Antiviruses are one of those programs that, belonging to one developer or another, we find in most current computers. This is also something that is especially evident in those computers that are based on Microsoft‘s Windows operating system.
However, with the passage of time, despite the protection that a priori they present to us, they have become somewhat controversial programs. That is why sometimes many, erroneously, prefer to dispense with its installation and use on the computer. To a large extent, the controversy we are talking about here is due to the high consumption of resources that these security programs do. Here we refer to the high percentages of both CPU and RAM memory that they do as a general rule.
This is something that, how could it be otherwise, is especially evident in older computers or with somewhat more limited resources. Therefore, if the antivirus is started and we are working on another project with a large program, or just playing, we will see how the performance drops. To all this we must add that these specific applications are usually constantly working in the background. The objective of this is clear, since this way they protect us at all times from the possible attacks of which the computer could be a victim.
However, we can always take certain measures that help us to reduce CPU consumption, or at least notice it less. That is precisely what we are going to talk about next, tips for the antivirus to consume less CPU from the PC.
Keep security software up to date
The developers of these programs are fully aware of the problems they sometimes cause on their clients’ computers. That is why they try to correct or solve them in part based on new updates . Therefore it is advisable to have the most recent version of the antivirus at all times, surely it works something better in this regard.
Schedule deep analyzes during free hours
On the other hand, we should also program the application to carry out the system scans when we are not working. This can be at night if we leave the PC hibernating, when we are eating, in the late afternoon, etc. That already depends on the circumstances of each one, but this way the CPU consumption will not affect the rest of our work.
Configure the folders you want to scan
On the other hand, we can also limit the disk locations that we want to protect, perhaps it is not necessary for the antivirus to analyze all the complete units. This is something that most security solutions let us specify, which will greatly lower the consumption of antivirus resources, especially if we have HDDs instead of SSDs .
Turn off real-time protection
Another measure, which by the way we recommend carrying out only on a specific basis, is to disable real-time protection . This means that the antivirus will stop being active in the background, thus freeing up resources and running only when we request it. But as we mentioned, it is not advisable to leave this inactive continuously, since the effectiveness of the program will decrease dangerously.