The age-old shut down vs hibernate debate

[jedishrfu]

There’s another failure mode in fluctuating AC power that can affect the lifetime of semiconductors and of course the talked about but yet to occur EMP in any significant way.

With respect to debate, I remember as a child the issue of Color TVs and the instant on feature where folks were worried that it would age the tube faster. I’m sure this carried forward into PCs as well. I do remember discussions among peers over the benefits of sleep vs hibernate vs shutdown modes. We would shutdown our PCs over the weekend and leave them running overnight. Now we leave them running all the time so that needed admin work and disk backups can run after hours.

 

[anorlunda]

I searched for a study comparing PCs which stay on always with those that power off every night. I couldn't find one. If there was such a study, it could provide the definitive answer.

There are now publicity campaigns trying to convince people to stop wasting electricity (and being more green) by powering down all devices that draw standby power overnight. That is more than PCs, entertainment center boxes are a major culprit. There are also EU and US regulations mandating reduced standby power consumption.

The situation today is much better than in 2000, yet we still see public estimates such as below. I am skeptical of that 10% number, but I have no hard data. Nevertheless, it is foreseeable that some lawmaker will one day forbid leaving personal computers on 24x7, and perhaps forbidding standby mode for all consumer devices.

Devices on standby consume electricity which must be paid for. The total energy consumed may be of the order of 10% of the electrical energy used by a typical household, as discussed below.

 

[Pleonasm]

I searched for a study comparing PCs which stay on always with those that power off every night. I couldn't find one. If there was such a study, it could provide the definitive answer.

There are now publicity campaigns trying to convince people to stop wasting electricity (and being more green) by powering down all devices that draw standby power overnight. That is more than PCs, entertainment center boxes are a major culprit. There are also EU and US regulations mandating reduced standby power consumption.

The situation today is much better than in 2000, yet we still see public estimates such as below. I am skeptical of that 10% number, but I have no hard data. Nevertheless, it is foreseeable that some lawmaker will one day forbid leaving personal computers on 24x7, and perhaps forbidding standby mode for all consumer devices.

What I find crazy is that some modern flat screen TVs no longer have an off button. Only standby mode is possible unless you pull out the plug.

 

[Pleonasm]

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-genius-turn-off-your-phone-for-better-battery-life/

Why would battery longevity imrpove from nightly shutdowns? I lose 2% from just starting it up,... about the same that procentage lost over night if the phone is on airplane mode.

 

[Klystron]

[snip!] Why would battery longevity imrpove from nightly shutdowns? I lose 2% from just starting it up,... about the same that procentage lost over night if the phone is on airplane mode.

Interesting and quantifiable point. Begs the question: should chargeable devices be left plugged in?

My Moto-G phone instructions warn against over charging but are vague on details. In light of @anorlunda warning concerning overheated batteries, caution dictates plugging in the phone only when required.

 

[Pleonasm]

Interesting and quantifiable point. Begs the question: should chargeable devices be left plugged in?
.

It stops charging after 100% so it doesn't matter, if 100% charge is your goal.

 

[anorlunda]

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-genius-turn-off-your-phone-for-better-battery-life/

Why would battery longevity imrpove from nightly shutdowns? I lose 2% from just starting it up,... about the same that procentage lost over night if the phone is on airplane mode.

Lithium-ion suffers from stress when exposed to heat, so does keeping a cell at a high charge voltage. A battery dwelling above 30°C (86°F) is considered elevated temperature and for most Li-ion a voltage above 4.10V/cell is deemed as high voltage. Exposing the battery to high temperature and dwelling in a full state-of-charge for an extended time can be more stressful than cycling. Table 3 demonstrates capacity loss as a function of temperature and SoC.

 

[essenmein]

I searched for a study comparing PCs which stay on always with those that power off every night. I couldn't find one. If there was such a study, it could provide the definitive answer.

There are now publicity campaigns trying to convince people to stop wasting electricity (and being more green) by powering down all devices that draw standby power overnight. That is more than PCs, entertainment center boxes are a major culprit. There are also EU and US regulations mandating reduced standby power consumption.

The situation today is much better than in 2000, yet we still see public estimates such as below. I am skeptical of that 10% number, but I have no hard data. Nevertheless, it is foreseeable that some lawmaker will one day forbid leaving personal computers on 24x7, and perhaps forbidding standby mode for all consumer devices.

I don't have the time to find it, but I think Google or someone had some interesting data.

My understanding of the question is more do you let it run 24/7 or shut down at night, google or facebook, one of them, used domestic computers for their server farms so had interesting data on MTBF for things like spinning drives, and I think the standard theory was less power cycles = more run time, but based on the statistical data they measured (from 1000's of PC's and their component failure rates) they didn't notice any effect (between power off at night and run 24/7).

Re original question re shut down vs hibernate, I doubt there is a lot of difference, both are basically "off", but if looking at keep running 24/7 vs some low power state (hybernate/shutdown/sleep) the thought was the life saved due to the "off" period would be less than the wear a power cycle/thermal cycle added, therefore its better to not turn it off.

Even though the data says there was not statistical diff between off at each night and run 24/7, I just feel better if my spin drives are running at a constant temp constant speed.

Note that from a greeny perspective, we heat the house at least half the year so at that point its parasitic heating that reduces the load on the furnace :P

 

[eq1]

As far as I know, solid state devices such as computers and even more so cell phones do not "age" in an appreciable way, and so the "debate" is moot: it does not affect the lifespan noticeably, whether you shut down your computer/phone or let it go to sleep.

This is not correct. See below.
https://semiengineering.com/transistor-aging-intensifies-10nm/

When hibernating a SOC has more of its die area biased [*] which means the time to dioxide breakdown or NBTI failure could be reduced, in theory, but the engineers should've assumed the part was biased 100% of the time in the lifetime model so whether or not the part is in shutdown it should still meet the stated lifetime goal making the point moot.

* Part of the die area (for example, the real-time clock circuit) is always biased. Unless the battery is physically disconnected of course.

 

[Rive]

Just two small points.

• maybe worth to look up 'BGA reball' and the mentioned failure reasons on the pages coming up as result. Temperature change does have an effect.
  
• worth checking the temperature profiles of the most frequently affected components (CPU and GPU). Usually both has more changes during load<>idle than idle<>OFF. Loads like games are especially bad.