Leaving your PC on all night to farm: is it bad? How much does it cost? How to set it up

Is it bad to leave your PC on 24/7?

Not because of the hours it is on. Servers run for years without shutting down, and the parts of a regular PC can also handle long hours of use. What shortens a computer's life is something else:

• Heat and dust. A clogged fan and a case with no airflow make the parts run hot all the time. Farming an idle game is a light load, but a constant one.
• Power surges. The power going out and coming back, lightning near your home. A good surge protector or a UPS protects better than turning the PC off at night.
• A laptop that cannot breathe. Plugged in all day, it runs hotter: keep it on a hard surface (never on the bed) and, if the manufacturer offers it, turn on the mode that caps the battery charge at around 80%, which extends the battery's life.

How much electricity it uses

The math is simple: power in watts × hours on ÷ 1,000 = kWh. Then multiply by the price per kWh shown on your electricity bill (with taxes and fees, it varies from region to region). On 24 hours a day for 30 days, that's 720 hours a month:

These are example ranges: the real draw depends on the parts, on how many accounts are open and on the game. The right way to know is to measure it with a plug-in power meter (or a smart plug that shows energy use) during a day of farming. A monitor that stays on adds another 15 to 30 W — letting the screen turn off by itself is the easiest saving.

Windows settings for farming all night

1. The screen can turn off; the PC must not go to sleep. In Settings › System › Power (on a laptop, Power & battery), in the screen and sleep section, let the screen turn off after a few minutes and set sleep to Never when plugged in. With the PC asleep, no tab runs.
2. Hibernation stops everything too. If there is an option to hibernate after a while, set it to Never while you farm.
3. Windows Update on your schedule. In Settings › Windows Update › Advanced options, set your Active hours to cover the period when the PC farms on its own: Windows avoids restarting to install updates during that window. You can also pause updates for a while before an important night.
4. Laptop with the lid closed. In Control Panel › Power Options › Choose what closing the lid does, choose "Do nothing" for when it is plugged in — otherwise closing the lid puts it to sleep.
5. Power mode. Balanced does the job. Windows energy saver, when on, limits what runs in the background.

Precautions worth taking

• Clean the dust off the fans every now and then and give the case room to breathe.
• A small UPS keeps the PC running through a brief power outage, so the farm does not stop. A long outage shuts everything down, with or without it.
• Keep open only what you need: each account is a game page running, and more accounts = more power use.
• Check each game's rules about leaving the account on: some ban tools that keep the session active.

Where IdleDeck comes in

A PC that stays on is half the job; the other half is keeping the tab from falling asleep. IdleDeck keeps each account awake with the window minimized or in the tray and reloads on its own any page that goes down. With the option to start with Windows, it opens by itself after a restart and turns back on the accounts that were running. If the game connection drops or an account needs attention, it alerts you by Windows notification, sound or Discord — on your phone, if you use the webhook.