No pre-built gaming pc for you

[Lyssa Greymoon]

19 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

See, this is what I don’t get because you can turn sleep/idle modes OFF. It’s like, the first thing I do whenever I buy a new upgrade. So I don’t understand the inability to ship to those states.

Probably because most people won't bother to change the default power settings. Why would they?

[Ceka Cianci]

I just restart mine when I go to get in the shower at night before work.. Mainly because I like that the clock is easy to see.. hehehe

[Arduenn Schwartzman]

Steve Burke just released another commentary video, not just calling these headlines clickbait, but destructive, generally unproductive headlines.

 

[MoiraKathleen]

8 hours ago, Chris Nova said:

These regulations make zero sense. If that many people aren't paying attention or dont care to how their computers sleep, then just make it a standard all PCs come with those options turned off. There is literally no point for all this.

The point is that many people leave their PC's in idle or sleep mode for long periods of time, so it does makes sense to have the PC's be as energy efficient as possible during those times (though I imagine it would be even better if people turned them off completely instead of leaving them in sleep mode for hours on end).  

If you live in a part of the country where one does not need to ever think about how much electricity your home is using and you have the ability to pay whatever that might cost regardless of how much you use, yay you! 

[Silent Mistwalker]

11 minutes ago, MoiraKathleen said:

The point is that many people leave their PC's in idle or sleep mode for long periods of time, so it does makes sense to have the PC's be as energy efficient as possible during those times (though I imagine it would be even better if people turned them off completely instead of leaving them in sleep mode for hours on end).  

If you live in a part of the country where one does not need to ever think about how much electricity your home is using and you have the ability to pay whatever that might cost regardless of how much you use, yay you! 

 

Saving energy isn't the only reason I have always shut my pcs down when I'll be away from them for more than 20 - 30 minutes.  A computer that lasts 5 years for everyone else (that doesn't shut theirs down) will last me 10 years.  I'm not stupid like they think I am.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Chris Corvinus]

6 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

 

Saving energy isn't the only reason I have always shut my pcs down when I'll be away from them for more than 20 - 30 minutes.  A computer that lasts 5 years for everyone else (that doesn't shut theirs down) will last me 10 years.  I'm not stupid like they think I am.

You can actually damage your computer turning it on and off constantly. 

[Love Zhaoying]

9 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

 

Saving energy isn't the only reason I have always shut my pcs down when I'll be away from them for more than 20 - 30 minutes.  A computer that lasts 5 years for everyone else (that doesn't shut theirs down) will last me 10 years.  I'm not stupid like they think I am.

Remember back when people didn't turn off their PC because it could wear out the power switch? 😹

[Silent Mistwalker]

24 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

You can actually damage your computer turning it on and off constantly. 

Try telling that to someone who hasn't been building the things for over 20 years. They might buy that. Might.

[MoiraKathleen]

9 minutes ago, Chris Nova said:

You can actually damage your computer turning it on and off constantly. 

I wouldn't classify turning it off if someone is going to be away from it for more than 20 or 30 minutes as "turning it on and off constantly".

I always figure if something comes with an on/off switch, it shouldn't be detrimental to turn it off when it's not being used at all.  

If I'm going to go out to the store, or go for a walk, or do housework or yardwork instead of sitting at my desk using my computer, I don't see any reason for it to stay on, so I turn it off.  I also turn it off at night while I'm sleeping.   If I'm just going to be away a short while, like making dinner, or if a family member stops by for short time and I'm not shutting down applications I have running on the PC, I leave the PC on and let it go into idle/sleep mode, but I do turn off the monitor and the speakers.   

[Silent Mistwalker]

24 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Remember back when people didn't turn off their PC because it could wear out the power switch? 😹

There are so many things like that people believe that simply are not true. I mean, nothing lasts forever anyway. It's all going to wear out sooner or later but why make it sooner? And why fall for obvious bs? Sometimes I would swear humans are getting less intelligent rather than more intelligent.

