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Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by pmiller2 on Friday September 27, 2019 @02:55PM (#21095149)
Technically yes. There are 3 types of phenomena that cause transistors to degrade or fail. All 3 are caused by electrons flowing through the gates. See https://semiengineering.com/transistor-aging-intensifies-10n...

Practically speaking, however, I doubt it makes much of a difference for most desktop systems.

Re:Ask HN: Should I turn off my idle machine over the weekend? by monocasa on Friday September 27, 2019 @03:06PM (#21095257)
There's way more in computers than transistors ; you have to weigh that against the other effects on the complete system. I would be surprised if the thermal cycling from shutting down and booting the computer wasn't orders of magnitude more likely to cause problems than actual wear on the transistors. That being said, all of these issues are very unlikely to occur.