If you searched for the best power mode for gaming on Windows 11, here is the short answer before the details: plug in, set the Plugged in mode to Best performance, and keep On battery on Balanced.
Older guides tell you to pick the High performance plan in Control Panel, which was the usual advice back in the Windows 7 and 10 days. On Windows 11, the route Microsoft documents is the Power mode setting in the Settings app, with three choices: Best power efficiency, Balanced and Best performance.
Laptops get one choice for when they are plugged in and another for when they run on battery.
This guide walks through where to change it before a VALORANT or League of Legends session, why a laptop on battery still runs slower even on Best performance, and what to undo when the setting is greyed out.
You won't find a promised FPS gain here, because Microsoft does not publish one, so the guide also shows how to measure the difference on your own PC. Game Mode sounds similar but is a separate switch that works independently of power mode, and it has its own guide: Windows 11 Game Mode explained. Menu names are from Windows 11 as of November 10, 2026, and can differ slightly between versions.
What Best performance actually changes on desktops and laptops
Microsoft's documentation for PC makers describes each power mode as a lightweight power plan. What it mainly changes is processor power management and other CPU settings that affect how responsive the system feels.
Graphics card power and thermal behavior are left to the manufacturer, who can hook its own settings into each mode. That is why Best performance does different amounts of work on different machines.
On a desktop the difference can be small, and some desktops do not show the Power mode option at all because the manufacturer did not enable it. Gaming laptops are where it matters most, but only together with two other things: the charger and the maker's own performance mode.
On battery, laptops usually run with lower power limits, so even Best performance often delivers fewer frames than the same laptop plugged in. If your laptop has an NVIDIA GPU, look at BatteryBoost in the NVIDIA app too, since it can cap your frame rate on battery.
Out of the box the mode is normally Balanced, although a maker can ship a different default. Best performance also has a cost: more heat, louder fans and faster battery drain. The practical setup for most players is Best performance when plugged in and Balanced on battery.
Your graphics driver has its own power management option as well, which is separate from Windows power mode and covered in NVIDIA Control Panel best settings for gaming.
How to set power mode for gaming
- 1Open the Power mode settingGo to Start > Settings > System > Power & battery and find Power mode. The options are Best power efficiency, Balanced and Best performance. If you are still on Windows 10, the same control is a slider that appears when you click the battery icon on the taskbar. It needs version 1703 or later and may not show up depending on your hardware and PC maker. Windows 10 support ended on October 14, 2025, so moving to Windows 11 is the better long term choice.
- 2Set Plugged in and On battery separatelyOn a laptop, Power mode has one choice for Plugged in and one for On battery. Since most gaming happens on the charger, set Plugged in to Best performance and leave On battery on Balanced. If you have to play on battery for a while, raise that one only for the session and switch it back afterward. Whatever you pick becomes the new default for that power state.
- 3Fix a power mode you can't changeTwo things usually block it. First, Energy saver, added in Windows 11 version 24H2, locks power mode while it is on. Turn it off from Quick Settings or the Power & battery page, and check the battery level at which you set it to switch on automatically. Second, a custom power plan hides power mode. Open Control Panel > System and Security > Power Options and select Balanced, and Power mode comes back. This often happens on PCs where someone picked High performance or a manufacturer branded plan years ago.
- 4Match the maker's performance mode and the GPUGaming laptops come with a vendor app that has its own performance modes, with names that vary by brand, such as silent, balanced, performance or turbo. If Windows is on Best performance but the vendor app is on silent, you won't get what you expect, so set both in the same direction. On laptops with both integrated and dedicated graphics, also make sure the game runs on the dedicated GPU. How to choose which GPU a game uses shows where to set that.
- 5Compare the same scene before and afterTest somewhere you can repeat exactly, such as The Range in VALORANT or the Practice Tool in League of Legends, and watch both the average frame rate and the sudden dips. How to show FPS in games covers the Steam, NVIDIA and Game Bar counters. If nothing changes, power mode is not the bottleneck on that PC, and going back to Balanced costs you nothing.
Which power mode to use, by situation (as of November 10, 2026)
| Situation | Recommended setting | Why, and what else to check |
|---|---|---|
| Gaming laptop on the charger | Plugged in: Best performance | Set the maker's performance mode to its performance side as well, or the gain stays small. |
| Laptop gaming on battery | On battery: Balanced, Best performance only when needed | Power limits are usually lower on battery, so frame rates often stay below what you get plugged in. |
| Desktop PC | Best performance, if the option is there | Power mode mostly touches CPU settings, so the change can be small, and some desktops don't show it. |
| Power mode greyed out or missing | Select Balanced in Control Panel Power Options | With a custom, High performance or manufacturer plan selected, Power mode does not appear. |
| Energy saver is on | Turn Energy saver off | While it is on you can't change power mode, and screen brightness drops by 30% by default, which you can switch off separately. |
| Lots of heat and fan noise | Drop to Balanced and compare | A very hot chip can lower its clocks even in a performance mode. Check with how to check GPU temperature first. |
| Gaming while recording | Charger plugged in + Best performance | With the charger in, both the game and the recording encoder get full power headroom, so your before and after clips stay consistent. |
Before you queue up
- The laptop charger is connected and the battery icon shows it is charging
- Power mode is set to Best performance for Plugged in
- Energy saver is off, and you know the battery level at which it turns on by itself
- The maker's performance mode and the GPU the game uses are both set for performance
- Your monitor runs at its full refresh rate, because extra frames feel like nothing on a display stuck at 60 Hz. See how to change your refresh rate
Record a match before and after the change
Numbers alone can hide things. Short hitches and frame drops in the middle of a fight are much easier to spot when you watch them back. DOR is a free Windows app that detects VALORANT or League of Legends when you launch it, records the whole match, and keeps the recordings in My Clips inside the app.
VALORANT also gets automatic clips of your kills with ace and clutch tags, and League of Legends gets automatic clips of kills, multikills and objectives, so finding a comparable fight takes seconds.
Save one match before you change power mode and one after, then watch the same kind of fight side by side. On a laptop, record with the charger plugged in and Plugged in set to Best performance so both the game and the recording get full power headroom.
On supported NVIDIA graphics cards such as the RTX series, DOR records with NVENC hardware encoding, and the free plan defaults to 1080p at 30 FPS. For lighter recording settings on a laptop, read how to record gameplay on a laptop.
