The latest MSI, Alienware or Razer gaming laptops are a staple for many gamers but to ensure your gaming laptop will won’t die on you while you’re playing your favourite games. It is important to know how to make gaming laptop battery last longer?
As a laptop gamer myself I understand there is nothing worse than your gaming laptop battery dying during the heat of a battle. So to prevent that happening, keep reading to learn more.
What You Will Learn..
How to save battery on gaming laptop
How to check your batteries health
What Affects Your Laptop Battery
What Things Can Affect Battery Life?
Unfortunately, gaming laptops are not known for their long battery life. Typically, things like the hardware inside, power settings, and poor maintenance are all key factors that will likely affect the life of your battery. The size of your device can also affect battery life as bigger laptops use more power.
A gaming laptop with a dedicated GPU will use much more battery power than a laptop that only has integrated graphics. If you are play demanding video games like GTA 5 on your gaming laptop or World of Warcraft. It will use up more battery power than less demanding games.
Poor maintenance is also a contributor to why your battery is draining faster. This includes not cleaning your laptop regularly and letting dust build up inside blocking the vents and exhausts.
The fans inside the laptop need to work harder, so you will then need to learn how to keep your gaming laptop cool. If not, it may prevent heat dissipation and lead to hardware damage.
What Affects Battery Health?
- Screen size, and display resolution
- Powerful NVidia/AMD graphics cards
- Fast Processors with high clock speeds
- Vents Blocked preventing heat dissipation
- Too many programmes running
- Screen brightness set to high
- The volume turned up to high
- Continuously charging too 100%
How to Save Battery on Gaming Laptop?
Learning how to save battery on gaming laptop while gaming will only help you so far, why? Because it is best to use your gaming laptop while it is connected to an outlet. This will ensure you enjoy the best possible gaming performance, enjoying the highest fps in game titles like COD Warzone.
But, not all games will benefit from higher frame rates and will run fine on battery power alone. For those types of games it would be worth investing your time in learning how to improve your laptop’s battery. Below you will find a list of great laptop battery saving tips to improve battery power.
Use Battery Saver Mode to Keep Battery Healthy
One of the easiest things you can do is to adjust the power saving mode every Windows laptop will have. To do this, left click on the battery icon in the bottom right corner of the display. Then, you will see three to four options, depending on whether your gaming laptop is plugged in or not.
Check out the modes below.
Power Saving Modes
- Better Performance: This mode is perfect for those who want to squeeze every last drop of battery life out their laptop. It helps to limit resources used by background apps.
- Battery Saver: Helps to reduce display brightness, prevents downloads from Windows Update and stops background apps from syncing.
- Better Battery: Better Battery mode is a new feature of Windows that will increase your laptops battery life. It delivers longer periods between charges.
- Best Performance: It’s the best way to have a responsive, fast-booting laptop.
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Best Power Mode To Save Battery Power?
A very effective way to save battery power is by enabling “saver mode” at 20%. This can help to conserve battery power when your laptop’s battery is running low. However, enabling this will disable certain features. For example, your email clients won’t sync.
Also, apps running in the background and non-critical Windows updates are blocked. However, this is much better than your laptop dying on you before you finish your work or complete your game.
First, left-click the battery icon > click battery settings > toggle saver mode on > set the percentage (default would be 30%) > Ensure Lower Screen Brightness Is Checked.
Reduce Background Programs to Save Battery Life
Another way to gain more battery power is to turn off background programmes and apps you do not need. Apps will keep running unless you close them down correctly and therefore using up precious resources, all while draining your laptop’s battery.
Check What Apps Are Using Your Battery Power
First, click on the battery icon and then left-click. Then click Battery Settings to bring up the battery sheet. Scroll down to Battery Usage Per App. You will see which apps drain your battery the most. You can then choose whether to let the app run, or you can choose to let Windows decide what’s best.
Use Windows Task Manager To Close Apps
The easiest way to close apps and programmes you do not need is with the Windows Task manager Sheet. This will free up precious resources better used elsewhere and improve battery life.
If you are not sure what the programme is or what it does, it is best not to disable it until you have researched it further. That said, some programmes cannot be disabled.
- Press CTRL+ALT+DELETE, click on Task Manager
- Ensure the Processes Tab is enabled
- Right Click On Programmes You do not need
- Click on End Task.
