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Ever wonder what would happen if you never shut down your Windows PC? So have I, which is why I decided to take it upon myself to find out what would happen if I left my computer running for an entire week without even bothering to put it into sleep mode. This experiment was performed on a PC running Windows 10.
When your PC runs without pause, Windows’ built-in processes and your apps can start experiencing all sorts of random bugs that make your system lose stability over time. The most common issue comes in the form of a memory leak, which makes your PC run sluggish until you restart it.
That being said, I was surprised by how stable my PC has been after running continuously over the past week. Not only did I not experience system-wide BSOD crashes, but I didn’t experience any major stability issues. Windows 10 remained standing strong and steady, proving itself to be a stable and reliable system (in spite of the recent CrowdStrike fiasco).
The only issue I experienced was when unpacking a RAR file on day one of the experiment. WinRAR crashed because I tried to cancel a file transfer, but the app recovered after running it again. What’s weird is that I still see the failed file transfer when transferring a different file, but it doesn’t affect my system’s functionality.
Other than that odd issue, my PC has been running fine without a shutdown. Still, I did notice that demanding video games stuttered a bit more than usual, likely because it took longer for them to load assets into the RAM.
Before you jump the gun and decide to leave your PC always on, there are a few important things you should consider. The first one is your electricity bill. Assuming your PC is configured correctly to use as little power as possible when idle, it can still draw anywhere from 40W–100W of electricity.
What’s worse is that the unused electricity gets converted into heat, which is okay in winter but not in summer. The PC running 24/7 also adds fan noise to your room that can disturb your sleep, though that can be mitigated by building a silent PC. Additionally, leaving your PC always running doesn’t give your OS and apps an opportunity to recover from bugs. Plus, you won’t get Windows updates until a reset.
It could also potentially leave you more susceptible to hackers who have gained access to your system. They could track your schedule and steal your data when you’re asleep or away, though it’s not a common scenario that you should worry too much about.
If you want to reap the benefits of a PC that’s always running with few (or none) of the drawbacks, you can still do that. Instead of shutting down your PC, just leave it in sleep mode. It’ll start up much more quickly compared to a cold boot, and you can wake it with a simple button press. To access the system remotely, enable wake-on-LAN so that you can always turn it on from its slumber.
I like to give my OS a full daily reset to ensure it keeps working its best and to nip memory leaks in the bud. I don’t mind my system taking an extra minute or two to boot up because I can use that quick window to do a chore. Also, I want to keep my Windows up-to-date to ensure I don’t miss out on any new features and security updates.
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