Why does BeamNG run better when my laptop isn't charging?

The game seems to lag more when it's plugged in.

 

Check your power settings

 

Most possible explanation is that charging the device & playing the game at the same time heats it up more (which is possible), so the CPU throttles down the clock speed to not overheat as fast & thus makes the game run worse

 

Thermodynamics, pure and simple. I think a typical laptop charger is about 280w, and there’s plenty of resistance in the circuitry I’m sure. Probably 5-15w of what’s going into the charging port is dissipated as heat. Thus, Sitthy is entirely correct.

 

A gaming laptop of mine has a 135W charger, and even my desktop shouldn't use over 280W under load. My other laptops have 65W chargers.

 

It's highly probable you had inadvertently set power settings to "power saver" when plugged in and "high performance" when on battery, some laptops switch the modes automatically during plug and unplug

 

Clean your fans out. It's probably caused by heat from charging along with the heat of CPU & GPU; while running without the charger, the only significant heat source are your processors. Usually good laptops have fans that can dissipate the heat from all 3 sources easily, but it would also force the fan to run harder so more dust would be stuck in the fans.

 

This. The amount of dust that gets sucked into the fans is absolutely rediculous.

 

Is that true for fans that use exhaust?

 

Doesn't matter the placement. If you have fans, dust being stuck in fans are unavoidable unless you have a filter.

 

Well, heat generated form battery iinternal resistance is significantly more than heat generated from charging resistantance heat. Anyway the least heat is to fully charge the battery first, then play video game with AC power, in order to make battery power exactly zero.