sleep or shut down, I want the best for my Mac!

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PippinX

Registered
Hi guys I'm new here, I have an old question but I haven't found the best answer yet. The question is is it better to shut down your computer or to make it sleep when you don't use it?

I'm used to shutting it down when I don't use it. I do so 5 or 6 times a day. My computer is an Intel iMac. So do you guys think shutting it down like I do is good for the components?

Thanks guys!
 
Will with as new of a Mac as you have they have a soft power anyway. What that means is this when you shut it down there is still power running to most of the parts in your computer. So just sleeping uses a little more power per hour, then just shutting it off. It's more up to you. One is no harded then the other on the parts that makeup your Mac.
 
No more then if you where to put it to sleep and then wake it up. The only thing sleep does that powering down does not is. It has some power going thought the RAM to keep what was there there, 2nd The mac in sleep polles the USB/Firewire ports every some many times a min to see if there has been any mouse movement or keybord key being hit. If so then it will wake back up to full power. But when it does this it has to spin up the hard drive(s) and do the same for you CD/DVD drive. The only thing it does not have to do is reboot the OS Back into RAM. I hope that helps. Other wise for the most part other then the level of power it uses when asleep as to when it is truned off. Most everything that happens when you startup the Mac has to happen when it comes back up from sleeping other then reloading the OS.
 
I recommend sleeping over shutting down. The power difference is minimal, and can actually improve the performance of your machine, since OS X caches stuff in RAM for faster access, and those caches are cleared when rebooting.

I hardly ever shut down my machine. I don't even reboot except when I install system updates (about once a month). I only shut down if there's a lightning storm, or if I'll be away from my computer for more than a day or two. Otherwise, there's no real benefit to shutting down.

Starting up probably puts more stress on your hardware than waking up, since it needs to do a lot of disk access during the boot process. But I doubt it makes much of a difference either way.
 
I prefer sleep mode, simply for the fact it is up and running quickly. I only turn off my PB when I transport it. Overall, I think sleep is better, even if only minimal advantage.
 
I don't care about running quickly or not, I just want to know the best way to keep the hardware stable.
 
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