Laptop "Hiccups"

[Yuxiang]

So I purchased this HP Pavilion dv6 Notebook PC about a year ago with the following specs: (That I think is relevant to this issue anyhow)
I7 [email protected]
Nvidia GeForce GT230M

At first everything was really smooth, I rarely game on PC nowadays but games like Civ5 was running smoothly with no problems, after some time passed, problems emerged.

Every once in awhile(say an hour, nowadays in much more frequent intervals), my computer would go through a period of a few minutes where everything slows down dramatically, accompanied by static like sounds(if sounds were playing).. This first happened in Civ5 and now it even happens when I run games like League of Legends on the lowest setting...

Question is, what could be causing this? My computer seems to be slowly crippled under a prolonged period of overheating issues during gaming but I can't be sure.(Everything runs smoothly when I'm not gaming) I am guessing it could be the graphic card but before I make a purchase and try to correct the matter I wanted a confirmation or opinion from someone.

Thanks in advance.

[Isiolia]

Have you cleaned out the dust bunnies? Might try seeing if there's a BIOS update - usually meh on desktops, but on laptops may fix pretty big issues.

GPU overheating is a common issue on those (and other HPs), and can effectively result in something not unlike the RRoD issues on the 360 where the GPU needs to be resoldered. You may want to send HP support an email if no simple fixes work, as they've had extended warranty exceptions in the past (well, and were part of a class action suit over nVidia GPUs in general, but that should have been before you bought yours).

[Niya]

Since you also consider overheating a temperature monitor would be one of the first things to do. That might also explain the slow-downs for a couple of minutes, when thermal throttling kicks in.
SpeedFan (almico dot com/speedfan.php) is quite good for that, can read most system temps and show them in the systray. Processor and GPU should stay below 100°C on load, from my own laptop (i5 and some radeon GPU) i know that they stay at around 80-85°C when i stress them. When you have CPU-Z and GPU-Z running during that you can also monitor if throttling is used, you should see a rapid decrease in clock speed when that happens.

[Yuxiang]

Alright, first thanks for the replies, they gave me a nice idea about where to start.

My HP warranty has expired, and so I think i will try and fix the problem myself and double it as a studying experience(How difficult is this?). I used SpeedFan and it shows that my computer runs at about 70~80 normally, and 90~110 while playing games(Civ5).. so this pretty much means my GPU has deteriorated from long periods of overheating? (Due to it being fine the first year or so and has really gone downhill performance wise in the past couple months)

What are some ways I can fix this and prevent similar problems in the future? Getting some kinda cooling system(I have a cheap one a friend gave me but its obviously not working), a replacement GPU, or both? In either case I'd also appreciate some recommendations on what to get.

Thanks again in advance.

[Niya]

Doesn't have to mean that the GPU is already broken, sounds more like that the cooling is just not working how it should and your GPU has to run throttled on stress. Modern hardware (CPU and GPU) is "intelligent" enough to not die from overheating.

The easiest, but not that effective way would be a cooling pad, that's just a piece of plastic or metal with 1+ fans in it that gets power over USB. Put it under the laptop and it assists the internal cooling a bit.

Other option would be to open and clean the laptop from the inside. Don't know how difficult HP makes it to open their laptops, i just know from consumer fujitsu NBs that they're extra complex so that no user ever tries to open them theirself <.< Business laptops are often easier to open.
If you get it open, first step is to clean the fan and heat sink from any dust. When you use a vacuum cleaner, block the fan from rotating with a pencil or something similar. Otherwise the fast rotation might damage the bearing.

Next step after that would be to remove the cooling system from CPU and GPU, clean it and apply new thermal grease. But this can be very complicated and also dangerous to the hardware when done wrong. So better not try to do it yourself. Got a computer store near you where you can ask if they do stuff like that?