Macbook 5.1 overheating strangely way too much

Greetings!

I've had a Macbook 5.1 2.4Ghz for a year and a half now, and recently a lot of overheating problems (I guess) have struck my machine.

It doesn't really matter wether I'm on OSX or Bootcamp. The fans are always working overtime, and it feels slower. Even on Youtube the videos get glitchy from time to time its really annoying.
For example, on Ableton live, sometimes it just brakes for a second, uses 99%of the CPU, and then back down again to 5%.
Playing games on Windows 7 (and I've tried formatting, 32bit and 64bit) it's fine on the first 2 minutes but after that, the framerate gets realy unstable, even on Counter-Strike 1.6. Sometimes it does even feel that I'm running without a graphic board.

Unfortunatly, it seems to me that it is a hardware related issue, or too much dust and stuff inside it, causing it not to cool down properly (I've tried SMC aswell, didn't work). I've got lots of spare space on both partitions, it is pretty healthy software-wise. What can I do to stop this?

Thank you for the attention, I hope you can help me.

Specs:

MacBook 5.1 13" (April 2009)
Dual-Core 2.4hz
2Gb RAM DDR3
Nvidia 9400M 256Mb
250gb HDD

Personally, I'd be tempted to pop the bottom cover off and check for dust contamination if you're finding that the fans are on high all the time. A few quick blasts at the ducts with some compressed air should clear any build up. Be sure not to let the fans spin when you do this as you don't want to over-spin them.

If that doesn't work, I'd say you've got some runaway processes in the background that you need to check on. In OS X, you'll want to open Activity Monitor, sort by CPU utilization and see if you can narrow down what process is consuming so many resources. And conversely when booted into Windows, you'll open Task Manager, go to the Processes tab and sort by CPU. Once you have a better idea of what is actually getting the machine heated up, we'll be better able to determine the nature of the issue.

My guess though is that you've got something clogging up airflow. If you use the machine in a dusty environment, it's not uncommon to have significant build up in a relatively short period of time. This makes the fans work harder to circulate air and cool the machine.

siblat doherty

cwa107 said:

If that doesn't work, I'd say you've got some runaway processes in the background that you need to check on.

Click to expand...

Not on Windows at least, I formatted the bootcamp partition this morning and it still has those issues.

I'm going to check on the warranty, I believe it is already voided because more than a year has passed. If so, I'll clean it myself.