Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is on?

Good afternoon,


We recently purchased a few monitors for our offices. The monitors are great but we have a question about saving energy and also keeping the heat temp down in our rooms. Basically we have our pcs running around the clock for many hours which causes a lot of heat in our rooms especially from the monitors. & well most of the time we leave around midnight and leave all of our pcs on with the monitors on as well. We were wondering if any damage will occur to our computers or monitors if we turn the monitors off while the pcs are on. We basically have to run software during the night time and internet applications that process themselves. But we would like to know if this will cause damage to our pcs, video cards, or monitors if we turn the monitors off all night and back on in the morning time. We've got a lot of expensive hardware in our pcs and the monitors themselves are new though some are still CRTs and we dont want to damage anything!

Please reply.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Turning off the monitors won't cause a problem, I turn mine off at night when I have to leave the PC running for something. I've never had a problem.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Where I work we routinely shut down the monitor in the server room. It has never caused a problem.

At home, I've been known to shut off a monitor when my "video" cruncher PC is converting a large batch of home movies - also has never caused a problem.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Yes but are these monitors attached to video cards or integrated motherboard video? Some of our coworkers say that the video card may be sending signal to the monitor while its off and can damage the video card. But no one has proof. Others say it can damage the vid card and than set off a chain which would damage your mobo and than other components etc. But still no one has proof.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

They are talking a bunch of :crap. Sounds like none of them have a clue how computers work.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Also we're not talking about screen savers or windows standby for the monitor. We mean physically turning off the monitor by pressing the on/off button. What do you have to say about it now that we've cleared this up? [ie: no standby or screensaver. physical turn off!!!]


@ Adrenalyne... Yah I think they're on some bull myself but we're all debating it and it's turning into an office brawl. We need answers!

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Right, that's what I thought you meant. In both my examples the monitor is completely turned off.

I agree with Adrenalyne - I've never, ever heard of such a thing happening.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

The answer is this: Turn it off. Or set it to go into standby, which is nearly as good.

All the video card does is send a signal to the monitor. Either the monitor is on, and receives the signal, or its not and the signal is not picked up. Its not like the signal builds up till something explodes due to there being no outlet via the monitor. The only part of the machine that cares if a monitor is on or off, and thats in a very limited sense, is the OS.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

yayyyyy no more turning on the [bleep] air conditioner on blast because the rooms get hot from the monitors being on so long! I will do it at home too. Hope it doesn't ruin my $500 pro soundcard I also use for work!!! Hope your right and doesnt effect anything in my pc or the monitor itself!


Thanks

Define what you mean by that...

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

If you boot your machine with the monitor turned off, the OS cannot detect it(most monitors are plug and play these days). So, when it gets into windows, you have a generic monitor driver loaded, instead of the correct one.

Thats about it. Even that doesnt matter much, as the monitor driver is usually only for color profiles and defining refresh rate abilities.

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

Thanks... BTW Love your avatar ADRENALYNE!!! LOL

 

Re: Can you leave a monitor off while a pc is off?

In my power settings I set my display for an hour, this doesn't turn off the monitor, but it does go into a reduced power use setting, because it's not having to lite up the display. Off is better, I suspect the display going dark takes the monitor to where it is only using a couple of watts.