Do you leave your computer on all night or turn it off?

Off at night. We have many power outages and surges here in the Philippines. I even go further and unplug everything. Updates can be done anytime.

I put mine to sleep at night, and rarely shut it down completely. I have done this with my machines for 15 years and never had a failure.

I had an audio client who asked me why his computer power supplies kept failing. Turns out he was not just doing the Shutdown he was also turning off the babysitter switch on the back. This resulted in huge current inrushes when the system was powered back up and it was reducing the lifetime of his power supplies from years to months. Same, by the way, with modern audio gear powered by switch mode power supplies and bricks... those bricks will last a lot longer if you just turn off the amps and stuff, but leave the AC power on. Yes, I recommend shutting down your stuff at night ... Use the shutdown or standby switches but don't turn off the AC power to the supply.

The wear & tear has been my concern. With the processes it goes through a day, it deserves to rest at night like a person does or risk a "psychological" breakdown.

The age old question. Generally I power down at night. I used to leave them on always because of metal expansion/contraction premature wear of the components when powered on and off.

I have wondered if the shock the components receive turning back on might shorten their life more than leaving them running 24/7.

Off - because you cant be hacked if its not turned on

I've been running the same computer since 2010, turning it off (mostly) every night. Before that I used to leave my computers on. I've also managed thousands of computers in data centers which were all on 24/7 for the most part. In my experience over the past 3 decades, I've come to the conclusion that certain components last longer if you turn the computer off, but only if you do so for a decent length of time, for example 8 hours over night. Turning the computer on and off to save an hour here or there I don't think helps much and may be worse. The component that is the most important to me is the hard drive, which (like electrolytic capacitors) seem to have a lifetime based on "heat over time." So I think basically power-on hours is a good measure of lifespan for a spinning drive. My current hard drive in the oldest machine is well over 5 years old, but only has 3.5 years worth of power-on hours. Basically it's about the heat. I also power off my ssd-based systems, but that's just to save write-cycles because every OS writes logs. I'm not sure how much of a difference it really makes on an ssd over time. I haven't had the decades of experience with SSDs that I would need to really know for sure.

Yes.

Live in an area that gets thunder storms. Thus the computers are OFF any time we're not actually using them. And especially during the highest power-rate periods, because of that time-of-day electrical billing thing. Nor do I worry about Microsoft anymore - Watching you from a system I specked and built, then loaded with Linux Mint / Cinnamon.

On surge/battery backup. Turn it off, and I do my own customer support, because I was in IT for a number of years. So, I turn it off. Memory surges, hacking, all the reasons you listed.

Leave you PC on, so less starting up surges, I have replaced more PSU than there are sausages lol B4L

Actually turning off and on any electronics device, including a computer causes stress on the components. This much more so than leaving it on. A computer should stay "cool enough" if it has adequate air circulation. Also with the advent of SSDs we do not have to contend with the mtbf of the old spinner hard drives. Certainly shutting down a computer will protect it against any hackers. One more thing. If you have guys like this doing remote maintenance on your computer you will have an access port open on your router. This will allow an overnight hacker to get into your machine much easier...Sorry, but I'm just giving you the tech facts...

Is this a Schrödinger's cat kind of thing?🐈

I disagree about turning the computer off at night. The more you turn it on the more you turn it off the more you’re going to surge the power supply and overtime. The power supply is going to die prematurely.