Science Journal

Do Turning off Computer Frequently reduces its lifespan?

When I was a first-year college student, my IT teacher narrated about his experience working as a call center agent before. He told us that they never shut their PC off because shutting it down frequently can reduce its lifespan. Since he was a teacher, we believed everything what he said without question. Though I had a question which is "do PC overheat when always turned on?" but that question came after our dismissal. But I never bothered to know the answer because I am not interested and my focus on that time is finding ways to catch my crush's attention. But now when I started falling in love with science and passionately learn new things every day, skepticism and curiosity enhanced and oftentimes messes up my mind by giving an odd questions like why poop twirls and why it floats. But thanks to Google, I could ward off those disturbing questions clouding my attention on something I am supposed to focus on. So, the answer of the question above is ... it depends.

Now, since you know the short answer, you may stop reading this piece of shit and you're free to read other things but for those people who want to dig deeper and have the burning desire to learn how and why. Then keep on reading.

Computer's internal components are made of materials that won't last forever. It's not of made of honey that could last for a hundred years but it is made of metals, steels and other chemical chunks that decays over time. Well it does contains some plastic but plastics shows no significance to make computers functional. Anyway the average lifespan of computer is 3 to 5 years and there are various factors that affect its lifespan. Computer's internal electronic parts are sensitive to a variety of condition such as environmental heat. Well, heat is really the electronic device's greatest enemy. Many people including me are fond of putting their laptop on their bed because it feels nice and comfortable, but it turns out that the soft surfaces trap the heat leading the computer to overheat. Consequently, slowing its computational performance. Playing games could be a heavy factor for wearing out the hardware because it takes a huge amount of energy to run that game application. Banging your laptop while running on walls or something hard (not your dick) too contributes in decreasing its lifespan. If your computer has a fan unlike me, and not cleaned thoroughly or maintained properly, dust could clog up the vents and prevent the air from flowing freely to cool the vital components.

So those are some factors that reduce the computer's life but do turning off the computer really decreases its lifespan? First, we need to know what is happening when computers are shut down or doze off.

Putting your computer to sleep is designed to reduce the power consumption while it is still turned on but have a little power to keep the applications in a standby mode. The hard drive and optical drives slow down; Processors run with a reduced clock rate; RAM is powered down to a lower activity state; And if you tap your mouse or keyboard, it instantly resumes everything because RAM is super fast. This kind of method of letting your computer sleep is good if you use it every day and does not require to wait for a few minutes that feel likes an hour to reboot or turn it on. Which explains the practice of my teacher of not turning off his PC. Plus, the advantage of applying this method is the computer can run important maintenance programs in the background such as virus scans, disk cleanup, and system backups. Shutting it off interrupt these necessary programs leading the computer susceptible to malware.

Speaking of shutting down, when the user clicked the red circular middle-finger button, all opened programs received a notification from their mother, Operating System (Windows, Linux, Mac) to stop reading and writing files before turning off the lights, jk, before shutdown occurs. Then shutdown signals sent to the remaining devices and drivers, slowly weakening the power. But if you forced to shut it down by holding the power button or plug it out intentionally; or caused by a sudden trip of an oblivious passerby; or suddenly power spikes and surges, there is a high chance of acquiring file corruption, data loss, and damage in the hard drive. But the good thing about shutting it off is that the minor systems like bugs (not the insect, it's a software flaw), leaked memory and unused network connections are cleaned out. And Windows runs its update in the background and some of it requires a reboot. Not shutting the computer off for once may induce a decrease in performance and load times.

But neither of them is the best method to apply because if you constantly play the computer 23/7 weekly, hitting it, or working in an environment hotter than a desert or download malicious files, your computer won't survive long enough. Perhaps die before its expected lifespan. So, It's how you manage that determines the length of its life.

Furthermore, if you want to lengthen the life of your beloved computer I have a few tips that I would like share: Mitigate environmental stress factors. Avoid placing your computer in a hot place but of course, don't put ice on your computer if it's overheating. Don't be dumb. Pour water on it. JK. Anyway, Use UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply ) to keep voltage surges at bay and level constant. Or the best viable solution I found in the internet world is never turning it on. Which makes sense because not using the computer makes its components not wear out thus lengthening its life. Your welcome.