Will wear induced by turning computers off in the evening be offset by energy savings?

Solution 1:

I work for a large state government where we recently began implementing power management. According to our calculations based on metering a sample population shutting off PCs during idle periods saves about $35/PC per year for a mainstream business desktop with LCD monitor. Your mileage will vary, so do some testing yourself.

Laptops are generally provide for less savings, CRT monitors and workstation class devices increase savings.

We looked into the issue of hardware failure at great length, and based on research, testing, and a production implementation that's about 6 months old, I can find no evidence supporting the assertion that turning a computer on and off "wears out" anything or causes other hardware related issues. We've observed no statistically significant increase in hardware failure. (If anything, it has gone down slightly due to refresh of older equipment.)

You will find other issues, such as:

• Annoyed end-users
• Older PCs that don't like to resume properly
• Misbehaving applications

These issues don't have magic bullet fixes. You need to communicate with end users, test your applications and test your older hardware.

Solution 2:

First, if this is a "huge office scenario", you will hopefully have warranty contracts that covers most of the lifetime of the machines. In that case, if it breaks, it's the vendors job to repair it and you can just reap in the energy savings.

Beside that: While I would agree that there is a somewhat increased possibility that hardware will die during a power cycle, I consider this to be a problem of (really) old hardware and I can't see how one cycle every working day over a course of three to five years would cause a problem except on very crappy hardware that might die anyway whenever you look at it the wrong way.

One major issue remains, which decides the whole game in my opinion, and this is the harddisk. Desktop drives are not designed to run 24x7 and I personally experienced a significant amount of drive failures of non-raid-type drives used in 24x7 server scenarios.

So, in the end: Turn the machines off and save the energy. There is nothing else to gain.

Solution 3:

Not switching PCs off may cause overheat which decrease hardware lifetime.

Solution 4:

Sorry but I didn't get you where you say "hardware often breaks specifically when turned on." Does turning computers off and on damage them ?

Further, I would suggest having the machines to be put into suspend mode, if it is not possible to switch them off completely, so that at least some power is saved :)