Every night, I put my computer to sleep. But should I be shutting it down every now and then? For example, maybe once a week or once a month?
Just curious to see this question answered from a Linux gamers’ perspective.
I always shut down my PC. No need to keep it wasting electricity (even a little) when I’m away and I can wait a bit for it to boot again
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All the time. When I’m not using my PC it’s off. Why would I keep it on, it boots up in seconds.
For me the advantage of keeping it in sleep is having all the apps open and exactly where I left them. “Session save” type features never keep things quite right - some apps just don’t reopen, they’re often not on the right workspace etc, not to mention documents and so on have to be saved if you power off.
You can of course use hibernation to get the best of both worlds, at the cost of long start-up times, and so I do often do that, when I’m not expecting to turn back for a while.
Personally I prefer to always start off from scratch where I can. If I need to go away from the computer and things are in a fragile state or where the setup is finicky and I’ll be finishing it next session then I’ll just put it to sleep.
Sounds crazy to me that people aren’t shutting down their computers when not using them. For me it’s like turning off the light off in a room you’re leaving. I can still hear the voice of my mum giving me a lecture about not wasting energy and I’m thankful for this.
It’s such a small gesture and it can already improve your carbon footprint a tiny bit.
The only exception is when I’m downloading a game or backing up my computer.
Uhhh yeah. My PC is booted in less than half a minute, why would I let it waste energy the whole night just to boot slightly faster? Even when I booted off of an HDD I still did so.
I see no point in keeping my power hungry monster awake 24/7. I’m in any game less than 3 minutes after a cold boot.
Mines been keeping me warm through the last months of snow storms.
Automated backups happen at night.
i shutdown my pc every time i stop using it. i didnt know there are ppl out there that dont
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My server is the only thing that’s on 24/7. My and my partner’s PCs shut down while we’re not using them. It takes like 10 seconds, maybe, to boot up.
I always shut down my PC when not using it. Never had an issues with any of my games (Pop!_OS and a 3090 GPU).
I shut my computer down whenever I intend to stop using it for more than a couple of hours. So that means every night, and some other times as well. Starting the computer doesn’t take very long. So I don’t feel like it is a hassle or trouble. Being completely shut down saves a bit of power; and there are other minor benefits.
One benefit is that it prevents accidentally waking the computer in the middle of the night, filling the room with light and noise while I fumble in a tired state trying to shut it down. (Not saying that happens often, but it has happened - and it is not nice.)
If you mean by “should”, because you fear losing performance, like Windows, then no. But I also see no point in keeping it on 24/7. When I’m done with my computer, I just turn it off. If I want to play a video game, the absolute maximum amount of time it takes for me is 120 seconds until I’m in a game from cold start. Constantly feeding my power-hungry monster just isn’t worth it.
My computer a 7900xtx and 7800x3d with a crap load of other stuff shoved in there. Idles around 100-150 watts of power with the screen off.
100 watts isn’t a lot, but that’s like leaving a light bulb or two on from when I was a kid!
Unless Im playing an idle game that needs it on just let it hibernate.
People used to leave their PCs running 24/7 due to the fear of thermal expansion causing hard drive failure. It’s not a problem anymore as far as I know, but this practice stuck with a lot of old power users.
It wasn’t quite as silly when PCs didn’t draw so much power.
The sleep functionality has historically been unreliable at best so that gets avoided as well.
Now, in 2026, even if I’m just going outside for 20 minutes I’ll sleep the machine, unless it’s doing something in particular.
I always turn off my pc, it takes maybe as much time to boot as it does for me to walk from the power button to the sofa (it’s a living room setup and those 2 things are a metre apart)
I shut down after every use on my Linux gaming PC. My Linux servers (I currently have 3) stay on for weeks on end without being rebooted, but I try to reboot at least once a month, but I forget most months.
I shut down because, in my opinion, I want my SSDs to last longer and them not being on when not in use is my way of ensuring that. I don’t game every day, but I do usually every other day, so for them to be on for 24 hours without me using them is potentially wasting time health-wise, in my opinion. Admittedly I haven’t done the research to see how reboots affect health of an SSD, because it may be counter productive in that light if a reboot causes just as much if not more stress than just leaving it on.
But SSD health is not the only reason. My other reason is that my PC is somewhat beefy and draws a lot of power and I’m charged a shit ton in electricity costs as it is and this thing can potentially cost me a few dollars each month of being on without being in use, especially during peak hours when my rates get outrageously expensive, at double the normal rate.
And then performance is the last remaining reason. But that might be Windows PTSD where I’m just used to Windows being a butt when it hasn’t been rebooted in some time. I just feel I get the best performance when I give my PC a break when I’m not using it.
My brother uses Windows and leaves his PC on all the time and just puts it to sleep and he doesn’t seem to have issues requiring him to reboot. He games every day whereas I’m not always using my gaming PC.
Edit: got me curious about this so I finally just skimmed through some articles really quick. Apparently SSD health is not really a concern on more modern M.2 NVME type drives which is what I have (I do have one older SATA SSD) and booting may do more writes than just leaving them on, but the modern drives are built to handle this but heat is still a concern. But at the end of the day, this is just a small part of why I do. The power bill is my main reason since it can cost me a few bucks keeping it on when not in use. Performance is secondary too. Likely won’t be that bad keeping it on all the time like I do with my Linux servers.
Always. When I’m not using my PC it’s turned off. I only turn it on when I’m using it, and then turn it off when I’m done. Yes, this includes things like going onto short shopping trips.
The only times I’ve let my PC on when I’m not directly using it is when it’s rendering something.
