Alienware M14x R1 temperature/aging problems.

Hello! I bought my M14x way back in December 2011 I believe, so it's definitely not as young and powerful as it used to be. Over the last year I've had temperature problems that have seemingly only gotten worse and worse; an example being my CPU will run much hotter than it should some of the time; right now with just Google chrome (3 tabs) open and Skype with general background applications it's idling around 90C (far too high) and GPU around 61C (higher than it should be, but much less extreme). I've cleaned out the air vents plenty of times and have a dedicated laptop cooler, but the problem doesn't seem to be getting any better.

Games are running much poorer as a result, you can imagine. I can't even run League of Legends at max settings without FPS suffering quite a bit, and on med-high settings it's not uncommon to drop to around 25ish FPS during a high action moment, whereas I used to be able to run it at 60 FPS, max settings 100% of the time. Some of that could be due to aging, but I'm quite sure some of it is temperature, too. God forbid I try to play a more modern, graphically intensive game.

I used to have a video bookmarked somewhere about perhaps doing a thermal re-paste, but I have no idea where it went or how to do it, really. I'd love suggestions, I hope I can at least alleviate some of this problem for a while until I can perhaps save and get a new computer.

 

I used to own a M14xR1 but then I give it to my cousin, and he has similar problem except for the CPU is a bit cooler (around 70-80C on normal operation), but after a re-paste last year the temperature got improve quite significantly to the point that it drop to between (55-70C).

I've been trying to find a teardown video on YouTube but I guess it may have been removed but luckily the old teardown thread here at NBR still available. As for the thermal compound, I recommend you use the desktop grade like the one I use it for my cousin which I also use it for my desktop and it is Arctic Silver 5, however there is a short term "break-in" period (which take around 1-2 weeks), after then you should see an improvement, It has been more than 8 months since I repaste his M14x, and surprisingly the temp stay around what I mention above (with a regular 2-4 week dust removal with air compressor).

 

I'd recommend you to re-paste as well.