How to Enable the Ultimate Performance Power Plan in Microsoft Windows 10

Windows has plenty of features hidden away in old dialogs and registry keys. One of them is the fabled Ultimate Performance power plan, which, as the name implies, is intended to maximize performance on your PC. It’s mostly designed for workstation PCs, but you can enable it on any Windows computer with some tinkering.

The Ultimate Performance plan was added to Windows in 2018, and it builds off of the High Performance plan that ships with many PCs. It’s worth noting that a lot of PCs now include power modes in the Settings app, but those are different from the power plans in the Control Panel (we’re not sure why these are separate, either).

This power plan basically removes restrictions on power usage by certain components. For example, your CPU will always run at its maximum speed, reducing the tiny bit of latency that might occur when the processor boosts from a lower clock to a higher one. Similarly, a hard disk drive may not be allowed to stop spinning, ensuring that it’s always going full throttle and reducing latency when accessing files, since the drive no longer has to spin up. USB devices may also be blocked from entering a low-power state.

Overall, these measures should reduce the tiny bits of latency that can occur when the system needs to speed up for certain operations, but it shouldn’t affect overall performance for the vast majority of people. After all, your PC already runs as fast as it needs to when it needs to. By running full throttle at all times, you’re also using a lot more energy, which can kill the battery on a laptop, and result in higher energy costs for a desktop.

The Ultimate Performance plan is available in Windows 10, but it seems to no longer be available in Windows 11. In that case, your best bet is creating a custom power plan with similar settings.

The Ultimate Performance power plan can be enabled in the Control Panel, despite being a relatively recent feature. In order to enable it, follow these steps:

1. Open the Start menu and search for Control Panel. It should be the first search result.

How to enable the Ultimate Performance power plan in Microsoft Windows 10 and Windows 11

2. In the View menu near the top right corner, change from Category to Small icons.

3. Click Power options

4. You’ll see all your power plans, but you may need to expand the Show additional plans section.

5. Select Ultimate Performance.

That’s all you need to do to enable this plan… Or it would be, if the plan was actually available. Unfortunately, on most PCs, and especially on laptops, the Ultimate Performance power plan is hidden away so you can’t see it in this dialog. In that case, follow in our next blog post.