Most gamers spend hours tweaking in-game settings but completely ignore the OS running underneath. Here are 5 Windows defaults that are actively hurting your performance:

1. Hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling — Sounds helpful. Actually adds input lag in most competitive titles. Turn it off in Display Settings > Graphics > Default Graphics Settings.

2. Game Mode — Windows Game Mode can cause micro-stutters by aggressively managing background processes. Try disabling it and benchmark the difference.

3. Full-screen optimizations — Windows forces borderless windowed on most games by default. Right-click your game exe > Properties > Compatibility > Disable full-screen optimizations.

4. Power plan — "Balanced" is the default. Switch to "High Performance" or create a custom plan. Your CPU is literally throttling itself.

5. Unnecessary startup programs — Open Task Manager > Startup and disable everything you don't need on boot. Discord, Steam, and RGB software can eat 5-10% of your resources before you even launch a game.

These 5 alone can give you a noticeable bump. But they're just the surface.

PeakPC automates dozens of optimizations like these — including registry tweaks, service management, and memory allocation tuning that you can't easily do manually. If you're serious about performance, check it out.