In the Windows 10 Creators Update version 1703 (build 15063) and later, the SEC NVMe Idle Timeout setting in Power Options lets users set to have NVMe devices power down after a specified time in milliseconds of inactivity is detected.
By default, SEC NVMe Idle Timeout is set to 100 milliseconds on battery and 200 milliseconds plugged in.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the SEC NVMe Idle Timeout setting under Hard disk in Power Options for all users in Windows 10.
The AHCI Link Power Management – HIPM/DIPM setting in Power Options allows users to configure the link power management mode for disk and storage devices that are attached to the system through an AHCI interface. AHCI Link Power Management is a technique where the SATA AHCI controller puts the SATA link to the internal HDD and/or SSD disk into a very low power mode when there.
The AHCI Link Power Management – Adaptive setting in Power Options specifies the period of AHCI link idle time in milliseconds before the link is put into a slumber state when Host-Initiated Power Management (HIPM) or Device-Initiated Power Management (DIPM) is enabled.
By default, AHCI Link Power Management – Adaptive is set to 0 (Only use partial state).
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the AHCI Link Power Management – Adaptive setting under Hard disk in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
Having your HDDs automatically turned off after being idle can help save energy and extend a PC’s battery life.
The Turn off hard disk after setting in Power Options lets users set to have hard disks (HDD) power down after a specified time of HDD inactivity is detected.
Some Windows systems might exhibit very small amounts (bursts) of disk activity separated by relatively long amounts of disk idle time. This pattern of disk activity impacts system power savings because the disk is powered up periodically. The disk then remains in the spin-up state for at least the disk idle timeâout, even if the amount of disk activity that caused the disk to spin up is very small.
The Hard disk burst ignore time setting in Power Options lets users ignore this burst of disk activity up to a specified time when the Turn off hard disk after setting is determining if a hard disk is idle. By default, Hard disk burst ignore time is set to 0 (do not ignore disk burst activity).
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Hard disk burst ignore time setting under Hard disk in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
Starting with Windows 10 Spring Creators Update version 1803 build 17101, Microsoft introduces a new Ultimate Performance power plan scheme.
A new power scheme â Ultimate Performance: Demanding workloads on workstations always desire more performance. As part of our effort to provide the absolute maximum performance weâre introducing a new power policy called Ultimate Performance. Windows has developed key areas where performance and efficiency tradeoffs are made in the OS. Over time, weâve amassed a collection of settings which allow the OS to quickly tune the behavior based on user preference, policy, underlying hardware or workload.
This new policy builds on the current High-Performance policy, and it goes a step further to eliminate micro-latencies associated with fine grained power management techniques. The Ultimate Performance Power plan is selectable either by an OEM on new systems or selectable by a user. To do so, you can go to Control Panel and navigate to Power Options under Hardware and Sound (you can also ârunâ Powercfg.cpl). Just like other power policies in Windows, the contents of the Ultimate Performance policy can be customized.
As the power scheme is geared towards reducing micro-latencies it may directly impact hardware; and consume more power than the default balanced plan. The Ultimate Performance power policy is currently not available on battery powered systems.
While Microsoft has restricted the new Ultimate Performance power plan to only be available for the Windows 10 Pro for Workstations edition by default, it can easily be enabled (added) in any edition of Windows 10 version 1803 (build 17101) and later.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Ultimate Performance power plan scheme in any edition of Windows 10 version 1803 and later.
The Power menu in Windows 10 can allow users to sleep, hibernate, shut down, or restart the PC without having to sign in to Windows.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable Shut Down, Restart, Sleep, and Hibernate in the Power menu for specific or all users in Windows 10.
The Battery setting in Power Options allows you to configure notification and action settings you want when your battery reaches a set low and critical level.
By default, when your battery reaches a low or critical level, you will get a “Your battery is running low” (low) or “Your battery is very low” (critical) notification before the set action is taken.
This tutorial will show you how to change the low and critical battery notification, level, and action settings for your active power plan in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
The USB selective suspend setting under USB settings in Power Options allows users to specify whether USB selective suspend is turned on or off.
The USB selective suspend feature allows the hub driver to suspend an individual port without affecting the operation of the other ports on the hub. Selective suspension of USB devices is especially useful in portable computers, since it helps conserve battery power. Many devices, such as fingerprint readers and other kinds of biometric scanners, only require power intermittently. Suspending such devices, when the device is not in use, reduces overall power consumption.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the USB selective suspend setting under USB settings in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
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Link State Power Management is a part of the PCI Express Power Management Settings in Power Options that allows users to specify the Active State Power Management (ASPM) policy to use for capable links when the link is idle.
The link state of a PCIe device is converted from L0 (on) to L1 (off) when the link is not transferring data. The hardware is automatically converted to L0 again when data is available to transfer across the link.
There are basically 2 levels of power management in the PCI Express options. The difference between these 2 options are the power savings versus the latency (Time to recover from the Sleep state).
Users can specify the following ASPM policies below:
Off = Turn off ASPM for all links.
Moderate power savings = The system attempts to use the L0 state when the link is idle.
Maximum power savings = The system attempts to use the L1 state when the link is idle.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Link State Power Management setting under PCI Express in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
The Video playback quality bias. setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options allows users to specify the policy to bias video playback quality.
Users can specify the following policies below:
Video playback power-saving bias. = Video playback quality would be biased towards battery life.
Video playback performance bias. = Video playback quality would be biased towards performance.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Video playback quality bias. setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
The When playing video setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options allows users to specify the power optimization mode used by your computer’s video playback pipeline.
Users can specify the following modes below:
Optimize video quality = Gives the optimum video quality during playback.
