Can dust make games crash?

[queenroxa]

So I bought a decent alienware gaming desktop which ran fine and still does, however it;s never been cleaned in the 2+ years I've owned it, and with that I've noticed that weak games like sims 3 started crashing, so my question is: Can dust make games crash? my computer has never overheated but makes a lot of noise, any input? regardless i'm going to get it serviced and cleaned but still wanted to ask in advance, thanks

 

[USAFRet]

Dust causes heat buildup which causes a laptop to restrict performance to prevent actual overheating which may cause a game to crash.

Or, it might be something else altogether.

 

[panathas]

Dust build up produces higher temperatures so the cooling systems have to work harder in order to keep the temperatures under control thus increasing the overall noise output. In the end if there is too much dust the cooling system will get overwhelmed and then you'll see overheating problems. The fact that your current temps look normal doesn't mean that everything is working properly. The increased noise output is a warning.

As for the game that crashes, it may have something to do with the dust or it may be totally random. There are many things that may make a game crash. Usually we have dust buildup => overheating problems => system stability issues and then a lot of software and games crash not just one piece of software or game. If you have just one game that crashes it may not be related to dust.