Handbrake CPU usage goes to 100% when I plug in charger

My laptop specs: 11th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-11300H @ 3.10GHz 3.11 GHz + Iris Xe Graphics + 8GB RAM + 512GB NVMe SSD

Normal cpu usage for handbrake stays between 20-30 % of cpu when on battery. But as soon as I plug in charger the usage goes to 100.

This does not happen with any other app I have checked intensively.

Does anyone know why this might be happening?? any solutions to this?

Unfortunately you do not mention what operating system you’re using but it’s most likely Windows 10.

Microsoft has decided it’s a good idea to not report the true CPU utilization anymore. Instead, you see the result of CPU utilization * (current CPU frequency / max CPU frequency). So if you have a CPU that has a regular (non-turbo) speed of 3 GHz but it is currently throttled to 1 GHz, most Windows facilities will only report up to 33% CPU utilization even if your CPU is in fact 100% busy in its current state. You can find more about the reason in this article.

So when your laptop is unplugged, the maximum CPU frequency (with all cores busy) is limited to 20-30%. This could be due to user choices (the performance slider on the battery tray icon or power plans, search “power plan” in Start menu) or due to thermal or power constraints.