matthewchan

My computer is always on to download anime. I've left it on for weeks without shutting it down.

I'm worried that if I leave it on while I'm at school, the fan may eventually stop functioning and my computer will fry and catch on fire or something.

Should I be worried?

__________________
I download anime, watch anime,
download more anime, watch more anime,
and download anime soundtracks because I have no life.


Lazy Anime Reviews | Web Development | Anime Specialists

dragonrider2004

not really. you do shorten the life of your fans when you leae them on all the time but you can install a heat sensor that will kill the power to your box if the temperature gets near the dangerous levels. the grat thing is these sensors can cost as little as $20 usd and some can interface with your motherboard (depending on make and model) and cause the operating system to shut down intead of just cutting power eliminating errors on the next start up. these sensors are lifesavers b/c they let you replace the broken fans before something else breaks keeping your costs WAY down. you can find these sensors at such fine internet establishments as www.cyberguys.com(deffinetly here) or www.thinkgeek.com(not sure about this one but it should)

__________________

Legend

well i do have some advice:

- im pretty sure u do this, but keep the monitor off.
- and try to give your Harddrive some rest, be more worry about this than the fan

__________________
Cheer up, sleepy jean.
Oh, what can it mean.
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen...yeahhhhhh

dragonrider2004

true, true. the harddrive needs to rest sometimes...

__________________

youth_anime_fan

It also depends what kind of computer you have. An example of an extremist would be:

My friend built the most powerfull pc known to man. He uses two clip-on fans to cool down his cpu, otherwise it would burn to ashes. That's insane. So, maybee if your worried, and want to "rube" it open 'er up and lay on the breeze! (way cheaper too)

LenMiyata

Grumble Grumble Grumble

I'd also be concered about a power glitch that could force a improper shutdown and cause some file system damage. Since most power outages are only a few seconds in length, investing in a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) to keep your system up and running, and also provide some protection against power surges (lighting strikes a few dozen miles away on a power line can be a real PAIN!!)...

__________________

teh s uck

If you're going to leave it on all the time, there's probably a few things you need to do on occasion to make sure that your computer does not overheat.

1. Clean it on occasion. You would be amazed how much dust gets into a box. Cleaning out the dust will reduce overall temperature inside the unit.

2. Make sure that there is plenty of room in there for air flow. Tie up cables, remove components that your not using, etc.

3. Do NOT overclock your CPU or your graphics card.

4. Get Motherboard Monitor and SpeedFan -- these are freeware that can monitor and control your motherboard temps and your fan speed. You can get these from most freeware archives. Or Google.

Modern CPUs can take a lot of heat with a decent fan. On my default fan settings, my CPU generally hangs out at 55-60 deg. C, and can spike up to 80 during periods of heavy activity; both are well within the specs for my CPU (AMD Athlon XP 1700+). Also, many BIOSes also have heat sensors that will shut the computer down if it gets too hot; check the specs for your machine for all this info, you may find that you're worrying over nothing.

I agree with pyoro-pyoro, BTW. Your hard drive will probably drop dead sooner than your CPU would.

__________________
Your ad here.

Ectoruss

Like they said, And if you know how to set the bios of you PC, You should at least, set the limit temp of the cpu, Power suplie & Video card in the way to shut down the PC before they reach the limit Temp., This way, You will be sure that even if you are not there, You pc will not fry.

For the screen saver and the energy saver, be aware. When you set your monitor to shut down after some time, this is OK. But i you set the hard drive to shut or put the systeme to stand-by, This could cause some prob if you are downloading........

__________________
Coming soon.........

Sinistra

To set up power settings you can do this in the control panel goto

Start-> Control panel(If useing XP display and Themes) if not Display-> Goto the screen saver tab. You will see a Power star management system click advanced.

Here you can set the time durations of how long your stuff stays on after idle

Set your monitor to 20mins

Goto Standby and set it for like 3 hours or so this will shut down everything on your computer when you hit the space bar your PC will start back up where it left off when it went into Standby.

you can also set Hybernation This will shut everything down and store everything in memory powered by the CMOS battery in your computer. You will have to hit the power button to start it back up but it also saves on your computer..

So I hope this helps ^_^

__________________

Legend

speaking of airflow, go to g4techtv.com as they have a video there teaching you how to set up your fans to create a positive or negative charge air flow (i forgot) that what you don't have to clean it as much

__________________
Cheer up, sleepy jean.
Oh, what can it mean.
To a daydream believer
And a homecoming queen...yeahhhhhh

ex-paranoia

Too many concerns... If you live in a clean space and have a decent computer with a decent fan, you have nothing to worry about. Obviously, your comptuer will not run for the rest of your life, you will have to reboot it and turn it off on occasion. However, yes, people have pointed out good ways to maintain your computer, it's unlikely it's going to burn, unless you've made modifications to the hardware settings (ie: overclocking), however, the default settings on your board should be good enough for you to leave your computer running fine on a 24 hour basis. Hell if computers were so unreliable, you wouldnt have servers that ran for 5 motths straight before having to be reset or turned off for maintenance.

My longest uptime was around 4 months, I had left my computer running when I went on vacation during summer, I had full access to my computer from remote terminals from where I vacationed, everything worked fine, and I have everything set at default of my board. Albeit it is a 5000$ computer, but, burning should not be a concern for you. You can be pretty certain that your computer will run fine. Besides you're just leaving it to download music right?

You can take some steps to lower the power usage of your computer, for instance all of the above, from previous replies... Such as:
- Power Management
- Screensavers
- Sleep Mode
- Sensors
- Higher Grade Fans
- Keeping your BOX in a good environment.
- Maintenance on the box every couple of weeks.
- Maintaining system software.


You can bet that if you follow these steps, that your computer will last you ages. Unless you are very unlucky, and your Motherboard/Hardware/Chipset decide to give up because of some hardware deffect or simply out of bad luck, well there's nothing that can be done about that :P

But need not worry, that happens really rarely Unless you overclock it like crazy, and not have the brains to add cooling.. >.>