Maximum PC

Hey all. I'm going to be headed for St. Joseph, MI for a week with the family.

All 24 of us will be at a beach house across the street from Silver Beach on Lake Michigan.

Now, what should I do with my rig? I've always unplugged it when I was going to be away for a while. This is because I don't have any surge protectors or line conditioners or USPs on this machine. I've always been very cautious about that with T-Storms.

When I was about 15 my good friend had his comp fried by a lightning strike. Of course, he lived out in the country, I'm not sure if I have the same chances here. Fortunatley, his insurance paid him for a brand new machine, though I am not sure if our insurance would do the same.

About 3 years ago my sister's house got struck by lightning. She lost half the electronics in her house. Incredibly, her computer still worked.

Now, so far, WUnderground is calling for some clouds with highs in the mid 80's and lows in the 60's.

Unfortunatley, that's not how mid-west weather works. In the mid-west, we can have any two completley different types of weather during the same week. So, for example, we may be highs in the mid 70's on Monday, but by Friday we can have highs in the mid 90's. T-Storms can literally come out of nowhere. We can have perfectly sunny weather on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but Thurdsday, Friday, and Saturday may be full of intense storms.

My two primary concerns right now are lightning strikes and heat. I don't think I'll be able to leave the windows open due to rain/T-storms, and my parents would never let me run the AC all week.

Speaking of my parents, I don't think they are going to be too keen on the idea of me running my PC over the week. Is there some way I could make it boot after we leave?

Let me know what you think of letting the PC run all week while I'm gone,

TIA,
Dan O.

Go spend $50 on a surge suppressor.

Or spend $150 for a cheap UPS.

Not having one is like not wearing a condom. Sure, most of the time you're ok, but one wrong move could change your life forever.

If you don't have any surge protection, and the forecast calls for T-storms, I'd highly reccommend unplugging it.

As for leaving it on...Just turn off your monitor, most parents are either to stupid to see that the computer itself is still on or are too lazy to check...Or you could just put it in a closet and plug it in.

Take it with you. I always take one of my computers with me. Our laptop is just to crappy. I am going to be gone for 5-6 weeks next spring. I will just leave the folding farm running. I do have surge protection on them though.

HepC or lose my computer... hmmm. Let me think about it a while...

I'd rather HepC

LOL.... well, I guess that I was wrong about the analogy...

Okay, as some of you may have heard in another post, I bought a new surge protector. Yes, my old one was made by the Tandy Corp.

This new one is the APC 2,400 eP Joule Protection one with the phone and DSL protection.

The sweet thing is it was only $24 at Comp USA. So, After attaching a ground wire to the conduit in the wall, I got the ok signal from my surge protector that there was no faulty wiring.

Now I've got this thing protected from surges, and I know that PCs don't usually get dammaged just by being disconnected from the power source, I think I'm ready to rethink letting it go for the week.

There of course is one major hitch. The temps this next week are going to be alot higher than they have been, up around the upper 80s. Of course that is a usual temp for this time of year, it's just that we've been lucky for the past month with cool temps in the 60s and 70s.

Now, I'm not going to be able to leave the window open, but I might be able to leave the door open. This room sits adjacent to the garage attic, which has a black shingled roof, IE HOT!. The attic sits about 6 inches below the window, on the west side, which is genneraly where the wind comes from.

Now, I think I'm beggining to realize that most of the heat generated by this computer is not made by the box. Instead, most of it comes from the Monitor and Subwoofer, even the power supply to the speakers gets quite hot.

If I were to unplug the sub, turn off the monitor, unplug the speakers, and put this thing in a suspend mode for the day, would it be safe to wake it up for week via BIOS alarm?

I guess I shouldn't be so worried. I do have the bios set to shutdown if an overheat should occur.

I don't know, it's just that I've never left turned on for so long without me being there.

What I don't want to do is get to the beach house and be worried about my PC the whole time. I need some reassurance.

What do you think of me leaving my PC run for a week in near 90F day temps with the windows closed?

Dan O.

I think you're worrying yourself to death with this. I'm beginning to think you may be better off shutting it down and preserving peace of mind during your vacation. Why stress over it, you can resume folding duties when you return? And you have those Xeons working for you so you wouldn't be at a total standstill.

Another option is to reduce the CPU usage to 50 percent. That should cutback on some of the heat generated. Really though, I'd rather see a post in a week about how you enjoyed your vacation as opposed to how you worried yourself the whole time

Leave it on.... you'll forget about it soon enough and the bios shutdown will work (ok... 99% likely to work).