If you are using a relatively old Windows machine with a low-end hardware configuration—at times—you may have experienced lag or a complete freeze whenever CPU-hogging processes run for an extended period. It's a bit frustrating as your system almost becomes unresponsive or may shut down due to overheating in such cases. But, there's a solution! How about throttling a CPU for a specific process such that it doesn't use all of the CPU's power to prevent overheating, yet keeping the process in a working condition, continuously? This way, you can easily run CPU-intensive applications for a long time.
We'll learn how we can easily achieve this goal. You don't need to be a nerd or a programmer to do this. We'll see an easy and reliable way to run CPU-hogging apps on a low-end Windows computer.
In this guide, we'll learn about a free tool that is made for this purpose. It's easy to use and runs smoothly on older versions of Windows as well. So, let's get started and master CPU-throttling.
Why Throttle CPU Usage?
Before we dive into the actual process and know about the tool, let's first understand why CPU-throttling is necessary for low-end systems and how it can benefit you.
- Does not let the system freeze indefinitely
- Significantly reduces battery power by lowering CPU load
- Heat and fan noise are reduced significantly
- Resource-hogging background apps are kept in check
- Keeps the system responsive even when you are multitasking
Now that we know how CPU-throttling can benefit us, let's get familiar with the tool required for the same.
Meet Battle Encoder Shirasé (BES)
Battle Encoder Shirasé (BES) is a free and open-source utility that puts a cap on the CPU usage of selected processes by suspending and resuming them rapidly. In other words, a process is slowed down by repeatedly putting it into a suspend-resume cycle.
It's a portable application, hence no installation is required. Simply download the utility's zip file and extract the content into a folder located at a convenient location for quick access.
It works flawlessly from Windows XP to Windows 11. Let's see the step-by-step process to learn how we can use this powerful tool for CPU-throttling.
Step-by-Step Guide to Throttle Apps Using BES
Follow the steps given below to easily throttle the application on your Windows machine. Here we go!
Step 1: Download and Extract BES
After downloading the tool from the official website, extract it to the desktop in a folder. It's a portable application, so installation is not required.
Step 2: Run BES as Administrator
After extraction, you have to run the program. To do that:
Go to the folder, and right-click on the BES.exe executable. From the context menu, choose the 'Run as administrator' option to start the program.
Administrator privileges are necessary to ensure processes can be controlled without any limitation.
Step 3: Select a Target Process to Throttle
Once the program is in running state, it's time to select the application we want to throttle.
To do that, click the Target... button to open the dialogue box that houses all the necessary options and settings for process-specific CPU-throttling.
From the process list, scroll up or down to find the process (application) you want to throttle. After selecting it, press the 'Limit this' button on the left.
Pro Tip: You can throttle up to 3 processes in parallel through the BES tool.
Step 4: Adjust the Throttling Percentage
After process selection comes the critical part. Now you have to specify the percentage of CPU power a process can use. To do that:
Adjust the slider to specify the percentage of CPU time you want to allot for the process. But if you are using it for the first time, you may get confused about how this slider works.
In the image shown above, the slider shows 55% CPU time. Now you may think that this process will get 55% of CPU time. But that's not the case.
It's the exact opposite. The actual CPU time allotted for this process is 100% - 55% = 45% percent of CPU time. So, whatever percentage is set by the slider, subtract that from 100, and the result is the actual CPU time that a process will get.
Step 5: Run, Unlimit, and Exit
Once the CPU time has been allotted, start the CPU-intensive job of that process. In my example, it'll be the animation rendering process to output the FHD video in MP4 format.
Once the job is complete, click the Unlimit button and exit the BES application. Thereafter, you can close the application associated with that process as well.
Conclusion
Battle Encoder Shirasé (BES) is a lifesaver for users stuck with underpowered machines. It gives you the power to decide which apps deserve CPU time and which ones should back off—without killing them.
If you're often frustrated by a slow PC, give BES a try. It's lightweight, safe, and surprisingly effective—especially when you can’t upgrade your hardware.
