How to properly shut off a pc?

[San_Cingay]

Alrighty, this might sound very very stupid, but i was wondering how to actually shut down a pc? Going to the bottom left of the screen pressing the windows logo and shutting it down from there, or just pressing the power button on the PC itself? If its neither of them, please tell me the proper way of doing it. And by the way, should i flip the switch and turn off my PSU when i shut down my pc?

 

[turkey3_scratch]

They do the same thing (assuming you don't hold down the power button). No you don't need to flip your PSU switch.

 

[Robert Cook]

much better to ask and then do the right thing, then to not ask and mess up. go to windows start menu and turn the computer off, then once it is off if you want you can flip the PSU power switch, that is your call, unless you have a good reason to switch off the PSU (such as being gone on travel for a while) then I would just leave the PSU on. the power button is really only used for starting the PC and for shutting it down if it freezes up and you cannot shut it down through windows.

 

[turkey3_scratch]

Oh actually I think my power button puts thew computer in sleep. So that'd have to be changed in my control panel to shut down. Sleep seems to be the default in Windows 10.

 

[Benab3]

The normal way to shut down a PC is by doing it through Windows. By clicking the Windows Logo ETC.
Briefly pressing the power button on a modern PC, basically does the same thing. It just sends a message to the operating system, telling the computer to shutdown.
Do not hold down the power button, as this will do a hard shutdown on the computer. Basically just cutting the power to it. Not recommended unless the computer has frozen for example.

There is no need to flip the switch on the PSU.

 

[geofelt]

Using the start button to shut down lets windows stop running tasks gracefully.
Pushing the start button does the same thing, assuming the default is to power off.

However shutting down by pressing and holding the power button for 4 seconds shuts down immediately without giving windows a chance to clean up.

Better yet, I suggest not shutting down at all normally.
Use sleep to ram(not hibernate) instead.
That keeps only ram active which is a very low power state.
Sleep and wake is then only a matter of a few seconds.

 

[ChaoticWolf]

The best way you can shut off a PC is not being careless. Don't just go down to the power button and just hold it down until it turns off, this won't severly break anything as there is a super rare chance of that happening, but it just cuts off every component inside the PC shutting it down without Windows taking care of a few things before a power off.
Worst of all, when the PC is on, don't go behind the computer and unplug it's power, or flip the PSU switch to off, this is the most improper way of shutting off a PC

The best way to turn off a PC properly is not doing that last part, but instead inside your operating system, probably Windows I'm assuming, you go to the power options and shut it down. This will allow your operating system to possibly give you time to save your work or possibly even do it for you and close tasks running in the background, clean up, and shut off your PC nice and cleanly
Sleep mode will just put your PC into a low power state and somewhat turn off your computer, but will still retain everything in windows
when it starts up again, the ram will be active only which is very low power
The power button will also be blinking, which is on all or if not almost on every pc
It will get off of sleep mode once the button is pressed again or the keyboard has a key that has been pressed or the mouse has been moved
Hibernate will write the current windows state to the Ram (I think in theory) and turn off your PC like you normally would on a shut down.
The Pc will be off like normal, but when you turn it back on, windows will be able to load from its previous state since its been retained in the memory
You said it's neither shutting it off manually in windows or by the power button that is proper, but I mean shutting down in the os is the most proper way you can do it, sleep can be too.