It's a good probability that you're reading this from a computer at your office or home, and chances are that at the end of the day when you leave work or go to bed, that computer will stay on. At the very least your monitor might be set to go to sleep after a few minutes, but your computer's still on and sucking away electricity that will cost you monthly. We highlight some tips on how to quickly and easily shut down and startup your computer to halve your PC's contribution to the electric bill consumption.
We've talked a lot about energy conservation and how much your tech costs you when it shows up on your power bill. Consider if your computer is on 24 hours a day at home, turning the computer off while you're sleeping and at the office can cut 2/3 of the power usage of your computer! Even if you take into account possible lower computing usage loads, an auto-off LCD, or lower power rates in the evening, that's still a good chunk of change. Your computer at work is just as bad of an offender, lonely running antivirus software while you're away. We highlight some easy ways for you to shut down and power up your computer without causing too much of an inconvenience to you (which presumably is why we keep them on in the first place).
Auto Shutdown After 20 Minutes of Inactivity
Set your computer to shut itself down when you're done using it. If 20 minutes isn't enough for you, go ahead and adjust this to a longer time period because in the long run you're still shutting it down for much longer periods of inactivity. You can even enter custom settings, say having your LCD powering off after 10 minutes but the computer staying on for 30.
Auto Power Up In the Morning
Just as you set your alarm clock to wake yourself up in the morning, chances are your computer can do the same. Access your computer's BIOS settings to set an alarm for your computer to automatically turn itself on when you wake. If your computer doesn't inherently support this feature there's software out there that you can purchase to do the same task. Do this for your home when you normally wake up, your office when you arrive, and your home again when you return from a hard day's work.
Tweaking a few settings on your computer will ensure your computer's always on and ready when you need it, yet doesn't needlessly waste electricity when you don't.
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Comments (11)
The downside to this is that computers (desktops) are more efficient when left on. The reasoning behind this is that; when left on the putty like material that is spread over processors stays in a more liquid form, allowing the heat to distribute better. Another reason to leave the computer on is because hard drives are more efficient when constantly running, the shut down and start up process are where they start to break down. I would imagine in the end saving on the electric bill will add up to more than the cost of a new computer but it is something to take into consideration.
Mac OS has the auto-on/off features built into the System Preferences in the Energy Saver settings, so there's no need to fiddle with BIOS.
And really, the savings from this should be marginal with modern computers and may not be worth any hassle involved. Both Windows 7 and Mac OS 10.6 do an excellent job of conserving power (Apple even mentions that they reduce power to the processor between keystrokes), and their idle power consumption is on the order of 5-10% what their typical consumption is during use. The monitor is by far the single biggest energy drain, so if you already have that set to power cycle after a period of inactivity, it'll save you far more than shutting down your computer will save, though every little bit does help, I suppose.
That said, if you're still using an old Windows XP tower desktop, then the savings could be substantial, since XP's energy conservation efforts weren't fully-fledged, and those towers were never really designed with low power in mind.
Of course, a nice new feature of Mac OS 10.7 (coming next month) is that it will restore all of your windows and applications exactly how they were when you closed them or shut down, so that may make shutting down less of a hassle. You'll no longer need to worry about saving and closing everything down at the end of the day, and can instead leave anything you were looking at or working on up and running. It'll be exactly as you left it when you see it again later.
Great points guys, these are excellent points and counterpoints.
@aichon
Thanks for the Mac tips as well, I'm a bit lost in the Mac world, being a PC user. :)
I read an article from last July that said 74% of workplaces are still using Windows XP, so shutting down your computer at work may be worth it.
@kevin331
How long would it take for the putty to heat back up into its most efficient level of performance?
Lots of places say that the average lifespan of a HDD is 5 years, but of course they may just be trying to scare you into buying new/more. If you're trying to stretch the life of your HDD, then yeah constantly parking the head and powering on and off will put some additional wear and tear on the unit. 5 years sounds awfully short for a storage medium, but digital media is fragile, and likely you're replacing your computer more often than 5 years anyway, and transferring your content to a new computer and (probably much bigger) hard drive.
The putty is Heat Sink Compound which provides a thermal bridge between the CPU chip and the metal heatsink pressing against it.
It has a specified thermal gradient regardless of temperature of the chipset. It normally does not change viscosity with temperature. As long as there was sufficient when installed, with no voids or gaps, it would always work as intended.
Blowing dust off the cooling fins is a good idea.
@kevin331
I'm calling bs on the whole Thermal Paste ("putty") being more efficient when it's warm. While thermal paste usually takes a couple of days to stabilize from initial application the variance thermal performance variance is typically only a few degrees.
@Jason Yang - Thermal paste would beat back up to "efficient level" within minutes of starting your computer.
This, all thermal compound hardens. Think of it as grout designed to help shunt heat.
Modern pc's are insanely energy efficient compared to their older brothers. My pc and laptop with both monitors, while sleeping, uses less power than my cable box does when turned off. If you want to turn them off then by all means but unless your electricity is very expensive or you have a house full of computers it isn't much in the was of savings.
@kamikaze - Agreed that sleeping computers nowadays are pretty efficient. Many of us don't even put our computers to sleep though, which if we did would be much more energy efficient than nothing. And again agreed that turning off won't do *that much more than sleep, but moreso discussing the general idea of energy efficient modes of off (sleep or off or whatever).
My PC gets shut down or hibernated every night when I take it off my desk. It just doesn't get the option to suck juice from the charger unless I'm using it.
My mac spends most of it's time 'asleep' unless I'm tapping keys. I wish my work machine woke up this cleanly.
There is no software that can "turn on" computer that has been "turned off" unless the hardware has been designed for it. There is lot of software that can "turn on" machines that are sleeping, better known as low power mode.
Heat and cooling cycles will reduce the life of components but how much it is reduced and much savings you get depends on each component.
I always let my computer go into suspend power mode, I don't turn it off.
You should not turn off your computer if you intend to use it in the next 8-12 hours. Every time you turn it off the system cools, components contract. When you turn it back on the components then heat up and expand. Every time they go through this cycle it causes stress on the components and brings them one step closer to failure.
If you're going away a few days or just rarely use that PC, sure turn it off. But if you use it every morning and before bed then you're probably better off leaving it running. Either way you're energy savings will be negligible.