Disable Start-Up Programmes to Improve Battery Life
It is also worth looking at what start-up programmes run each time you turn on your gaming laptop. Some start-up programmes can have a huge effect on battery life.
Keeping with the task manager sheet, click on the Start-Up Tab. Then Right-click on a programme you do not need and then disable it. This will prevent it from starting up when you boot your laptop.
Lower Screen Brightness to Preserve Gaming Laptop Battery
A laptop’s display is a big source of wasted energy and you should consider reducing the brightness if you want to improve your laptop’s battery health. You may not realise that if your display is set to full brightness it can use up to 40% of your power.
Moreover, when your laptop is running on battery power only. By default the display brightness should automatically decrease to save energy. However, you can adjust this setting in Windows.
- Right Click On Your Desktop
- Select Display Settings
- Adjust Brightness Accordingly
Lower Refresh Rate to Preserve Battery Power
Another thing you can do to preserve battery power is to reduce the refresh rate of your display. The greater the refresh rate, the more battery power it will use but will offer a smoother experience.
A higher refresh rate is not always needed. As an example, the refresh rate on my laptop’s display is 240Hz which I use for playing games. For other tasks, I reduce it to 120Hz to keep my battery healthy.
- Right Click On Your Desktop
- Select Display Settings
- Advanced Display Settings
- Click On Refresh Rate – Reduce
Change Hard Disk Timeout
Changing your Hard Disk Timeout can also help improve your laptop battery life and make your battery last longer. However, for this battery saving method to be effective, you need to have an HDD.
By default, the Hard Disk Timeout will be set at 60. Decreasing this to 20 or 30 can save your precious battery power. Not only that, but it can also increase the availability of the hard disk drive. That will improve your system responsiveness which is great as HDD can be a bit sluggish.
- Press Windows > Type RUN
- Select RUN > Type regedit Into Box
- Press Enter > OK
The Registry Editor sheet below.
Next, follow the steps to change the HDD Timeout number.
- Choose: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE > System
- Select CurrentControlSet > Services > Disks
- Double-click on the Time Outvalue
- Select Decimal > Lower this number to 20 or 30
- Click OK – Restart Your Laptop
Unplug Your Laptop When Not In Use
Another good battery saving measure is to unplug your laptop when it is not in use. Also, to extend the life of your laptop’s battery, you should take it off charge once it’s charged to 100 percent.
In fact, it would be best to charge your battery, 80%. Let the battery drain to about 30-40% and only then charge it again. Doing This will prolong the life of your battery, in some cases by as much as four times.
It’s important to note that lithium-polymer batteries have a finite lifespan. The higher the charge percentage, the time it needs for charging will get shorter. And over time your battery health will decrease. As each cell needs more voltage for it to store all its energy.
Create Custom Power Plan to Save Gaming Laptop Battery
Creating a custom power plan is great for saving battery power on a gaming laptop. Manufacturers set the power settings to maximum. The problem is that these settings will reduce the battery the fastest.
Creating a power plan will not only improve gaming performance on your laptop. It will also give you more complete control on how much battery juice is used.
How To Create Your Custom Plan?
- First, Right Click the battery icon.
- Select the Power Options.
- Select, Create a power plan
- Next, Name Your Plan
- Select Power Saver
- Click Next, then Save
How to Optimize Your Power Plan
Another helpful tip to ensure your laptop battery lasts longer is enabling processor performance boost mode. This is a simple way to get more power out of your processor and improved performance.
Unfortunately, this option is not available on Windows laptops by default. For this you need to edit the Windows Registry file. First see if this option is enabled already.
Quickly check using the steps below.
Find Processor Boost Mode
- Press Windows Key
- Type Edit Power Plan, then Enter
- Select your custom power plan
- Select Change Advanced Settings
- Select Processor Power Management
- Is yours visible? If not, lets create it
How to Enable Processor Performance Boost Mode
Next step is to enable processor performance boost mode. Follow the next few simple steps below. You can use this mode to save battery power and improve your overall gaming performance.
- Press Windows Key then Type RUN
- Select RUN and Type regedit Into Box
- Press Enter then OK
- Click the folder ‘HKey Local Machine‘
- Then ‘System’ then ‘Current Control Set’
- Click ‘Control’, Scroll Down, Click ‘Power’
Note: Your Window should look like the image below.
