I think I cooked my computer and I might need new parts.

[ICIT2LOL]

Yes matter of fact I keep desktops away from anywhere near the floor and use filter material on them anyway.

 

[Cardboardo]

When I said it overheats sometimes, I mean pretty rarely. Even if BP Prochot is disabled, will high temps reduce performance?

High temps dramatically reduce lifespan as components cook off over time, solder may melt in the heatspots and disconnect components (thus break the laptop) and you possibly risk to make your battery catch fire (depending on where it is located, if it is close to heat sources you are).
I had seen all three kinds of damage. It is usually either too expensive or impossible to repair.

Besides, most of the power-saving features shouldn't have a horribly negative impact on performance. When performance is required by a program everything is throttled to 100% regardless.
Power-saving stuff should have an impact on idle and light-medium load temperatures only.

A laptop cooling pad (with large fan) should help greatly reduce temps while keeping silence. I had a few gaming laptops temp reduced by up to 10 C° just with a good cooling pad.

Agreed Bob and plus I always have a piece of filter material over the intake for the fan as the thing sits so close to tops and more so on laps.
Might be a good time to check out the state of the inside of the thing at least that is what I would be doing. Just out of interest as Derek asked what model is it??

(Thanks for all the tips, everyone)

It's an Alienware M14x. I'm going to de-overclock everything and see how that works out.

 

[linnemeyerhere]

Open the bottom panels as much as you dare and see if that exposes the CPU fan and GPU sinks and that will tell you if their clean, otherwise clean as I mentioned previously.

 

[ICIT2LOL]

Open the bottom panels as much as you dare and see if that exposes the CPU fan and GPU sinks and that will tell you if their clean, otherwise clean as I mentioned previously.

Yes Linne I would add that the OP adds disabling the fan while doing that as the compressed it can spin that fan faster than it is designed to go and rapidly wreck the bearing.

The other thing that I do is get some of those pipe cleaners (in pic) and gently push through from outside to loosen that crud as some I have seen are packed quite solid - and then just blow to rubbish out.

The alternative is to blow from the outside with the vacuum over th fan aperture but still disabling the fan from spinning but as a last resort.