Despite what some people might think, computers run on electricity and not magic fairy dust. Electricity costs money, and generating it usually has some sort of environmental cost too. In short, most people would agree that it’s better not to waste more power than you actually need. But who decides? More power on a modern computer usually means more performance, and this has to be dynamically adjusted. It’s the operating system that sets the policy on how power is allocated, but if you’re a Windows user your computer might not be doing it right.

If you’re running a desktop PC, you really should avoid Power Saver mode. Because it aggressively saves power wherever it can, it makes even a high-end computer feel slow to respond. Because it limits the maximum power that the computer can use, it also means components like the CPU and GPU don’t run at their maximum power and don’t reach their highest performance levels.

If your desktop is feeling a little laggy when responding to input, you better believe that heavy productivity apps and video games are going to perform significantly worse with Power Saver on. The thing is, Windows doesn’t really put the whole power plan thing front and center. If you didn’t know there was a power preset menu to switch between them, you’d probably just assume there was something wrong with your computer when it started performing worse than you remember.

What makes this even worse is that on a desktop system the amount of power you save in exchange for this degraded experience isn’t really that much. It matters when you’re running on battery power, but not when you’re plugged into the wall.

As you’ve probably already figured out, for most people, most of the time, the Balanced setting is the best option. That’s true for a plugged-in laptop as much as it is for a desktop PC. In this mode, the computer’s basic responsiveness should feel snappy, and when you start up intensive software, your core performance components should have access to as much power as they need.It results in a quiet but fast enough computer when you’re doing the basics, with the option to kick it up a notch. High Performance and Ultimate Performance still exist, but they’re mostly intended for specialized workloads, benchmark enthusiasts, or professional workstations where squeezing out the last few percentage points of performance matters more than power efficiency.

Incidentally, I enabled Ultimate Performance on my 24-core workstation laptop, which is always plugged in. I use smart charging to limit the battery to 60% for that reason as well. The main downside is that the lower limit for the idle fan speed is higher, but it’s well worth the snappiness for me personally. Still, I recommend most people to just stick to Balanced.

Despite what some people might think, computers run on electricity and not magic fairy dust. Electricity costs money, and generating it usually has some sort of environmental cost too. In short, most people would agree that it’s better not to waste more power than you actually need. But who decides? More power on a modern computer usually means more performance, and this has to be dynamically adjusted. It’s the operating system that sets the policy on how power is allocated, but if you’re a Windows user your computer might not be doing it right.

In Windows 11, open Settings > System > Power & battery. Under Power mode, choose Balanced if your desktop is currently set to a more restrictive option.