[Love Zhaoying]

23 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

And why fall for obvious bs? Sometimes I would swear humans are getting less intelligent rather than more intelligent.

Nooo..if I reboot too much, my boot sector will degrade!!'

[Jaylinbridges]

Chris is right.  Cycling your hard drives up from a cold start every day or more will wear out the motor bearings.  Older hard drives did not have the temperature compensation to always read correctly when cold, if they were formatted at normal hot operating temperatures, resulting in read/write errors when starting.   While precision HD manufacturing has improved in 50 years, hard drives are still a weak link.    They will last longer if you keep them spinning than the strains of a cold startup. 

Same with power supplies.  Ever noticed the current surge that makes a thud when you first turn on your power supply.  That's all those electrolytic filter capacitors charging up for the first few seconds.  Most Power Supplies fail when you turn them ON.  If you are lucky only an internal fuse will blow, or a circuit breaker will trip.

I've been building and operating multiple PC's since 1978.  For years I always had four systems running 24/7 as part of my business.  If I exclude those boat anchor SEA80 drives (Seagate 80 MB HD that would shake the floor when the head would seek) I have had exactly two hard drive failures in the last 50 years.  One was an off brand Chinese that went out of business, and the other was a 60 GB MaxTor that finally started giving errors after 20 years in service.  I retired it last year. 

I never turn my computers off, unless to clean the heat sinks and fans every 6 months. I have 8 drives running now, the oldest is dated 2008 and the newest is 2018.  No danger signs yet - they are run with adequate cooling and never shut down.   I also back up new files every 30 mins to the Cloud (IDrive), and entire systems always backed up in case something blows up.  So far its been a waste of  money, as I've never needed my cloud backup.

If your computers only last 10 years, it's because you been power cycling them too much

My old Win2K Pro system has been running 24/7 since I built it with new parts, in 2003 !  Well I did shut it down once, when I moved in RL back in 2007, for 2 days.  It serves it's purpose as a music server/streamer. Not connected to a web browser of course or SL (haha).

Edited July 29, 2021 by Jaylinbridges

[Lyssa Greymoon]

27 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

hard drives

[Silent Mistwalker]

Quite a few people have a number of old(er) pcs sitting around that are fully operational.  We have quite a few between the two of us. He's been building pcs longer than I have. Thankfully I learned from him and not someone who seems to believe money grows on trees.

If you have ever lost a pc to a lightning strike or some other act of nature, you'd shut them down every night, too.

Edited July 29, 2021 by Silent Mistwalker

[Jaylinbridges]

10 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

If you have ever lost a pc to a lightning strike or some other act of nature, you'd shut them down every night, too.

And unplug them from the wall and internet.  Fortunately I have always lived in a lightning free zone.  A lightning storm here is a major event the weather geeks talk about for weeks.  With all power and internet wiring underground here now, the greatest risk is a 150 foot fir tree falling on my roof in a wind storm.   I used to have battery backup for power outages here. About 2KW worth for 45 mins.  But most of the backup units failed and the batteries got too expensive.  And no more outages from storms here since everything is buried now.  

[Love Zhaoying]

1 hour ago, Jaylinbridges said:

  Cycling your hard drives up from a cold start every day or more will wear out the motor bearings.

Motor bearings? SSD! 
Up next: failure to park your hard-drive head will crash it!

[Silent Mistwalker]

27 minutes ago, Jaylinbridges said:

And unplug them from the wall and internet.  Fortunately I have always lived in a lightning free zone.  A lightning storm here is a major event the weather geeks talk about for weeks.  With all power and internet wiring underground here now, the greatest risk is a 150 foot fir tree falling on my roof in a wind storm.   I used to have battery backup for power outages here. About 2KW worth for 45 mins.  But most of the backup units failed and the batteries got too expensive.  And no more outages from storms here since everything is buried now.  

