First, there are two main schools of thought on leaving your computer running all the time.
The first is that turning it on is essentially that same as giving it a power surge, and causes a lot of wear on the electronic components, especially the mother board. So to an extent it's better to leave it running.
The second is that leaving it running all the time is harder on other components, such as fans (as the'll clog faster) and especially the bearings in the hard drives. Changes are if the computer is running all the time your hard drives will fail before anything else.
Some other things to consider:
-Power consumption. This isn't a huge problem. An idle computer IS NOT going to draw 400W like feisar stated. Probably something closer to 150-200W, maybe less depending on the system configureation. It still adds up over time though, so turning it off doesn't hurt.
-Memory/OS. If you notice, leaving Windows on for a long time tends to make it unstable. Linux doesn't do this, but windows is self-destructive. Restarting a computer helps fix this as it dumps the RAM and reinitializes everything.
-Dust. Electronic components attract dust due to static. I hate to say it but what Riizke said is flat wrong. Fans in a computer are there for cooling, not to blow dust away. A computer with really good airflow is going to suck in a lot more dust than one without. More dust will plug up the fans and the heatsinks faster. Plugged fans and heatsinks will increase the chances of the computer overheating, which can cause perminant damage to internal components. A computer should be cleaned out every 4-6 months IMO, but if you leave it running 24/7 it will collect dust a lot faster.
-Finally, unless you have a UPS (uninterruptible power supply) leaving a computer on all the time is going to subject it to more brownouts and unclean power. This is probably the single hardest thing on computer internals.
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Problems? See this thread at archive.org.
