Laptop Performance Decreasing Over Time?

[arrox]

I feel like my laptop's performance is slowly decreasing over time. I bought it almost around 11 months ago, and when I first got it, I could play games like Skyrim and Blacklight Retribution on med-low graphics with good fps. Now when I even try and play something like Blacklight, my computer just crashes. Basically, is there any way to improve performance to how it was when I first bought my laptop, or make it perform even better?

Specs:
CPU: Intel 3rd Gen Core i7 3 i7-3610QM / 2.3 GHz Quad-Core 6 MB cache
RAM: 8GB DDR3 SDRAM running at 1600MHz
Graphics Processor: NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M LE / Intel HD Graphics 4000 - 2.0 GB GDDR5 SDRAM
Resolution: 1280 x 720

 

[USAFRet]

Clean the dust out.

 

[k1114]

It's most likely just dust buildup making it overheat which makes it slow itself down or turn off. That's probably what the crashing is. Hardware performance really isn't going to change overtime during it's usable period. Except probably the hdd, but that usually isn't for a couple of years. After awhile windows will accumulate junk where you then need to refresh windows but that is a software cause.

 

[arrox]

So i should just open my laptop up and clean out all the dust?