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Other than your refrigerator, the only thing in your house that you might never bother turning

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off is probably your computer, especially if it's a desktop. But if you're one of those folks that

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leaves your PC on 24-7, are you shortening its lifespan prematurely, or are you actually doing

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it a favor? Let's first look at which components in your PC are most likely to wear out from prolonged

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use, starting with the capacitors. You know, those things that look like little water towers in

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store electricity, you'll mostly find them on your motherboard and inside your power supply,

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as well as on your graphics card and other expansion cards. Low-quality capacitors used to be more

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common, but after the infamous capacitor plague that saw lots of computers die prematurely in

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the early to mid-2000s, we're talking less than a year in some cases, component manufacturers have

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started taking capacitor sourcing much more seriously. For instance, even lower to mid-range

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motherboards these days mostly use solid capacitors, which typically have a rated lifespan

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of over 22 years of continuous use at 65 degrees Celsius, which is quite a bit warmer than motherboards

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usually get. At lower temperatures, capacitor life is even longer, a lot longer. Now, cheaper,

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liquid electrolytic capacitors don't have life spans quite that long, and it turns out that these

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are commonly used in even high-end power supplies. But the good news is that not only do power supplies

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usually run at moderate temperatures, but those chunky primary capacitors can still last for

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upwards of 15 years, even though they aren't solid caps. And this stands even for cheaper units,

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so long as you didn't get a no-name model from the bargain bin. Okay, so unless we're talking

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extreme heat, your capacitors are probably fine. But what about the rest of your parts? Well,

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computer fans can have a fairly limited lifespan. Specifically, cheap sleeve-bearing fans, often

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found in lower-end builds, can die after about four years of continuous use. Nicer ball-bearing

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fans can last about twice as long, but regardless of what kind of fans you have, the good news is

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that if they do die, they aren't typically expensive to replace and also shouldn't result in your

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components immediately overheating unless you've got some serious ventilation issues from dust.

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Clean your computer. Okay, the other major component to watch out for if you've got your PC

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powered on constantly is the venerable hard drive. Although SSDs have become a lot more common,

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hard drives are still used for cheap mass storage and are often still included in low-end pre-built

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machines. Because hard drives have moving parts, it's usually a good idea to replace them after

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about five years of power on time. And fortunately, you can keep an eye on your drive's built-in

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smart data to check if a hardware failure might be in your future and move your data accordingly.

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Your computer's other components such as the CPU and the RAM are actually more likely to simply

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become outdated or off-sleep before they actually die, even if you leave your PC on 24-7. But beyond

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simply not doing much harm, leaving your computer on can have advantages. For example, assuming you

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have the correct settings enabled, leaving it on can allow the PC to perform updates while you're

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away. So when you come back, you can do whatever it is you typically do without being interrupted.

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Having it powered on is also necessary for remote access, for using it as a server or a router,

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or for background activities like crypto mining. But at the same time, we are not telling you to

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just leave your machine on all the time without a good reason. Turning a modern PC off and on

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several times a day is not going to wear out the components, and running a computer will accumulate

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more dust and, of course, draw more power than one that's turned off. That's something we should

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all be thinking about seriously. Finally, you can have a sticky situation on your hands if something

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vital like a CPU or a GPU cooler dies while you're away from your PC, not paying attention.

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But the bottom line here is that nothing bad is likely to happen just from leaving your PC on

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all the time. But make sure that you do turn off the monitor while you're away, as those can die

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before your PC does. But maybe that's a topic for another video. Thanks for watching guys,

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if you liked this video, why don't you give us a like, give us a subscribe, and hit us up in the

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comments section with your suggestions for topics we should cover in the future.