How to Optimize your Laptop for MAXIMIUM Performance

so you just brought a brand new laptop and you're wondering what are some of the next steps to make sure you're getting the most out of it you see the SE are the little things you can do within the operating system and install programs to optimize The Experience some of them will be pretty obvious for seasoned veterans but important for newcomers While others will be pretty interesting for everyone now I do want to mention that I did a similar video last year on a few tips and tricks to optimize your new pc but a lot has changed since then especially with Windows 11. I'll leave a link to video right over here which you can check out but keep in mind that while a lot of those points are still valid times and Technology have changed huge thanks to Lenovo for partnering up with us in this video as we're using their slim 79 Pro X which by the way is what they call here in North America for the rest of the world it's the yoga slim 7i Pro X now this laptop has everything that you could possibly need for a thin and light form factor that can do pretty much everything from casual productivity tasks to intense Creator Focus tasks it's got the horsepower to back it up as it features Intel's 12 Gen autolog processor and and Nvidia RTX 3050 graphics card running Studio drivers you also get a gorgeous 3K high resolution display with 120hz refresh rate and a design that's been optimized for what Lenovo calls Comfort Edge I've did a separate video going over all the changes that Lenovo has done to this laptop which you can check out right over here but this video will cover pretty much every single Windows laptop I'm just using this one as a baseline so let's get started first up the usual cleanup you see most laptops come with a bunch of bloatware apps that just take up space and resources the slim 7i Pro X doesn't at all it's a fairly clean install All Things Considered but how do you make sure you know there's nothing you don't really need or want well all you need to do is head into add or remove programs typically the programs that you don't want are things like pre-installed games like Clash of Clans and weird utilities like off-brand PDF readers maybe Amazon Alexa and other third-party shopping Services trust me you'll find all sorts of junk on some laptops heck I even uninstall or disable Skype or OneDrive because because I don't use those services but if you do you should probably hold on to them I also get rid of GrooVe music and a bunch of other things that come with Windows 11. my go-to media player is Media Player classic which supports all video and audio formats and it's a lightweight application for Windows I'll leave a link down below if you guys are interested in checking it out I also use a handy little program called winter stem it's a great little free utility software that tells you what's taking up space on your drive a lot of it you'll probably need but it'll help you visualize what's what I use this a few times every year too I also delete anything related to McAfee or Norton because while an antivirus is absolutely essential these days there are much much better for utilities out there that don't chunk down on system resources and keep asking you for subscriptions my pick is Malwarebytes next up Windows optimizations you see Windows 11 has a lot of great features and a lot of quirks as well so let's talk about some of the things that change within the operating system right away and the first thing is quickly moving the taskbar back to the normal left hand corner that we're all used to since Windows 10. all you have to do is click on taskbar and then click on taskbar settings in the pop-up menu scroll down to the taskbar personalization page and change the taskbar alignment from Center to left in the drop down menu by the way if you like to keep your taskbar clean you can toggle off icons like search task View and widgets I use this every time when I'm setting up a new laptop I just prefer the Simple and Clean look on the desktop the other thing I do is modify file spacing now if you're using a tablet you can leave it as is but I just feel like for laptops it just takes way too much space now to do this hit up file explorer click on the Ellipsis button at the top of the screen and choose Options under the folder options head over to the view Tab and check the box that says decrease between items for a compact view here's the difference between before and after and as you can see you can actually view more files without having to scroll down now this next tip is completely optional but I love bringing back the classic right-click folder context menu you see with Windows 11 they actually condensed a lot of it under the more options area but that to me it just involves way too many clicks so first right click on the start menu and open Terminal then you're going to copy and paste this command that you see right over here on the video here enter restart File Explorer or restart your PC and boom the classic context menu is pack good people it's just so satisfying to see this over here now understanding background processes and how to disable unnecessary ones and remembering what you disabled is pretty important for example disabling Adobe cloud services will mean you can't use some of adobe's creative apps but let's just say that you want to disable those background services that start up when you boot up the system all you have to do is search up task manager head over to the startup Tab and disable the apps that you don't need every single time when you boot up your PC this will significantly help with battery life as well the next thing I would also recommend is disabling pointer acceleration now this is a step that a lot of high-level competitive Gamers use since by default it could harm accuracy now to do this search up Mouse settings then navigate and select additional Mouse settings under related settings then head over to the pointers Tab and untick the enhanced pointer position option I'd also suggest disabling animation effects on Windows 11. now don't get me wrong they do look pretty cool but it's been shown to negatively impact battery life and system responsiveness so to do this head into settings then click on accessibility then click on visual effects and turn off the animations effects toggle and as you can see the difference in speed right away alright so this next cool feature something that I recently discovered and it's called storage sense it's nothing new it's actually been around since Windows 10 but when you enable it it cleans up unnecessary temporary files and the content from the recycle bin will be automatically deleted after some time and you can also choose to get rid of the stuff that's in your downloads folder provided you set it up correctly this is super useful especially if you have a laptop or you've picked up a new laptop that only features 256 gigabytes of storage now to do this go into settings navigate under storage management and you can enable the storage sense toggle now if you click the configure option you can actually customize pretty much anything you want and I think that's pretty cool you can also go ahead and apply this to OneDrive as well if you use that feature another thing I do is disable notifications on Windows 11. trust me it can get annoying especially for me and distracting as well you can do this by just heading over to the notifications tab within settings you can also pick and choose which apps give you notifications but I just leave it completely off because