Question Massive frame drops while gaming

[BladedTombstone]

I own an Alienware 17 r4 with a 1070, I’ve had it for about 5 years now and I didn’t receive it new, it was a refurb. For about a year now I’ll be playing a game and my frames will drop massively, and it’ll last upwards of a few minutes. I’ve done some looking around at temps and usages when it happens and I noticed that my cpu usage will spike up to high 90’s and sometimes 100 percent usage when this is happening. I’m wondering if I should try to re apply some thermal paste myself or if it’s worth the money to have someone do it for me. Just looking for your guys’ opinions on what to do.

Side note: I even got one of those laptop fan stands to hopefully help with what I’ve been calling “thermal throttling” which is probably not the right term to be using.

update: after running task manager and nzxt cam in the backrougn, playing apexlegends at high graphics settings I noticed that whent eh frame drops occur my cpu and gpu temps drop as if they've given up on trying to do what they're supposed to. I am honestly extremely confused as to why my laptop is doing this

 

[AlexTheFern]

I own an Alienware 17 r4 with a 1070, I’ve had it for about 5 years now and I didn’t receive it new, it was a refurb. For about a year now I’ll be playing a game and my frames will drop massively, and it’ll last upwards of a few minutes. I’ve done some looking around at temps and usages when it happens and I noticed that my cpu usage will spike up to high 90’s and sometimes 100 percent usage when this is happening. I’m wondering if I should try to re apply some thermal paste myself or if it’s worth the money to have someone do it for me. Just looking for your guys’ opinions on what to do.

Side note: I even got one of those laptop fan stands to hopefully help with what I’ve been calling “thermal throttling” which is probably not the right term to be using.

what are your temps in game? You can use software like hwmonitor to see.

 

[Myst_8362]

Try Dusting ur pc

 

[AlexTheFern]

Try Dusting ur pc

its a laptop

 

[Myst_8362]

its a laptop

same thing, unscrew the bottom and start dusting

 

[BladedTombstone]

what are your temps in game? You can use software like hwmonitor to see.

I just ran Apex Legends at the highest graphics settings and launched nzxt cam to monitor what happens when my frames drop. So what i noticed, immediately my gpu usage dropped down to single digits and would sometimes go back up into the teens, but my cpu usage didnt spike. However, in RE8 my cpu usage would spike up to 100 and bounce between the high 90s like i said in the post. So now I am even more confused as to waht exactly is causing this problem, and to answer your question on if something else is using a lot of cpu when this drop in fps occurs, nothing else will spike up like my game will.