I used to live where the lightning was bad. Where I live now is like what you describe. It's very rare to have a thunderstorm here. Lots of rain but thunder and lightning are rare. He is from here and even he has always shut his down every night. 

Just out of curiosity, is anyone else still playing Dungeon Siege and Titan Quest from the original discs on the same machine you were using when the discs were brand new? I am. 🤭

[Love Zhaoying]

50 minutes ago, Silent Mistwalker said:

I used to live where the lightning was bad.

I still do, but have "whole home" protection (from power co.), and also UPS's for my electronics. 

[Silent Mistwalker]

19 minutes ago, Love Zhaoying said:

I still do, but have "whole home" protection (from power co.), and also UPS's for my electronics. 

We've always used surge protectors. We can't afford several thousand dollars for a whole house surge protection. Besides you still need to use regular surge protectors since the whole house ones can only stop about 85%. There's about a 15% leakage. 

But even with all the surge protection, grounding and everything else, my pc, a new tv and a microwave all got zapped by the same bolt of lightning. The other pcs in the office building only had their network cards zapped. It was not fun replacing all those.

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Motor bearings? SSD! 
Up next: failure to park your hard-drive head will crash it!

Well that was true once, when you had to remove a hard drive for transport.  The drives all parked the head so they wouldn't bounce and put a defect in the media surface.  Heads float above the media when in operation.  Something tells me you never used the first consumer PC hard drives around 1982.

I have SSD drives for the C:/ system and programs, and SL caches.  Eventually all my Western Digital Black Label 2TB drives will retire to SSD, when they start to fail in about 10 years.  Zero reason to have SSD speed for archived music files, unless the whine of those 7200 rpm drives bothers you. 

I expect my SSD drives will fail before my WD Black Labels.  It's the main reason I use a Cloud Backup service.

 

[Silent Mistwalker]

I've always had either Western Digitals or Seagates.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Drayke Newall]

6 hours ago, Jaylinbridges said:

Same with power supplies.  Ever noticed the current surge that makes a thud when you first turn on your power supply.  

Umm.. no I have never heard anything like that. How old are your power supplies and who actually turns their pc off at the power supply switch? You do know when people say they 'turn off their computer' they mean Start>Power>Shutdown.

[FreeToSL]

6 hours ago, Love Zhaoying said:

Motor bearings? SSD! 
Up next: failure to park your hard-drive head will crash it!

OMG! I remember parking, I was a kid and my parents had a ton of superstitions regarding what was safe for that generic XT 8080. Best gaming computer, you could turn off Turbo and play the games in slow motion, very useful to get that record time in prince of persia.

[Kathlen Onyx]

If anything wears down your computer, it's leaving the machine on. Computers build up heat when they are actively processing data and running software. Heat itself can damage internal components, but it also causes your computer's fan to run longer. The more the fan runs, the quicker it will wear out its bearings

https://computer.howstuffworks.com/powering-down-computer.htm

[Jaylinbridges]

2 hours ago, Drayke Newall said:

Umm.. no I have never heard anything like that. How old are your power supplies and who actually turns their pc off at the power supply switch? You do know when people say they 'turn off their computer' they mean Start>Power>Shutdown.

Shutdown keeps your power supply powered so it can detect startup - just doesn't have the load of the computer drives, memory, MB etc, since you shutdown your computer w/ software.  But I know some people that DO use the power switch to turn off their computers, after the shutdown.  Especially with laptops.  If I shutdown w/ windows I get the "It's now safe to turn off your computer" on screen, which keeps the PS powered and ready.  I don't shutdown at night - I have processes running when I am sleeping or afk.  I do put the monitors to sleep after 30 mins.  Unless an automated process is running my CPU and graphics utilization at night is zero. Fans slow if they are temp controlled.

I am using the Antec High Current HCG 750 watt Gamer, about 2 years old. in my modern system.  No idea what's in the old Win2K, I have upgraded it's power supply a dozen times.  At least a 600W name brand, as I put a new one in it the last time I cleaned it.