I just don't like being bugged every now and then I would recommend setting up desktop icons too like bringing up control panel trash bin personal folder this PC Etc back to the desktop and all you have to do is Click personalize then head over to themes scroll to desktop icons click on computer user files control panel and network hit apply and boom they're all right there on the desktop for quick access I also like to disable sounds within Windows honestly that also does get a bit annoying as well so head over to settings then themes click on sounds and under the sound scheme drop down menu choose no sounds and your ears will thank you now if you're looking for a powerful system Search tool I'd recommend checking out everything yeah that's literally the name of the application it's a One-Stop shop for finding files and folders it's much faster and more accurate than Windows search bar you can do things like copy the path location of a file that you want to attach to an email and just paste it on the insert file window when you're prompted to attach a file again this is super useful if your desktop is cluttered and filled with files I would also recommend running disk cleanup regularly now this not only frees up space on your drive but it cleans up temporary files internet cache files and unnecessary program files that eat up your storage space you can run the built-in tool by just searching up disk clean up in the search bar and take it from there it's actually a great step to do after a large Windows update now this next bit is about understanding power modes you see every laptop comes with different Power modes that completely change the way how the CPU and the GPU behave so get to know them well for the best possible performance and battery life for instance with the slim 79 Pro X you get battery saving intelligent Cooling and Extreme Performance if you're strictly looking for performance selecting Extreme Performance through lenovo's Vantage software or hitting function plus Q on this particular laptop will allow the CPU and GPU to run at higher power levels which naturally results in Faster performance this is a setting that you would choose when you're editing a video or maybe even gaming to get the best possible FPS choosing intelligent cooling drops the power levels by a certain amount depending on the laptop that you have but that gives you the best of both worlds which is performance and efficiency so you get a little bit better battery life out of your system keep in mind that using high performance mode will tank the battery life of your laptop it's actually pretty crazy when you think about how power levels can impact things like export times and frame rates when gaming luckily Lenovo has actually figured it out with their X power because first what they've done here is a huge upgrade in the cooling system they had to Beef It Up to handle the power levels of the new autolik CPU that along with lenovo's custom tuning of Intel's thread director gives you that perfect balance of performance and battery life now if your laptop doesn't have selectable power modes Windows has some built-in and you can access them by searching power options within the search bar also make sure you run Windows updates guys many people see Windows updates and just avoid them but they're actually critical for getting the best performance from new architectures like all the lake I've done a separate video covering that which you can check out right over here but yeah just please update Windows now the RTX 3050 in the Pro X isn't the most powerful GPU but it's more than enough to get the job done when it comes to basic gaming and those drivers make a pretty big difference in a lot of cases you see GPU drivers are essential for the best gaming performance in the latest titles there's also gaming specific optimizations that you can do to help boost performance on your laptop Microsoft has a guide for that which I'll link in the description down below but in a nutshell disabling memory integrity and turning off virtual machine platform or VMP can help certain games and their respective performance the disable memory Integrity search up core isolation within the search bar and then turn off the toggle for memory Integrity you can also disable VMP by searching up turn Windows features on and off and then navigate and unselect VMP you might need to restart the system for both to take full effect you can also enable game mode you see this hasn't done much in the past but on Windows 11 it can actually improve frame rates by prioritizing gaming apps over background applications and also don't be afraid to lower the resolutions of your display this is probably the first step that I would do to increase frame rates if your GPU isn't that powerful I've also come across a few battery saving tips as well now battery life on many modern Windows laptops including the prox is amazing but there's always room for improvement firstly you can retune the display's brightness level if you don't need it to be too high lowering it can certainly help extend battery life also make sure you drain the battery every now and then until you reach the reserve capacity or reserve battery capacity level this will basically prevent unwanted capacity battery degradation there's also an option within Lenovo Vantage on this laptop that allows you to only charge the battery up to 75 to 80 to extend the lifespan of the battery which I think is pretty cool and so if your laptop comes with an option I would highly recommend you take advantage of that but keep in mind that the runtime on battery mode will be shorter compared to when it's fully charged finally I've come across a few bonus tips when setting up a Windows laptop Tom the first thing is change the default file location to this PC this actually allows you to bypass the quick access View and get right into viewing your desktop documents downloads Etc along with multiple drives if you have any trust me it's going to save you a lot of time now to do this open File Explorer click on the Ellipsis button choose options and change the setting for Explorer from quick access to this PC now while I'm here I'm also going to enable file extensions since I work with PNG JPEG and PSD and multiple video formats it actually helps me differentiate these files pretty quickly also did you know that you could launch the applications or icons located on your taskbar by hitting windows plus one to nine Keys respectively I think that's pretty cool guys well there you guys have it some cool new tips and tricks to help optimize your new laptop let us know if you found any of these tips and tricks useful and if I did miss out on any please try me in the comments down below as perhaps I'll make a follow-up video in 2023 I'd like to be a recurring process just to help everyone make sure that you know they're getting the best out of their laptops I'm Eber with hurricane X thank you so much for watching by the way don't forget spend responsibly

Channel: Hardware Canucks

Views: 509,896

Keywords: laptop setup, laptop optimization, windows 11 laptop optimization, windows 11 laptop setup, increase laptop battery life, laptop tips and tricks, new laptop setup, laptop tips and tricks for beginners, windows 11 setup tips, laptop performance hacks, how to increase laptop battery life, laptop battery power mode, laptop power settings, things to do after buying a new laptop, hardwarecanucks, hardware canucks

Id: RmD26V5Dh1o

Length: 13min 22sec (802 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 19 2023