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Disable Power Throttling in Windows 10

A couple of days ago, Microsoft revealed a new power saving option they are working on. It is a new feature, called "Power Throttling", which should improve the battery life of laptop and tablets on processors which support it.

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According to Microsoft, Power Throttling is a temporary name for the feature. The company said they already experimented with power management in Windows 10 Creators Update, but the official launch of this feature is expected with the upcoming "Redstone 3" feature update.

Update: If you are running Windows 10 version 1709 Fall Creators Update and above, please see the updated tutorial:

How To Disable Power Throttling in Windows 10 [Recent Versions]

If a device comes with Intel's Skylake, Kaby Lake or later processors, Power Throttling can reduce up to 11% power consumption by a device's CPU.

The main idea behind the feature is limiting the CPU resources for inactive apps. If some application is minimized or runs in the background, it still uses your system resources. For such apps, the operating system will place the CPU in its most energy-efficient operating modes – work gets done, but minimal possible battery is spent on that work. A special smart algorithm will detect active user tasks and keep them running, while all other processes will be throttled. The Task Manager can be used to find such apps. There is a dedicated column "Background Moderated" in Task Manager on the Details tab which will indicate this.

Power Throttling Task Manager

While the idea sounds great, the current implementation of Power Throttling has some issues. Many apps run properly in this mode, but some software is not compatible with the limited CPU mode. If you are suffering from this issue, here is how to disable it.

To disable power throttling in Windows 10, change the active power plan from Balanced to High Performance.

Windows 10 Creators Update will come with a refined user interface for the battery flyout. Here is how it looks: Battery Slider

It includes a power slider which allows the user to adjust the level of performance versus power saving features. Using this new option, the user can quickly switch the current power mode from "battery saver" to "best performance".

The slider includes four positions, as follows from left to right:

  1. Battery saver
  2. Recommended
  3. Better performance
  4. Best performance

Move the slider to the right to enable the High Performance power plan. This will disable Power Throttling.

Alternatively, you can use the classic Power Options applet.

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Go to System - Power & sleep.
  3. On the right, click on the link Additional power settings.Settngs Additional Power Settings Link
  4. The following dialog window will be opened. There, pick the High performance power plan.Disable Power Throttling In Windows 10

It is possible to prevent Windows 10 from managing the CPU resources for a specific app. Here is how it can be done.

In Settings, open System - Battery. On the right, click on the text "Battery Usage by App".

Settings System Battery
Find the app you want to exclude from Power Throttling, and disable the option "Managed by Windows" to off.Battery App Managed By Windows

Once you disable the option, a new check box will appear, "Allow app to run background tasks". Tick it to allow the app to run in the background.

Allow App Running In Background

That's it.

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Author: Sergey Tkachenko

Sergey Tkachenko is a software developer who started Winaero back in 2011. On this blog, Sergey is writing about everything connected to Microsoft, Windows and popular software. Follow him on Telegram, Twitter, and YouTube.

2 thoughts on “Disable Power Throttling in Windows 10”

  1. Thanks for the info. This does demonstrate how little Microsoft has achieved in integrating Control Panel and Settings!

  2. So far my experience with Fall Creator has been disappointed in how aggressive it attempts to throttle back the CPU. Maybe not so apparent with a core i5 or i7 mobile. But my core i3 laptops is running like a bad Celeron after update. I finally realized looking at Task Manager that the CPU hardly ever comes close to clocking to its rated core speed. I then realized this probably explained my longer boot times, slower launch of Chrome, and in general a slower experience. Even my wife’s i7 7500u laptop was noticeably slower and my only solution or work around is get back to a performance profile that prevents this under clocking. Sadly Microsoft claims better battery life with Fall Creator but clearly they simply tweaked the throttling of CPU to give the perception that Fall Creator is more efficient. Unfortunately its appears at the expense of performance. I can’t imagine this will impress many who already are complaining about performance issues.

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