CPU reached 97 degrees, GPU 93, and I shat bricks (MSI CX61)

Good day chaps,
I was playing World of Warships at medium graphics (averaging about 20fps) and I alt-tabbed at one moment to check a Teamspeak message when on my AddGadget CPU gadget (with CoreTemp on) showed 94-97 degrees, and the same gadget for the GPU showed 93 degrees. I shat a massive brick because I thought at that point these parts were going to fry, so I instantly shut down the computer, and made it run in safe mode to cool it off.

I want to put my laptop's specs in the signature but for some reason I don't have that option in my settings panel, so here are the specs:

3rd gen Intel Core i7 3630QM
Nvidia GeForce GT645M (2GB GDDR3)
8GB 1333Mhz RAM

This never happened before and the laptop is only a few days over a year in age (got it last Christmas), and it's been cleaned with compressed air (especially the fan, unscrewed out and sprayed with air). Next upgrade will, hopefully, be a GT80 once Xotic PC gets it's hands on it (March-April) because I want to customise it just so that I don't need to upgrade for 4-5 years from now on.

 

I'm not sure if it's due to the game engine, the way the game is coded or nvidia drivers but recently I've been noticing in some games when I tab out the GPU usage will go to 99% at full clocks, raising the temperatures.

The only specific title I can remember this happening in is FEAR3. The GPU usage would sit at 40-60% and then when I tabbed out it would jump to 99% and start heating up my card.
This could definitely be the case for you as well. Monitor your GPU usage in game and temperatures via an overlay like playclaw and have HWmonitor running in the background to watch your GPU usage when you tab out.

If those temps are seen throughout the entire duration of your gameplay I suggest repasting your CPU and GPU.

 

Indeed, the game is still in alpha stage and graphics engine will be tweaked heavily before closed beta, but I've played in other days and had no problem. In fact, I played right after I restarted the laptop out of safe mode and temperatures remained "normal": GPU load was at 52%, temperature for the CPU was around 69-72, and the GPU hovered around 71.

 

May not have been just the game then, but something else kicking in at the same time; AV perhaps? You have a single fan cooling the heatpipes of both cpu and gpu, so it stands to reason both temperatures will go up on just 100% cpu.

Still needs a repaste and you didn't have to shut it down; it'd down-throttle on its own at 95°, though you'd notice dropping fps in-game. You can check this in action when running XTU stress test.

And " Settings" > " My Settings" > " Edit Signature".

 

I couldn't realise if my fps fluctuations were due to the fact that graphics engine still needs a lot of work, or because my CPU+GPU were nearing water boiling point.

Ran 3DMark Fire Strike now, it seems that everything's ok, though I'll never know what caused that spike. My suspicion is that the fan could have had a hiccup moment, which for now it's the first and hopefully the last time it will.

Just seen Edit Signature activated after you told me about it, I am familiar with this forum's interface but when I changed my avatar the option to edit the signature wasn't there (seems like I needed a minimum number of posts, perhaps?).

 

You may want to repaste if it came with a stock paste job.