FPS Drop Across All Games

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omniloquent

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Mar 10, 2014
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I have an Alienware M14xR2 and over the last couple months I have noticed a significant drop in FPS across all games. I used to be able to run League of Legends at 60 FPS on max settings, now max settings get me between 10 and 20 FPS.

I have updated my nvidia drivers, checked temps and they seem to be okay (but I'm not positive), cleared some space on my hard drive, ran multiple virus scans (MWBAM and ComboFix), and more.

I cannot figure out what is causing this. Any help is appreciated!
 
Solution
A
I use Core Temp for monitoring my Laptop's CPU temperature, and current clock rate.
I use MSI Afterburner for monitoring my GPU temperature and clock rate.

Your CPU is overheating, and thus throttling down to a low speed. It happens to my laptop every month or so and cleaning the heatsink/fan solves it every time.

Compressed air is all you need, either by an air compressor hose or canned. If you use canned air, make sure you do not shake the can or hold it at an angle. Doing so will spray liquid which can short your laptop.

You will need to take the bottom plate off your laptop and spray the heatsink vent + fan assembly, making sure you stop the fan from moving from the air blast.
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omniloquent

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Mar 10, 2014
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Do you have a program you suggest that I can show you the temp results from? I just want to make sure that's the issue and if it is, what's the best way to go about solving that?
 
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azathoth

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Jun 25, 2011
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I use Core Temp for monitoring my Laptop's CPU temperature, and current clock rate.
I use MSI Afterburner for monitoring my GPU temperature and clock rate.

Your CPU is overheating, and thus throttling down to a low speed. It happens to my laptop every month or so and cleaning the heatsink/fan solves it every time.

Compressed air is all you need, either by an air compressor hose or canned. If you use canned air, make sure you do not shake the can or hold it at an angle. Doing so will spray liquid which can short your laptop.

You will need to take the bottom plate off your laptop and spray the heatsink vent + fan assembly, making sure you stop the fan from moving from the air blast.
 
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Solution
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omniloquent

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Mar 10, 2014
3
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4,510
I don't have compressed air on hand but I did take the plate off and picked out large clumps of dust with tweezers and blew some out with my mouth and that seems to have bumped it up to about 40 FPS so still not 100% but much better. Will compressed air really be effective in getting out the remaining dust or is this about as good as I'll get it without taking apart the entire laptop and thoroughly cleaning? After watching a disassembly, video the fan and heatsink seem pretty difficult to get to in the M14x.

Edit: Also, my temps tend to be between 65 and 70 while gaming.
 
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azathoth

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Jun 25, 2011
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You don't need to completely disassemble it at all, you just need to take off the bottom plate and use compressed air to properly blow out all of the dust. If you were able to pick out....clumps of dust, then there is MUCH more dust thinly coating the heatsink assembly. You can pick up canned air on the cheap (Under $5) at practically any hardware store, it may be called keyboard cleaner but it's all just compressed air.

That thin coating of dust might even be invisible to you when you're blowing it out, but it is more than capable of effecting heat transfer enough to cause overheating problems on a laptop.
 
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