Cool Computer

Hi Scott, Merry Christmas to you too.

As for cooling, not really. What it does do is help to keep the computer from failing (crashing as trextegra said).

If your computer is capable of being overclocked, then yes, cooling it will allow you to set a higher clock speed and that will give you better performance.

2010MegaScooter Happy Birthday and Welcome to SF,
Most all of us here are doing our best to keep heat out of the CPU, GPU and HDD's. It's true that safe operating temperatures are pretty wide and variable. But over all we strive for a quiet and cool case and component temp's. Those looking to push the stock envelope with over clocking fall into a whole other spectrum of cooling goals and techniques as this will normally include added voltage and heat which must be dealt with or failure follows quickly.

trextegra said:

well if your cpu and really any other components for that matter get to (sic) hot they can become unstable and crash or worse

2010MegaScooter said:

So Basically... It Helps the computer have a longer life..

Also, certain motherboards have settings that may allow your processor to decrease performance in order to keep it from frying. If it senses that your CPU is hot and/or overheating, it may drop performance as a safety precaution.

dont forget to use

Speccy - System Information - Free Download

If the CPU gets too hot it will throttle down to keep from overheating, which results in decreased performance, so in effect, cooling the CPU will give improved performance over a hot cpu.
Cooling it lower than normal operating temp won't gain you any performance though, which is probably what you mean.

You did a good thing by cleaning out the dust bunnies (they cause heat). The cooling pad for the laptop is a smart thing, since getting a laptop myself i also learned never use one on your lap or laying it on the bed because the cooling comes in on the bottom of the laptop. So yes cooling is very important.:)