Why is my Acer Aspire E15 running slower when plugged in than on battery?

windows-8.1 performance battery acer-aspire

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Solution 1

In my case, it was because of the more aggressive thermal throttling that occurred as a result of the battery heating up from charging.

By cooling down the internals by, for example, holding the bottom case of the laptop up to a fan for a couple of seconds, the throttling would stop.

Solution 2

Have you adjusted the settings in Control Panel\All Control Panel Items\Power Options\Edit Plan Settings, Advance options, which have separate options for On battery and Plugged in? That is the most likely cause of the issue, particularly active vs. passive cooling in Processor power management. See 13 Ways to Save Power for more information, and Power Options if the cooling policy is not shown.
Some Windows maintenance tasks, e.g. disk optimization, can be deferred while on battery, but resume with vengeance when plugged in. Check Task Manager (or Sysinternals Process Explorer) to see if there are running Scheduled Tasks using up CPU time. If that is the issue, let the tasks finish to keep the laptop healthy, and then it should speed up.

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Author by

Vishal Khode

Love to code: Python, JS, C#, PHP, SQL, VB.NET, HTML, CSS. In ancient days I coded in QuickBasic, ASP, and VBScript. I'm a friendly introvert with solid communication skills. I work hard and have refined problem solving skills. When I was younger I worked in a variety of industries (commercial fisherman, stone mason, lawn care, factory, custodial, youth leader). I settled on IT and have experience working in a startup, higher education, and with non-profits.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

Vishal Khode over 1 year

I am working on an Acer Aspire E15 (ES1-511-C590) running Windows 8.1 X64 with all the latest patches. It is running significantly slower while plugged in than when running off battery.

Yes, this is counter-intuitive, and yes, I have checked the power settings.

No, this is not a subjective analysis. I ran PerformanceTest 8 on the system both plugged in and while running off battery. Here are the figures from each test:

Category On Battery Power While Charging

Overall 600 186

CPU 1024 275

2D 193 48

3D 152 41

Memory 757 772

Disk 681 759
- meneldal about 9 years
  
  Can you show the power settings details for both cases? How high is the frequency of your CPU reported by the Task Manager/cpu-z?
- Suzana about 9 years
  
  Is the battery also used when the laptop is plugged in , or without the battery ?
- kinokijuf about 9 years
  
  Is your power outlet properly grounded?
Karan about 9 years

This is essentially just a copy of the second point from the other answer.