How To Get Better Performance On Laptop

Keep Your Laptop Cool

The hotter your laptop gets, the worse its performance becomes: a hot laptop will try to self-regulate its temperatures by slowing things down. Heres how to keep your laptop cool for more consistent high performance and less stress on sensitive internal components:

• Clean your laptops fans and vents. As dust builds up, your laptop cant vent hot air as efficiently. Physically clean your laptop regularly, and tidy the vents so it can keep itself cool. If youre feeling brave , you can open up your laptop and clean its fans directly.

• Dont put it on your lap. The word laptop is misleading. Place your laptop on a smooth, flat surface so that air can circulate underneath it. If its on your lap, or on a carpet or blanket, youll smother it.

• Plug it in. When your laptop runs on battery power, things can get hot especially if youve optimized its power settings for performance. Whenever you can, keep your laptop plugged into an external power supply.

• Use a cooling platform: An external cooling stand blows cool air against the underside of your laptop to improve airflow. You can pick one up for a relatively low price, and itll plug right into your laptop via USB.

Upgrade To Faster Drive

If, even after going through the reset process, you are not noticing performance improvements, then it might be time to upgrade the hard drive to an SSD.

Upgrading to a Solid-State Drive is perhaps one of the best ways to increase performance on older hardware. Usually, it’s because SSDs do not have moving parts like traditional hard drives, which means data can be read and written a lot faster.

When you replace an HDD with an SSD, Windows 10 will boots noticeable faster, apps will launch and run quicker, and the overall performance will be snappier and faster.

If you plan to upgrade to an SSD, we recommend the Samsung 860 EVO because of its fast performance, reliability, and five-year warranty.

Set Windows To Adjust For Best Performance

Your laptop does not only process your games but also its appearance and background apps. They are all necessary for your laptop to function properly. However, you can sacrifice a little bit of the appearance to give more priority to improve your gaming performance. You could do it by following the steps below:

Restart your game after adjusting the settings for the best results. You will see that the quality of the appearance of everything will decrease but your gaming performance will become smoother.

This option is good if you can make the hard choice of sacrificing your game and laptops overall appearance in exchange for better performance.

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Clean Out Your Hard Disk

If youve got a bloated hard disk filled with files you dont need, you could be slowing down your PC. Cleaning it out can give you a speed boost. Windows 10 has a surprisingly useful built-in tool for doing this called Storage Sense. Go to Settings > System > Storage and at the top of the screen, move the toggle from Off to On. When you do this, Windows constantly monitors your PC and deletes old junk files you no longer need temporary files, files in the Downloads folder that havent been changed in a month, and old Recycle Bin files.

You can customize how Storage Sense works and also use it to free up even more space than it normally would. Underneath Storage Sense, click Configure Storage Sense or run it now. From the screen that appears, you can change how often Storage Sense deletes files .

You can also tell Storage Sense to delete files in your Download folder, depending on how long theyve been there, and set how long to wait to delete files in the Recycle Bin automatically. You can also have Storage Sense move files from your PC to the cloud in Microsofts OneDrive cloud storage if theyre not opened for a certain amount of time .

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Heres how to customize the way Storage Sense works, and to tell it to delete old versions of Windows.

Defragment The Hard Drive

If your laptop uses a hard drive, it might need to be defragged. Because HDDs access information sequentially, having information in multiple places increases the time the drive takes to access the information. Defragmenting your hard drive moves data that is on the drive into a logical formation, making it quicker to access.

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Install A Solid State Drive

If your laptop has a hard drive , consider changing it for a solid state drive . An SSD can speed up your everyday tasks by up to six times.1 SSDs use flash memory to eliminate the moving parts present in HDDs, allowing the computer to find files faster.

For laptops, SSDs are more durable and energy-efficient. Most laptop makers are using SSDs for new laptops because they are more durable, lighter weight, and use less battery power than hard drives.

Pc Booster #: Switch To A Solid

One of the best ways to rejuvenate any laptop or PC is to install a solid-state drive. SSDs work on everything from old Lenovo ThinkPad laptops to dusty old Dell PCs, and the results are always worthwhile. Boot times are faster, read/write actions speed up dramatically, and even the most frugal processors feel alive with an SSD working alongside them.

Because there are no moving parts in SSDs, the read/write speeds are far superior to older optical hard-disk drives Buying one wont break the bank, but you might have to compromise a little on storage space, as SSDs still cost more per GB than mechanical hard disks.

