Any views please on whether to leave a ROCK on 24/7 or not?
Which creates more wear and tear?
Leave it running 24/7/365. Turning it off and on daily is way more stressful for the components.
4 Likes
If I COULDN’T leave it on 24/7 then I’d throw it away and replace it with something that could.
It’s a modern computer and will be old and outdated before it fails. Like all modern computers, you will end up throwing away a perfectly functioning machine in 5-10 years.
Sheldon
3 Likes
I see myself patching machines into household appliances in 2030, I hate throwing tech away and what’s to be done 
1 Like
I wonder which components would profit from leaving the device running 24/7?
While I’m no engineer my guess is: for a standard NUC kit the built-in fan is not one of the parts profiting from an always-on strategy… 
Power cycling is some kind of stress for the electronics, but is it really “way more” and of relevance for a ROCK / NUC use case as described here: 1 cycle a day on average?
Do you have an estimate how much longer a NUC would work when left to “always on”?
Next question: how would this relate to the energy potentially saved?
We’d also need an assumption on how long a NUC works before breaking because of age and how many power cycles are included it? Maybe 5 … 7 yrs of life, maybe more if the MTBF values of Intel for NUC boards (*) are used; and at least 10,000 power cycles (some say 40,000 cycles are built into average computers, nowadays)?
(*) Not sure if this includes the fan (or the psu) …
2 Likes
Yes absolutely it’s what its designed for.
Yes.
Electronics like to be stable. Inrush currents, the heating and cooling components, etc. etc. all contribute to wear and tear. Keeping things powered, warm, and stable is the right thing to do.
I’ve seen too many things blow up from power surges over the years. I don’t leave anything turned on unless it’s being used.
I have not shut down my Nucleus in 8 1/2 months except to reboot a couple times. My RPi4 runs 24/7 also.
If you’ve as many small low power devices about the place as I have it’s impractical. The power down power up cycle each day would leave little time for anything but sleeping…
Unless you’re aiming to have the hardware last for decades then convenience/availability is probably a bigger factor than the physical health of the hardware . Do you want ROON always ready for use or are you ok with having to turn on your server as needed?
I’m all about convenience so I’ve left mine on for years and it’s doing just fine. Last time I checked my energy use on the NUC (NUC7i3BNK) running 24x7 was around $0.75 per month and the convenience is absolutely worth that for me.
1 Like
My Core machine is in a rack in the cellar. Never purposely turn it off or even think about it.
I never turn off my DAC or the Mutec that feeds it.
Once I turn my pre-amp and amps on, they stay on for the day.
Can’t remember when I turned off the RPis last. One is down in the cellar, the other stashed behind my desk.
Leaving these things on while not being used is a minimal impact to my electricity usage.
Also as someone who lives in a cold climate (New Hampshire), and doesn’t have access to natural gas. The cost differential between heating with propane or heating with electricity isn’t as big as you could imagine. So using my rock and various electric gadgets to help heat my house isn’t a big deal (remember the rock 8 watts of power usage is 100% efficient heat going into my house and directly offsets my propane heating (only 96% efficient).
The bummer is when it’s the summertime (summer is my favorite day of the year) where I am paying to run my gadgets and then paying again to extract the heat out of my house with my air conditioner.
Sheldon
1 Like
The CPU profits the most…and with no cpu, no computer workie!!
Even for workstations, gaming machines and lower power computers, Sleep mode is much better than Power Off. This is mostly from a hardware perspective, but even helps with modern OS too. Not saying there are no more memory overflow issues in modern OS, but it’s also not 1995 any more either.
LOL…relate.
“If you don’t like the weather now…wait 5 minutes. Then you’ll really hate it!!” - old Maine/NH saying.
Whilst there are very good reasons for never shutting off an appliance like a ROCK device (many of them described above!), I actually take a different view.
I have automated the shutdown and start up of my NUC running ROCK so that everyday I start from a fresh, clean boot. I have observed performance issues with Roon when the NUC has been running for a long period of time and you will find plenty of threads on the support forum talking about memory leaks etc. I avoid issues of this kind, but save myself any manual task, by automating a power-off and power-on schedule.
1 Like
That’s me told and has me considering at least a cron task to reboot the NUC when I’m asleep. Have already noticed the inexorable memory creep of the RoonAppliance process. The trickiest part will be picking a time when I’m guaranteed not to be awake and listening.
Obviously no one lives in high lightening areas …
In summer we get a vicious electrical storm most afternoons
Even with meticulous management of mains deconnection, I managed to lose most of my hi fi (amp, streamer, video streamer, switches etc) to a direct strike in my neighbors garden via the ADSL phone line . The ADSL filter was literally destroyed
I shut down every night …
Now that, I can appreciate, and makes me glad that we live in more temperate climes (at least for now). Having said that, I do leave my ROCK/NUC powered on 7/24, but my main hifi (Quad Artera and ESL57s) get shutdown every night, and powered up at 8:00 am by our home automation system.
You unplug your 57’s? You must have rebuilt ones, because the original coating on these things has mostly evaporated in my experience and what used to take a couple minutes to charge can now take a day in some cases.
Sheldon