Does my PC need a rest??

hj2k_x

hj2k_x

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Howdi.

My PC is about three yaers old now. An AMD Athlon 2500+, 1GB RAM etc and a cheapish chaintech mobo..

Thing is, I have it running 24/7 with torrents and the like and I am wondering if I should turn it off every now and then? What do you guys recommend? My hdd , an 80 gig seagate which is a year old, makes noises every now and then but I havent had any problems so far really...

So, what u guys reckon? Does it need a rest?
 
At least once a year you should give it a bit of time off.... maybe let it go off on its own to the seaside, perhaps a holiday in Cape Town, though I would not let your PC walk alone up Table Mountain, there have been a few muggings, and I would hate to see a elderly AMD come to harm
 
lol my pc stays on all the time except for the occasional reboot, or storm ;).........but yeah i do let it rest once in a while
 
DragonLogos said:
At least once a year you should give it a bit of time off.... maybe let it go off on its own to the seaside, perhaps a holiday in Cape Town, though I would not let your PC walk alone up Table Mountain, there have been a few muggings, and I would hate to see a elderly AMD come to harm
Click to expand...

hehehehe :)
 
At least once a year you should give it a bit of time off.... maybe let it go off on its own to the seaside, perhaps a holiday in Cape Town, though I would not let your PC walk alone up Table Mountain, there have been a few muggings, and I would hate to see a elderly AMD come to harm

Having said that... you might want to do a bit of maintenance before its holiday, like cleaning out the CPU fan, bushing the dust of the memory... and maybe even taking the mem out and cleaning it with a pencil rubber.... there again do not try this at home if you have not done it before
 
DragonLogos said:
At least once a year you should give it a bit of time off.... maybe let it go off on its own to the seaside, perhaps a holiday in Cape Town, though I would not let your PC walk alone up Table Mountain, there have been a few muggings, and I would hate to see a elderly AMD come to harm

Having said that... you might want to do a bit of maintenance before its holiday, like cleaning out the CPU fan, bushing the dust of the memory... and maybe even taking the mem out and cleaning it with a pencil rubber.... there again do not try this at home if you have not done it before
Click to expand...

Cool. Shot :)
 
Sorry watching these two ppl on the box playing guitars... makes me want to give up and never play again

Were was I

Ohhh yes, well you can clean the CPU fan out, normally I would recommend that you shop around and buy another one and fit it and keep the old one as a spare

The is you are comfortable taking your RAM in and out, you can take it out and clean the tracks at the bottom with a good pencil rubber... do not touch the gold looking bits with your hands. brush the rubber dust and any other dust off with a clean (un-used) paint brush... put RAM back... take a note of how it goes back before you take it out....
 
i take the dustbuster and vacuum all dust out, if theres still dust use pressurised air can to blow it out.......:)
 
my p3 is on 24/7 except when i need to clean all the dust that gathers in it every uhm 4 months or so. Thats when my poor over loaded hard drive cries booting up and i am unsure if it will survive the boot up but then after a hour or two its back to normal. I think my hard drive is stuffed.
 
I have a P166, 42mb ram, 4G disk, it runs Linux and I use it as a firewall now, once a month or so I put it off and clean dust of the PSU fan, the CPU fan doesn't really matter, my CPU doesn't get hot. It has been running for 13 years as far as my calculations can determine, my policy has been to never put if off.

I don't remove any parts when I clean it, like the RAM, I think connectors might suffer worse wear and tear that way. Just brush the dust off with a dust cloth.

Disk drives are known to work for years, but once they are switched off they don't come on again. There are really Linux servers which go off after 3 or more years of continuous service, only to have the disks break and refuse to work on the next power-up.

If you want to use your old PC for something nice, use it as a media center in your living room. I have a Duron with 512mb of ram, a ATI card with a TV-out. I watch all my TV series on it. I also use the PC as a fileserver. I replaced the fans recently, since they were making too much noise.

Good luck.
 
hj2k_x said:
Howdi.

My PC is about three yaers old now. An AMD Athlon 2500+, 1GB RAM etc and a cheapish chaintech mobo..

Thing is, I have it running 24/7 with torrents and the like and I am wondering if I should turn it off every now and then? What do you guys recommend? My hdd , an 80 gig seagate which is a year old, makes noises every now and then but I havent had any problems so far really...

So, what u guys reckon? Does it need a rest?
Click to expand...

Nope never need to be switched off. If will one day do it on its own, maybe after bad weather. Only wear could be on the hard drive and screen which can be controlled by the bios to shut down and restart at the touch of the keypad. The PC box and power supply fans will get dirty and/or noisy and needs a check as someone stated. So Once every year or two. If you do get to the PC and it would not start then buy a new one. Check the supply first tho, it could be a authority blackout.
 
dude it's never good to leave anything with moving parts on for to long, it's like leaving you car runnig and never tunning it off, first you waist fuel, second it starts to break it
 
scotty777 said:
dude it's never good to leave anything with moving parts on for to long, it's like leaving you car runnig and never tunning it off, first you waist fuel, second it starts to break it
Click to expand...

That is true, but disk drives have the tendency to break only when you boot them up, they dont break while they are up and running. Wear and tear occurs during power cycles. I do not have a link to support my opinion, but I think it is generally accepted to be true.

Disks also break during the first 6 months of use, after that window period they will continue to work for very long before dying.

Fans however suffer wear and tear from continues operation, you will have to replace them before they break. The less you can use them the better.
 
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