Periodic Laptop Slowdowns

[M_10]

I've been having laptop slowdowns for a while now. My computer plays games fine for a while (60 FPS in LoL and Dishonored), then drops to around 10-20 FPS for a few minutes, depending on the game. I've tried updating the BIOS, which improved framerates overall but didn't remove the slowdown problem.

The games I've tested this on so far are Dishonored, LoL, WoW, and Dark Souls, Portal 2 (all but WoW at max settings). I have yet to see this happen in Skyrim.

I checked Google and saw that I could spray some compressed air on my fan, etc. to get rid of dust, or run some clean up software.

I can't exactly pinpoint when this started happening, as it occasionally has happened since I got the laptop in July, but it has been a bit more noticeable lately. Over Thanksgiving my laptop overheated in my backpack, so I'm taking that into consideration, and the area where the processor is was extremely hot when I took it out of my backpack. I want to try to see if this is something I can fix myself before sending it in.

Also, I've been noticing sound getting fuzzy/laggy independently of slowdowns, most noticiably in LoL. This happens both with built in speakers and wireless headphones.

Specs: Intel i7 Ivy Bridge
Nvidia GT650M 2GB
8 GB Ram

Any ideas?

Thanks!

[stalkerzzzz]

Get HWMonitor and run it in the background to check the temperatures when the framerate starts to drop. It sounds like overheating to me. You can also run Afterburner,to see if the GPU is throttling, and Throttlestop,to log the CPU frequency.