"Stand by" or "Shut down"

[bben46]

It used to be a rule of thumb if you run the computer for just 8 hours a day - like in many office environments - shut it down over night. If you run the computer for more than 12 hours a day - leave it running or standby so it will power up quickly to the same place you left it. As for power usage, most computers have a low power mode where the monitors go into standby, the hard drives spin down and stop. And sometimes the fans go into a quiet mode (slow speed) that cuts the power down to about 10% of what it normally runs.

 

If you do elect to use stand by, I recommend powering down completely about once a week or so to allow Windows to do some housekeeping - things like cleaning certain cache files & re initializing the ram. :thumbsup:

[kalikka]

For example OC'd i7-3960X + r7950 drains around 170W in idle.

With stock 2600k + r7950 its more like 60w.

 

And btw, if you have SSD I see no point in using stand by. My PC starts windows in 10-15s.

Edited December 22, 2012 by kalikka