We've always suggested that our members power down their race rigs regularly and don't leave them on always. First off, it saves you some cash. You'd be surprised how much energy a computer uses, even in stand-by mode. Secondly, it's just plain good for them.

There's something called Single Event Upset (SEU) that can slow your computer and all electronic devices down. I'm not going to describe it all, but the best way to fix this is simply powering down and unpluging your rig.

This is also true of your modem and your router/switch.

A guy by the name of Jerrold Foutz has written about this. From what I can tell, the dude basically wrote the book on electronic design and troubleshoot and has been at it for a very long time.

You really should take about 10 minutes and read the full article on Trouble Shooting Electronics via The Wayback Machine. There's very little technical jargon and it's written in easy enough to understand terms.