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How often do you turn your Mini off?
- Thread starter Sarah Hamilton
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Never turn it off. It's designed to run 24/7. Clearing RAM is not a thing any more than running your car to fuel exhaustion to clear the fuel tank.
They’re often used as servers, home and professional. Mine gets rebooted for software updates only.
Same here. My minis are always running unless they are restarting after an update. Actually, that goes for all my Macs.
I leave mine on 24/7, it reboots for software updates only. I've also disabled sleep mode, because its our home media (Plex, iTunes) & Time Machine server.
I don't know that there's hard research on this, but I've found over the years that if I keep my computer off for half the time, it tends to last twice as long, and I like to keep my computers for a long time. For this reason I bought 2 Minis, so that when one is off I can still use the other one without losing productivity, and both last twice as long.
I turn my M1 Mac Mini off when I'm not going to be using it for awhile. I'm trying to migrate my usage to all-Mac, but having a few problems in trying to do so. .PDF docs don't print the same, and I'm having to use Chrome for one thing (like signing a finance .PDF application), as Firefox and Safari simply will NOT work. Dunno why, but at least there is a work around. But, yeah... I'm leaving it on more now, since I'm using it more. But if I'm going to be away on a trip or something, or not use it for a few days... I'll shut it down. It may not use much power in idle (sleep or whatever), but it uses nothing, if it's off! 
I've worked in IT for nearly 20 years, and if this is the case - its news to me. There's so many variables that go into a computers longevity. The environment it resides in, generally plays the biggest part. I had a 2011 iMac sitting on a desk that ran 24x7 with no issues for nearly 7 years. When it finally did have an issue - it was due to a known issue with the graphics card. Had it replaced, and it ran for another 2 1/2 years before I upgraded it to a 2019 iMac.
Most of my Macs have always resided on desks, and kept mostly away from vents/dirt/dust/pet dander/smoke - which has a huge impact on the longevity of moving parts. Environment is the biggest factor in any computer's life span. Its power state has no impact.
Not sure I‘m following your train of thought on this…why have (for example) two macs from 2010 that last ten years, when you could just have one Mac lasting five years, then buy the second Mac? You would a) not have to worry about syncing the two, b) spread out your costs, and c) have a more up to date computer.
I turn my systems off every day. More from habit than a particular reason.
My 2014 Mini is a media server and runs 24/7 without sleeping, it runs for months without a reboot. 2012 quad Mini is a file/backup server and also runs 24/7 headless. The 2018 Mini is my primary Mac, and I shut it down at the end of the day and start it up the next morning so it typically runs 12-14 hours a day.
I don't think I've EVER turned it off. I use is regularly... and reboot it occasionally (to install macOS updates), but I don't remember ever turning it off. Why would I?
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In support forums and other places I read that you should restart it once a month at least, maybe even every week considering Monterey is in a strange place right now, the same one week goes for other „computers“, including smartphones and tablets. Regular but not-too-often restarts can help settle and prevent internal problems which will occur at some point with an ever running computer. In MacOS System Preferences, in the Power/Battery/whatevs section there is actually an option to have scheduled restarts or shut downs. So you can have it run for ever but just now that one morning every week you have to log in again. Done deal.
