Cooling Issues : Inspiron 1520

Last night i just figured out my laptop was having a bit of a heating problem. I own an Inspiron 1520 with the fancy Nvidia 8600 card in it and play a lot of 3d games. I was noticing some performance issues like skipping frames during gaming, and a noticeable dip general performance of my computer. One of my friends suggested i check my temperatures because he had a similar problem with building heat in his desktop. Soo i downloaded speedfan and the readings were amazingly high (showing the little fire icon):

Screenshot

And recently they have been even higher than that, in the 70s!

I have no idea how to diagnose whether the fans are working or not, but i feel almost no airflow when playing a game from the grilled vent on the left, or underneath the laptop.

The first step i know is to disassemble and clean the fans out, but im not sure what to do next. I suppose a laptop cooler, but i don't want this laptop to be like an old car that you keep putting money into when you really should have sold it.

This is freakin me out a little bit, so any advice would be appreciated

 

60 - 70 °C is fine for the 8600GT under load.
My Vostro 1700, which has better cooling, hovers around 62 °C under load with the fan on high.

Your problems are not due to high temps. Try a different driver - I use 169.28 and they are great for me (only really play CoD4 though )

 

Ok that's a big relief, but my CPU peaks in the mid 70's is that getting too hot?

 

Also it just now playing wow both my cores broke 80C

I'm going to try and disassemble and check the fans somehow...