a laptop is one of the components most affected by temperature shifts over time, so desktop computers wouldn't have the same problems.
It was the desktop that suffered the most. The reality is, circuit boards, chips, cpu's, gpu's, RAM, all have a temperature range they are designed to operate at.
And yes, batteries suffer from temp extremes too, lots of science testing to prove that as well indeed.
CPU's tend to be temp picky, as do storage drives as well. Another part of the story is thermal compound breakdown. What makes thermal compound dry out faster, is hot/cold/hot/cold cycles.
Also keep in mind, server machines are not just kept running 24/7 for being able to use on the network, they are also kept running for reliability reasons too.
And yep, as mentioned, computer cooling fans hate trying to start up in 40F temperatures, what a racket of buzzing noise they make. I think hydro fluid dynamic bearing fans are better, but even still, if the fluid is too cold, they will vibrate.
That's really interesting... I now wonder if some of the seemingly random glitches that sometimes happen may be due to this.
At some point I do plan on having my own little home server. One reason I was hesitant to keep it on all day is also because of electricity, but this may actually be a good reason to overlook that 
Of course I'd try to go for ARM computers that are more energy efficient anyway.
I assume that is Fahrenheit not Centigrade 
I chose the shutdown option cause that's what applies to my Zorin/Linux machines.
My Macs, on the other hand, are a different story. 
I think my longest streak was over 6 months (with sleep in between, but sleeps don't count as full shutdowns, so uptime will show only the time between complete restarts.)
I'm traveling right now, and I had a macOS security update installed a week ago. But the counter is up!
That's probably the longest I've ever heard of someone not shutting down their computer. Good job! 
Haha yup! And to top it all, it was a 12-inch MacBook with an i5 processor. (The one hole Mac. ) I wish it returned with an M chip. Would be really cool.
A misinterpretation of the thread title:
"Usually I get up at 7.30. Staying up is a different ball game!" 
3 posts were split to a new topic: Tales of self-hosting
