JVTech News This gamer left his PC on for 5 years night and day without turning it off once, he finally explains the result of his experiment
Published on 06/16/2024 at 3:15 p.m.
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Is there really any point in regularly shutting down your PC? One player decided to make up his own mind on the matter, by leaving his computer on constantly for 5 years. Here are his conclusions.
For the vast majority of PC users, there’s no real point in leaving a computer running 24 hours a day for weeks on end. But what if they decided to do it… During 5 years ? A Reddit user decided to give it a try. For this, he equipped himself with two machines: one of them was turned off every evening, and the other remained on continuously for 5 years in a row.
” It does not matter “
The Internet user gave the conclusions of his experiment on Reddit. And his conclusion is clear: “There is no difference except that one costs me more than the other”he explains, alluding to the power consumption of the PC which is constantly on. And even on this point, he puts the situation into perspective: “Even the additional electricity cost of a sleeping PC compared to a powered-off PC is negligible. We are on 4 cents per month”he believes.
However, as one can imagine, this person faced a lot of criticismbecause not everyone agrees with him. “Situations like memory leaks can slowly saturate the RAM, and the only way to free it is to restart the RAM”explains another Internet user. “Dead threads can sit there consuming system resources while the parent program has “forgotten” everything about that thread. »
Others question the veracity of his words, since this would mean that the computer has not been updated for 5 years : in fact, Windows requires, even under Windows 11, a restart for certain major upgrades. It is possible to disable updates, but this is unwise.
“Once a week is enough”
Faced with criticism, the Internet user at the origin of the experience clarified his comments. “You can turn off your computer from time to time, once a week is fine, otherwise it doesn’t matter.”he summarizes.
In fact, it is less necessary than before to turn off a PC every day, especially since SSDs have replaced platter hard drives. Windows is also optimized to limit the risk of slowdown over time. However, we can still question the benefit of leaving a computer running all the time, especially when it is not in use. It is however a choice that is left to everyoneas proven by the numerous messages published on this subject on Reddit.
