Is it best to let my PC "sleep"?

I have read in several forums over the years where some people hardly ever boot their system. It was called "standby" at the time, and still is in XP. Is it best to only reboot everyday, or put my system to "sleep" and reboot once a week? Normally, during the day I never shut down, I put it to sleep. In fact, today was the first in five days or so that I rebooted, and that's because Avast installed something new today and required it. The reason I'm asking this is I've read that it wears out a part quicker and that that the PC will last longer by letting it sleep and rebooting once a week. Any truth to this?

Personally, even though I don't always do so. I would recommend a shutdown while you are asleep or away for long periods. Power failures and bad cooling could cause damage to your system while you are not there to catch it. Plus the use of electricity even though its at a minimum while sleeping.

Now with that said, heating and cooling in one of the causes in damaged circuit boards. Every time the computer boots up components heat and expand. This causes tension (especially in a cold computer) and if great enough could cause cracks in the circuit. This is not a real great concern but the heating and cooling cycles do add up. How many times can you flex a wire before it breaks?

The only advise I can give is to find a happy medium. Which would be to leave the computer on as long as you are to where you can keep an eye on it.

Excellent response Cooley. I was about to post the same exact thing about expansion and heating/cooling but was distracted here.

Nice forum.

You can always try hibernate, which powers down your PC but saves the memory so you can quickly resume. There are downsides to this, as it will slow your PC down if you rarely restart/shutdown and it can also cause problems if your PC crashes during resume.

I always shutdown now, because it saves power and means that my PC is nice and fresh once booted.

That's an interesting point about the heating/cooling though!