Hi, i just bought a new PCMCIA sound card (Sound Blaster Audiology ZS 2) for my laptop. It provides great 5.1 sound for my music and movies and games. BUT however, when i play any games on my laptop (HL2 and Guild wars especially) 5 or 6 mins into the game it plays well and then my CPU fan comes on and i experience a horrible drop in gameplay (Frames per Second). When the fan cuts off, the gameplay goes back to normal. I think it is dust in my laptop, since i havent had the inside clean since i bought it (over a year ago). But whenever i take out the PCMCIA card and restart the game it will run perfectly normal. Is there anyhting i can do to fix this problem i am getting? Thanks

The combination of the game and the CPU driving the PCMCIA port is probably working the CPU pretty hard.

Don't know what itisbut it is NOT overheating. The fact that the fact is cutting in AND out is proof of that. The fans are temperature driven so if the laptop was hot the fan would continue to run and not cut out.

So does anybody have any idea on what i should do to fix this issue? Thanks for the replies so far

I have had this sort of problem before on my laptop, because the PCMCIA card slot is on top of where the hard disk resides it produces a fenominal ammount of heat. I found that buying a cooling plate worked great for me. A cooling plate is just a metal stand with multiple fans underneath generally powered by USB so no long power cables are needed. djas

OK thanks djas i will look into getting a cooling pad for my laptop if this problem proceeds. thanks BrownG