Shut down vs. Sleep?

Two schools of thought.

1. Turning it off will limit the heat exposure on your components, which will make them last longer.

2. Leaving it on will limit the wear and tear of starting up and shutting down.

A hard drive is made to spin a certain amount of time, or start up and shut down a certain amount of time. For me, I leave it on, since I believe the parts wear down less than it would if I were to start up and shut down daily.

 

Why should it overheat?
It can stay cool enough while drawing 60-100W and at standby the only piece that is powered is the RAM which is never actively cooled even when active. Idle power consumption is 0.4W or something around that number. Most household appliances consume more when shut off yet still plugged in.

You can let it sleep for months without issues. Sometimes it needs to restart for updates and such but that is all. It is no different than with a smartphone, you don't shut that down either and the power consumption in sleep is fairly similar.

 

I try and shut it down once a week or so, and I will shut down when I know I'm not going to use the computer for a few days at least. Otherwise, it's just sleep.

 

There are dozens of "sleep or shutdown" threads where you'll find many Mac users run months at a time without shutting down. Either is perfectly fine. One thing to consider is that there are maintenance scripts that run on a daily, weekly and monthly schedule. If your Mac is in sleep mode at the scheduled time, the scripts will run the next time your Mac is awake. If your Mac is shut down at the scheduled time, the scripts won't run until the next scheduled time. If your Mac is always shut down at those times, the scripts will never run, unless you manually run them or change the default schedule. You can manually run the scripts using the Maintidgit widget.

• Poll: Do you turn you MBP off?
• Should I sleep or shut down when I'm away?
• If you guys always sleep and never shut down...
• MacBook Pro: Sleep or Shut Down?
• Is it 'bad' to never shut an iMac down, but instead sleep it?
• Do you shut down or sleep your MBA?

 

Sleep consumes barely any power at all, there is absolutely no chance whatsoever for your computer to overheat while sleeping, since the only thing powered is RAM which consumes less than 1W.

I've had a Mac since 2008 and have only ever shut it down for updates or bootcamp.

 

Maybe someone knows if it causes heat problems to put a macbook for longer periods in a sleeve while it is in sleep mode?

 

Unless it wakes up or decides to spontaneously burst into flames, no, it does not cause heat problems to have a mac in a sleeve while it is sleeping, that is just silly.

 

I haven't shutdown my MBP in years.

And sleep mode does not produce heat. The CPU should be off during sleep.

 

Sleep over shutdown always, pretty much.