Before you worry about finding your old Windows disks for your new drive, its easy enough to clone the current HDD onto a new SSD. Download a third-party OS cloning tool and copy your older drive, sector-by-sector. Just be sure that the cloning application converts the boot sector to SSD, or the OS wont launch. Programs like EaseUS Todo Backup establish a proper SSD boot sector, so you dont have to deal with boot repairs later.

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Clear Your Internet Cache

Much like those pesky files clogging your hard drive, there are even more hidden items taking up space through your internet cache. Clearing them out regularly can free up a couple of gig’s worth of storage, noticeably speeding up your laptop.

How to clear internet cache on most browsers

The easiest way to clear temporary files from your internet cache is to go through your individual browsers, including Google Chrome, Firefox and Microsoft Edge, and access the Settings tab.

Regardless of the browser, finding Clear History, Clear Data and Clear Cache will take moments. Follow the directions presented, which is usually a click or two of a button commanding the deletion of all the data. Once that is done, you’ll have freed more space through your cache, increasing your laptop’s performance.

How to delete internet cache on Safari for Mac

It’s slightly different for Safari users. With Apple’s browser, all you need to do is click on Preferences and then click the Privacy tab. Keep in mind that Apple deletes all cookie caches after you visit a website.

However, once you are on the Privacy tab, you have three options to help you maintain a clear cache:

Signs Your Computer May Have A Virus

Once you have completed the above measures to help your computer run faster, you should see a positive difference in the performance. If, however, you are still experiencing a slow computer, your device may be infected with a virus. Here are the top signs that your computer might be experiencing a more serious issue.

• Unexpected pop-ups continue to appear
• Your hard drive is working extra hard
• Your computer is still slow to start up
• You find you have a lack of storage space
• You are missing files
• Your computers programs continue to crash
• Your web browser is sluggish

If you suspect your computer may be compromised or you cant pinpoint the issue yourself, it can be useful to contact the operating systems support team. They should be able to pinpoint the problem with your system or have you bring in your device for further inspection.

Here are support links to for popular computer systems:

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What Is A Gaming Laptop

If you think that gaming laptops are laptops that are only designed to play games, then you are wrong. Basically, gaming laptops are all laptops that could handle intense processes such as animations, graphics, games, and complex simulations. It is not limited to just playing games but all that needs a high level of performance.

These laptops have a higher quality of hardware that will not be utilized if you will just be using simple tools like MS Word. Yes, an allowance on your laptop specs is better, just take note that if you will want to buy a gaming laptop, their prices are also on a higher level than ordinary laptops.

Delay Automatic Windows Updates

Automatic Windows updates are a good thing, as software updates often contain security fixes. But when youre downloading an update in the middle of an online gaming session, that can rip through your bandwidth.

Heres how to deactivate automatic Windows updates to make your computer faster for gaming:

You can also elect to pause future updates, but we recommend that you always install software updates ASAP to reduce the risk of being targeted by security exploits.

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Enable Smooth Motion In Steamvr For Valve Index And Htc Vive

While Oculus’ software automatically enables motion smoothing and gives no obvious way of turning it off, SteamVR offers a similar setting for supported headsets like the HTC Vive family and the Valve Index that may not be enabled by default. You’ll want to make sure this is on if you’ve got one of these headsets, as it can help smooth out motion even when frame rates are low.

Check For Viruses And Spyware

You can run the built-in Windows Defender or a third-party app to do this, but you’re best served by PCMag security guru Neil Rubenking’s top pick among malware-cleanup programs, Malwarebytes Anti-Malwareit’s free! But don’t forget to use ongoing anti-malware protection, too. Some of the AV products have a lighter footprint on system performance than others, and the lightest of all, according to Rubenking, is Webroot SecureAnywhere AntiVirus. Rubenking also awards 4.5-star-rated Editor’s Choices to Bitdefender’s and Kaspersky’s AV software. See his complete roundup of the best antivirus software for full details.

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Switch Off Unnecessary Animations

Ever since Windows Vista , Microsofts operating system has become cluttered with fancy graphics and animated flourishes that do little to improve productivity. By default, Windows will automatically disable some of these based on how powerful your system is, but if youre willing to sacrifice a bit more aesthetic appeal for the sake of speed, its easy to switch all of the graphics off and run on the bare essentials.

