Does dust decrease performance significantly?

[Rafael Mestdag]

I ask because I've just brushed off quite a lot of dust from my cooler fan and the heatsink and afterwards I've noticed a slight performance increase. Is it just my impression or has my cpu become faster? Why?

 

[kanewolf]

Your CPU could only become faster if it was thermal throttling. If the dust was so great that the heatsink was no longer able to keep the CPU cool, then it could be faster. But it is most likely just your imagination.