Fix 1: Turn Off Hardware Acceleration

The Hardware Acceleration in Discord allows the app to use your GPU instead of your CPU for graphics-intensive tasks. Although this feature is supposed to reduce the load on your CPU, it can sometimes cause more harm than good. You may disable hardware acceleration in Discord to see if that helps.

Step 1: Open the Discord app and click the gear-shaped icon at the bottom-left corner to open the User Settings menu.

Step 2: In the Advanced tab, turn off the toggle next to Hardware Acceleration.

Fix 2: Disable Discord Overlay

Discord’s overlay feature makes it easy for you to chat with your friends without leaving your game screen. However, this convenience can come at a cost, as the overlay feature can be resource-intensive, leading to Discord using excessive CPU, GPU, and memory.

To turn off the Discord overlay feature, use these steps:

Step 1: Open the settings menu in Discord.

Step 2: Select the Game Overlay tab from the left pane. Then, turn off the toggle next to Enable in-game overlay.

Fix 3: Turn Off Voice Processing Features on Discord

Discord’s voice processing features, such as Echo Cancellation, Noise Suppression, Advanced Voice Activity, and others, can contribute to high CPU usage on Windows. While they may make your Discord experience better, but they can be resource intensive. Here’s how to turn them off.

Step 1: Open the settings menu in Discord.

Step 2: Select the Voice & Video tab from the left sidebar. Under Voice Processing, turn off the toggle next to Echo Cancellation, set Noise Suppression to None, and disable Automatic Gain Control.

Fix 4: Enable Reduced Motion on Discord

Another thing you can do is enable the Reduced Motion feature, which lowers the intensity of animations and effects. This will make Discord use relatively less CPU and RAM.

Step 1: Open the settings menu in Discord.

Step 2: Switch to the Accessibility tab and turn on the toggle next to Enable Reduced Motion.

Fix 5: Modify Advanced Boot Options

If you are experiencing high CPU usage with other apps and programs too, you should check the advanced boot options on Windows and make sure your PC is not limited to using just one core of your processor. Here’s how:

Step 1: Press the Windows key R to open the Run dialog box. Type msconfig in the text box and press Enter.

Step 2: Switch to the Boot tab and click the Advanced options button.

Step 3: Tick the Number of processors checkbox and use the drop-down menu to increase the number of processors your system can use. Then, click OK to save the changes.

Restart your PC after that to check if the issue persists.

Fix 6: Clear Discord Cache

Another reason why Discord may use too much CPU on Windows is if the existing cache data associated with the app is corrupt. So, you may clear the Discord cache data to check that.

Step 1: Press the Windows R keyboard shortcut to open the Run dialog box. Type %appdata%/discord in the box and press Enter.

Step 2: In the File Explorer window that opens, select the Cache, Code Cache, and GPUCache folders. Then, click the trash icon at the top to delete them.