Balanced = A balance of video quality and power savings.
Optimize power savings = Gives optimum power savings during playback.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the When playing video setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
The When sharing media setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options allows users to specify what your computer does when a device or computer is playing media from your computer.
Users can specify the following actions below:
Allow the computer to sleep = Devices and computers will not be able to play media from your computer while it sleeps.
Prevent idling to sleep = Devices and computers will be able to play media from your computer unless you put it to sleep.
Allow the computer to enter Away Mode = Devices and computers will be able to play media from your computer while it is in Away Mode.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the When sharing media setting under Multimedia settings in Power Options for all users in Windows 7, Windows 8, and Windows 10.
Most people running Windows like having multiple apps running at the same time â and often, whatâs running in the background can drain your battery.
You may remember some of the power experiments Microsoft did back in January 2017 with Windows 10 build 15002. Power Throttling was one of those experiments, and showed to have up to 11% savings in CPU power consumption for some of the most strenuous use cases.
In Windows 10 build 16176, Microsoft leveraged modern silicon capabilities to run background work in a power-efficient manner, thereby enhancing battery life significantly while still giving users access to powerful multitasking capabilities of Windows. With Power Throttling, when background work is running, Windows places the CPU in its most energy efficient operating modes â work gets done, but the minimal possible battery is spent on that work.
How does it work? To give great performance to the apps youâre using, while at the same time power throttling background work, Microsoft built a sophisticated detection system into Windows. The OS identifies work that is important to you (apps in the foreground, apps playing music, as well as other categories of important work we infer from the demands of running apps and the apps the user interacts with). While this detection works well for most apps, if you happen to notice an app that is negatively impacted by Power Throttling, we really want to know!! You can do 3 things:
1. Provide feedback. Run the Feedback Hub and file feedback under the Power and Battery > Throttled Applications category.
2. Control Power Throttling system-wide, using the Power Slider. Windows works hardest to keep the processor in its efficient ranges when youâve selected Battery saver, Better battery or Better Performance, and turns off completely when youâve selected Best Performance.
3. Opt individual apps out from Power Throttling by unchecking Let Windows decide when this app can run in the background in Battery usage by app, and unchecking Reduce work app does when in background.
Starting with Windows 10 version 1709, you can enable or disable Power Throttling. If you enable Power Throttling, users will be able to apply their own Power Throttling settings as noted above.
This tutorial will show you how to enable or disable Power Throttling for all users in Windows 10.
Starting with Windows 10 build 15014, some of you will start seeing a new slider in the flyout of the Power icon on the taskbar in this build (this is enabled only on select PCs currently, and is not yet wired up to performance/power settings â Microsoft has enabled it to get early feedback).
Some of Microsoft’s Windows PC OEM partners have asked for the ability to give people a number of options for how to âtuneâ their PC for different scenarios. A person playing a game, for example, might be willing to have a few less FPS when on a long flight if it gets them more battery life â whereas the same person playing the same game, when near a power supply, may want top-end CPU performance to eek out every ounce of performance they can get. Please note â the slider does not actually set new power or performance configurations. Itâs just the UI right now. Microsoft will be working with OEMs to determine the best settings for their customers, so that they can ship those on new Windows 10 PCs. In this Insider build, Microsoft is just looking to get your feedback on this UI!
This tutorial will show you how to change the power mode to the level you want for performance and battery life in Windows 10.
The USB selective suspend feature allows the hub driver to suspend an individual port without affecting the operation of the other ports on the hub. Selective suspension of USB devices is especially useful in portable computers, since it helps conserve battery power. Many devices, such as fingerprint readers and other kinds of biometric scanners, only require power intermittently. Suspending such devices, when the device is not in use, reduces overall power consumption.
This tutorial will show you how to turn on or off USB selective suspend for your power plan in Windows 10.
The Power Saving Mode setting under Wireless Adapter Settings in Power Options allows you to control the power saving mode of wireless adapters.
The strength and performance of your wireless network will decrease as you increase power savings, but your battery life will increase.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove Power Saving Mode under Wireless Adapter Settings in Power Options for all users in Windows 10.
The AHCI Link Power Management – HIPM/DIPM power option allows you to configure the link power management mode for disk and storage devices that are attached to the system through an AHCI interface. AHCI Link Power Management is a technique where the SATA AHCI controller puts the SATA link to the internal HDD and/or SSD disk into a very low power mode when there.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the AHCI Link Power Management – HIPM/DIPM setting under Hard disk in Power Options for all users in Windows 10.
The Allow sleep with Remote Opens power setting configures the network file system to prevent the computer from automatically entering sleep when remote network files are open. This can allow your machine to go to sleep when files opened remotely have not been written to.
Allow sleep with remote opens is turned off and not available to change in Power Options by default in Windows 10.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the Allow sleep with remote opens setting in Power Options for all users in Windows 10.
The System unattended sleep timeout power setting is the idle timeout before the system returns to a low power sleep state after waking unattended.
System unattended sleep timeout is not available to set in Power Options by default in Windows 10.
This tutorial will show you how to add or remove the System unattended sleep timeout setting in Power Options for all users in Windows 10.
In Windows 10, you can specify in each power plan the default action to take when closing the lid of your laptop to either do nothing, sleep, hibernate, or shut down.
This tutorial will show you how to change the default action to take when closing the lid of your laptop in Windows 10.
In Windows 10, you can specify in each power plan the default action to take when users press the power button on the PC to either do nothing, sleep, hibernate, shut down, or turn off the display.
This tutorial will show you how to change the default action to take when users press the PC case power button in Windows 10.