PC overheated recently, how to determine if there is permanent damage?

[avelle]

So, embarrassingly, my PC overheated last week and it was my fault. The heatsink was gunked up with dust and it overheated while I was asleep. The system in question is a Core i7 920 @ stock speed, with a 5870 gpu. It was my understanding that if an intel processor ever overheated, it would immediately downclock itself and shut the system down to prevent damage. After thoroughly blowing the system out, everything seemed to work ok, except I'm noticing some performance issues lately. FPS seems to be taking a drop noticeably in World of Warcraft when it didn't before, especially with a lot of particle effects going on.

Could this possibly be the result of the system overheating and a byproduct of damage? I assume the gpu is fine, but I'm not ruling anything out at this point. My machine's recent performance in games like Skyrim and Saints Row 3 is starting to irritate me and I'm getting the itch to upgrade again. If there was no damage, would pulling it apart to clean it up completely along with an upgrade to an aftermarket cooler + overclock provide enough noticeable improvement in gaming or should I just say screw it and upgrade to an overclocked Sandy Bridge system with something like a 570/580?

[Cheerios]

Couple of things you can try:

-ATI tools or 3D Mark to check for video card artifacts
-Prime95 to stress test CPU and make sure that there aren't any errors on any cores.
-Chkdsk to check your hard drive. An overheating intel processor will shut down the system automatically (usually around 90c), but it doesn't mean it shuts it down safely. There could be errors with the hard drive.

[Cephius]

Each processor has a temperature limit commonly called a TJ max that will automatically trigger a shutdown if reached. Ideally this is to prevent damage but if the processor was under extreme stress prior to hitting the limit... who knows.

I wouldn't judge performance by Skyrim or SR3 since the games themselves have bugs, try running some benchmarks and see if you the performance is still suffering. If you're getting artifacts that's GPU issue though.

[avelle]

So far there have been no artifacts or other visible problem outside of a lower framerate. I have noticed a considerably longer boot time since the overheating though. I'll definitely check out the programs mentioned above to see if any issues arise. Maybe this is all in my head and I'm trying to come up with an excuse to upgrade.

Assuming everything is fine, would an overclock of my 920 provide a noticeable increase in gaming performance?

[Cheerios]

OC'ing any processor versus leaving it at stock would give you a considerable increase in just about anything you're doing.

You should be able to easily OC your 920 to around the ~3.5~3.6 ghz range on air and stock voltage, and higher if you voltage tweaked and got a better cooler. Just make sure you're using Prime95 and Coretemp to make sure your CPU isn't close to reaching its max temp on full load.