To do this, open that Start Menu and start typing in ‘Adjust the appearance and performance of Windows’. Click on this option and from the scroll menu untick everything you don’t wish to see on the desktop . Click OK and this will change the desktop to something more basic looking.

On systems other than Windows 10, switching everything off gives the desktop a Windows 95-style look and feel. Its surprising to note how much of the so-called ‘flat look’ of Windows 10 relies on graphical flourishes once everything is switched off.

Adjust Power Mode To Improve Laptops Speed

Did you know that your laptop has a hidden power? Yes, and it is the power to control and balance your battery power and processing power. It is initially set to the balanced mode but you can increase your gaming performance by also increasing its power consumption.

To control your laptops Power Mode, follow the steps below:

Just take note that doing this will make your laptops battery drain faster so it is not recommended if your laptop is not directly plugged in into an AC power source.

You can also turn on the additional High-Performance mode of your laptop on the Control Panel. You can enable it by following the steps below:

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What Are The General Causes Of Low Fps

A decline in the FPS is a result of your laptop not getting enough resources or power to run a program. To fix this problem, you must first identify the issues root cause. Its probably a consequence of one or more of the following factors.

• Power Issues: The laptop may not be plugged in properly or is in battery mode. When running on battery mode, laptops tend to optimize the battery life so it compromises on the systems speed including the frame rate.
• Temperature Issues: The laptops temperature could be too high. Heavy rendering on graphics and too much utilization of resources can cause your laptop to overheat, causing a drastic drop in the FPS.
• Resource Issues: You may have insufficient resources to run your program. All programs on your laptop utilize the available hardware such as memory, CPU, and disk. High consumption of these resources will certainly affect the FPS of your game during runtime.
• Driver Issues: Your graphics driver may be out of date. Programs may require your laptop to have the latest drivers. If this criterion is not met, the display performance may not be as top-notch as it could be.

FPS drops are common in low-end laptops, but its essential to know that even high-end laptops experience this mishap. So, before you decide to spend your money to upgrade your laptop, try out our quick fixes first.

Increase System Performance With Hp Support Assistant

Developed by HP, HP Support Assistant works on finding updates and providing troubleshooting tools for HP devices. In this way, HP Performance Tune-up Check, a system optimization tool in HP Support Assistant will be applied.

Step 1: To access HP Support Assistant, you can search Support Assistant in the start menu or click the blue question mark in the taskbar. If it is not installed on your computer, you need to download it from the HP official site.

Step 2: Choose your Windows 10 HP laptop to check.

Step 3: Click Performance Tune-up Check in the One click fixes section.

Step 4: Hit Optimize to improve system performance in your Windows 10 HP laptop.

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Configure Freesync / G

These two technologies have the same functionality: dynamically adjust your monitors refresh rate to match the FPS. The difference between them is their compatibility.

G-Sync is an nVidia proprietary technology, whilst FreeSync is an open-source standard developed by AMD. Recently, nVidia has started allowing Variable Refresh Rate on select FreeSync monitors. They are testing and adding support for more monitors with each driver update.

Keep in mind that these features are not available on all monitors, and you should check the specifications of your screen to see if VRR is available.

If your monitor supports VRR, make sure it is turned on from the monitors OSD , and then you can configure it in your GPUs software.

VRR should not be confused with V-Sync as the latter is a software feature that limits your FPS to your monitors refresh rate. It works in the opposite way to VRR. If you are experiencing tearing in games, then you can turn on V-Sync.

However, if you dont encounter this issue, then you should always turn it off, as it will have a negative impact on your gaming experience.

Disable Unnecessary Startup Programs

When you turn on your PC, some programs start automatically and run in the background. You can disable these programs so they dont run when your PC starts.

Many programs are designed to start automatically when Windows does. You dont realize they’re running, but they’ll open quickly when you go to use them. This is helpful for programs you use a lot, but not for programs you dont use often because it increases the time it takes Windows to start.

Find the programs that start automatically

Sometimes you can determine which programs start automatically by looking at the program icons in the notification area on the far right of the taskbar. Check there first to see if there are any programs running that you dont want to start automatically. To try to find out the name of the program, point to the icon with your mouse pointer. Make sure you select Show hidden icons , so you dont miss any programs.

Notification area with mouse pointing to show hidden icons

Even after you check the notification area, you might still miss some programs that run automatically at startup. Heres how you can find all the programs that start automatically, and stop the ones that you dont want to start automatically when Windows starts.

To stop a program from starting automatically

Notes:

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