FPS Drops every few minutes - Alienware 17 R2

I have recently been experiencing drastic fps drops in any game I play. I have played fortnite, battlefield 1, and many other games without really ever dropping below 60 fps. I don't know what is going on, but everything will be fine and then it will drop to anywhere from 10-30 fps for a solid 30 seconds before going back to normal. I don't think I should be experiencing these random drops when the game runs fine at any other point. I have tried tracking my cpu usage while playing, making sure drivers are up to date, etc. The only fix that I found was on fortnite when I turned on v-sync. The game would run smooth, but I would then have mouse input lag. Any help is appreciated.

Specs:
GTX 970M
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4720HQ CPU @ 2.60GHz
15.89 GB RAM

 

probably the gpu vrm overheating, the thermal pad that dell uses is low quality and can result in overheating like this if it doesn't last properly

 

Is there anything I can do to combat this? Is it possible to replace the pads?

 

You can replace those stock pads with arctic pads or better such as gelid and poly fuji pads. The thickness is 0.5mm.

 

3M pads should do just fine if Fuji or gelid or arctic are unavailable.

 

Thanks for the info everyone. The issue was definitely the gpu & cpu over heating as the stock thermal paste is complete garbage. I ended up ordering some thermal paste and new thermal pads. Took it apart and reapplied thermal paste. Haven't had any issues with overheating & or fps drops.

 

I mean...how old is your laptop? Thermal paste does not last forever. If you got a few years out of stock paste that is not bad.