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Old April 12th 10, 03:08 AM posted to alt.comp.hardware
Nicholas Dreyer
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Posts: 9
Default More or less safe to turn off power supply rocker switch?

On Mon, 12 Apr 2010 13:32:23 +1200, ~misfit~ wrote:

Not so much to the motherboard but there's more stress put on the power
supply as the big capacitors 'fill', there's a big inrush current. In
fact the only times (twice in 15 years) I've had catastrophic failure
(BANG!) of (one of) the large capacitor/s in the PSU was when applying
mains power to it.

There is another consideration. If the machine is turned off at the
back, or unplugged, the small battery on the motherboard that retains
BIOS settings will die more quickly. However they're only a couple bucks
(depending on the brand and where you live).

What could be more of a PITA is if you have custom BIOS settings such as
an 'on the edge' overclock or 'just so' RAM timings, or even if you're
running your HDD/s as AHCI (and the default is 'IDE emulation'). Then,
when the battery does go you have to know these settings so that you can
re-enter them when you replace the battery.


Ah, what you say here is very interesting to know. It's sounding like
the slight energy consumption of leaving the PSU rocker switch on
permanently is not as bad as the possibility of a blown out PSU from
repeated powering-up, so I will continue to leave it on permanently.

The reason I was focusing on the rocker switch question was because my
last PSU blew after a mere four years with the rocker switch left on all
the time except for occasional cleaning, maintenance and moving: One
day, after CPU shutdown the previous night, nothing would start until
installation of a replacement PSU.

Thanks for sharing all your experiences,

Nick