No, I'm not talking about sex and your sexual desires here, but what I am talking about is: Should you leave your PC turned on or turned off?

Let me clarify what I mean. Let's say that I have been playing my PC games for 2 hours and decide to take a break but I also know that I will resume play in about an hour or so (2 at most), is it best to simply leave the PC running or should I turn it off? Clearly I'm not talking about power usage here because it would be cheaper to turn it off, but from a technical viewpoint what is best for the PC in terms of wear and tear of the parts inside the PC, to leave it running or turn it off? Does the upstart process take a greater toll on the PC than simply leave it running?


So what are your recommendations on this and what do you guys do?

Dammit

...

Right, no idea. I have honestly nevet conducted research into hardware deep enough to figure out boot costs on it, and can't even google shit now. What I do know is that I turn off my computer when I go and do something quite simply because I live in dusty environment and the less my fans run and get clogged, the better. Indeally, I try to just put it to sleep as opposed to completely turning it off - most games I've tried it with are actually quite capable of restoring from sleep as well, so I don't even need to re-launch them.

I honestly don't know, but I always ask myself how smart are computers cooling systems today. Do they run for a while before they shut down to cool down to reach a safer temeperature? I'm mostly working on a notebook and after heavy load I always keep the system running before shutdown, just to let the fans cool down the system and to be safe. On the other hand, in worst case the system automatically shut down if it's get too hot.

On a mac most people never shut down, they just send the system into sleep mode. I hear more and more people do that also on windows systems without any problems. Pesonally I don't would just down the system for just 1-2hour, it's very likely I need to check something and need the system in that time - except I would leave the house.

i never shut my pc down unless i plan to upgrade something
at most i just reboot

my current pc has never been off for longer then two hours in 2 years

You monster!

Up to you. If you don't have some processes running on your PC while you're away, I see no reason to leave it on.
So if you're not sure what's best, just have your PC do something so you had an excuse not to turn it off. :-) ^This as well.

Most updates for Windows require you to reboot at the very least. :P
I dunno about the situation with Mac's though.

same thing
mac os X wants you to reboot as well

ive got an intel imac with snow leopard around

I put it to sleep. No idea what is best long term.

I have no idea what is best, but personally I shut down my computer during the night when I go to sleep. I don't turn if off if I am just away for a few hours but I see no reason to leave it on all night.

I always turn my calculation-servant off when I do something else. The only exceptions are when I download a large file or when I feel so tired at day that I go to bed because then I use my PC as music-box. It calms me down to listen to nice music.

Hence the "at the very least" part.

This

Almost never shut it down. I think in the six years since i bought my computer it hasn't been turned off for more than a week :P Current uptime is 12 days. It just goes to sleep after an hour and the energy saving is pretty high (on Macs at least, don't know about those huge power units in some high end PCs) my second display goes to sleep after 5 minutes so that is fine too...