Update: Just installed new cooler master 212 EVO and now swtor and my other games run great. I am averaging 50 fps and I did a bunch of warzones. No change in performance. When I ran the benchmark for batman arkham city before I was getting 29 fps avg. Now I am at 56. Everything runs much smoother now.

This thread has been really good info..keep it comin! Also confirmed for me my decision for a budget gaming PC to get an i5 2500k. The only problem for me now is apparently as I was told on Tom's Hardware that my motherboard cannot overclock so that kinda sucks if I ever wanted to do that. Question, how much of a performance increase would I be looking at in swtor if I OC'd my 2500k to say 4.0-4.2? Other specs being 8g RAM gtx 480 win 7 64

So I found out why I am overheating. My stock cpu fan has gone kaput and isn't working at all! Several weeks ago there must have been a power outage. I came home and my pc was off so I booted it up and I remember it making a rather abnormal noise. It booted up fine though so I didn't think much of it until my performance was dropping weeks later. Just checked the fan and yep...not moving! I really hope I didnt seriously hurt the cpu because I would have to buy a new one and a new mobo as well.

Hey thanks for all the responses. As for the thermal paste I used it is Antec formula 6 nano diamond. I watched a youtube video on applying the paste to see how much I should use. I may have put too much though as I put several tiny dots in like a cross formation across the cpu. At this point I'm just shaking my head in disappointment at myself. I probably caused damage to my cpu as someone stated. The fan is a stock fan which I had some trouble mounting and I may have not secured one of the pins correctly when I put it on. Good news is I just bought a Cooler Master 212 EVO with rush shipping. Should I just keep my PC off until I can get this new fan and stable temps? I could try to reapply the thermal paste I have but maybe I should just wait until I get the new fan? Can't believe I possibly damaged my friggin cpu...arghhh.

Hey thanks for the suggestions HeatWave! My resolution is 1680x1050 lol. Don't underestimate the gtx 480. On GPU boss it is ranked 6.4 and a gtx 960 is 7.1 overall. I've been doing passmark tests on my PC and I'm guessing it really is a CPU issue now. Normal temperature is 69c when doing nothing. 94c very quickly after loading into swtor. This is bad right? The CPU is stock 3.30 no overclock as well. If this is the case do I need to reapply the thermal paste or do i need a better fan or both?

I bought a decent gaming PC 6 mos ago and one of the first games i tested it with was swtor which i was getting a near flawless 50-60 fps. I have just started playing again a few weeks ago and now my performance is lucky to average 30 fps and regularly drops into the teens...especially when any combat is involved. Now this isn't just with swtor I have noticed less performance on some other games as well but I really couldn't tell such a difference until I had been playing swtor. I cannot think of anything that would cause this. I have mostly games on my HD and I don't download stuff all the time. One thing to note is that when I first bought this PC like a moron I forgot to add thermal paste to the cpu and I booted it up and was running some games when I noticed the performance was horrible. Couldn't figure it out at first then like an idiot I realized my mistake, added the paste and that fixed everything. Only now nothing has changed that I am aware of but yet my performance has dropped considerably. Any help would be appreciated because this is so frustrating I almost want to quit gaming on pc. 20 fps is NOT acceptable on this rig. My rig i5 2500k 8g RAM nvidia gtx 480 1TB HD Win 7

I tortured andronikos simply because I wanted to assert my dominance. Why the F cant I do this to whiny ashara??