- Next, Click the folder ‘54533251-82be-4824‘.
- Next, the folder ‘be337238-od82’
- Right panel see ‘Attributes’ double click
- Change the Value Data from 1 to 2, click OK
- Restart Your Gaming Laptop
How to Check Processor Boost Mode is Visible
- Press Windows Key
- Type Edit Power Plan, then Enter
- Select your custom power plan
- Select Change Advanced Settings
- Select Processor Power Management
- This option should now be visible
You should now be able to disable or enable processor performance boost mode to help save battery power. Alternatively, if your gaming laptop is suffering from high CPU temps. You can change Processor Performance Boost Mode from aggressive to efficient aggressive or any other setting that works best. This will drastically reduce the temperature of your laptop and preserve battery power.
The settings I use are listed below.
Remove Unused Devices to Improve Battery Life
USB devices like gaming mice, external keyboards, or gaming headsets will draw power from your laptop battery. So if you’re running low on juice, it’s a good idea to unplug the ones that aren’t necessary.
Alternatively, if you have devices with RGB elements like the latest Razer gaming mouse. (like me) It is a good idea to turn RGB off settings because this will help preserve your laptop’s battery power.
Depending on the make and model of the devices you use, you should have software that you can run to disable RGB. Personally, I use Razer Synapse because the devices I own are made by Razer. So I can easily open up Razer Synapse and reduce the brightness or turn off RGB altogether.
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Elevate Your Gaming Laptop to Allow More Airflow
Elevating your laptop up off a flat surface can help to improve battery power and also keep your battery healthy. This will prevent the computer from overworking itself as it will allow for better airflow.
If you block the vents or exhausts. It means your fans need to work extra hard to be able to dissipate the heat generated by your GPU and CPU. In addition, elevating your gaming laptop can also help put less strain on your wrists. Which can lead to improved typing speeds and improved overall comfort.
Clean Your Gaming Laptop Regularly
Cleaning your gaming laptop can help improve the life of the battery. My recommendation is to clean and maintain your laptop at least once a month. When the internal components are well-maintained, the fans do not have to work as hard. This means that they don’t use as much battery power.
Dust and dirt can build up on the fan blades and other areas, which can cause the laptop to overheat. Overheating can lead to decreased performance, a shorter lifespan and poor battery life.
Check Your Batteries To Keep them Healthy
Gaming laptops have vastly improved in recent years. They have much improved the cooling technology. I myself own one of the best laptops with best cooling systems, the Razer Blade 15. However, the downside with gaming laptop is the batteries do not last too long when you play video games.
Mainly due to the powerful hardware manufactures are packing inside and the necessity for compromising on space. So it is crucial you check the health of your battery more often.
How To Check Your Batteries Health?
The easy way to check the health of the battery is by using the Windows battery report (“c:\battery-report.html”). This report is a fantastic feature that tells you exactly how long your battery will last and whether it’s time for an upgrade. Follow the steps below to create your report.
- Press, Windows Key + X
- Select Windows PowerShell
- PowerShell Window, shown below
- Paste powercfg /batteryreport /output “C:\battery-report.html”
- Press Enter – Creates a document in your C:\drive.
You should see something like this > Battery life report saved to file path C:\battery-report.html.
What To Check On The Battery Report?
This report will highlight whether you need to replace your battery. This reports displays estimated battery life when your battery is fully charged. Compared with what you’re using right now. Meaning how much juice will remain when it’s unplugged from a power source and operating at 1% capacity.
It is a good idea to check these numbers against the numbers when you first used your new gaming laptop. For instance, I started at 3.21.21 from new, which now reads 2.36.24. This means my laptop battery will run out much quicker now than when I first used my gaming laptop.
Conclusion..
That’s it from me. I have listed 11 best ways to make your gaming laptop battery last longer. These are the things I do each and every day to ensure my laptop battery lasts the longest.
I also use my gaming laptop for work and for gaming so it is important it stays in good health. Other things you can do include updating your drivers and turning off anti virus apps as well as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Lastly, remember not to charge your battery to 100% as this will shorten its lifespan.
Hopefully, you have learned how to improve the life of your gaming laptop battery. If so, please subscribe to my newsletter so I can keep you up to date with helpful articles like this one.
Thank you for reading, Cya Next Time
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