DISCLAIMER: Before I embarrass myself I would like to say that I know close to nothing about PC's. I've only owned one for the past year, and most of my "facts" could be completely wrong. Please oh please bear with me.

Anyway, my birthday is coming up and I was thinking of upgrading my laptop for the summer sales that are coming. The problem is I don't know how to do that. The more I research I put into my hardware specs the more confused I get. I thought I had about a medium quality rig. I don't even attempt to touch an AAA title past the year 2009 for fear the my computer will melt. But I've been looking at my specs and it turns out (this could be faulty information) that I have some pretty high end hardware, which confuses me. I can play pretty much any new indie game but playing Metro 2033 or Alan Wake for more than a few minutes will overheat my computer. Maybe I need a new fan?

Specs:

Model: HP Pavilion dv7 Notebook

OS: Windows 7 Professional 64-bit

Processor: Intel Core i7 -3610QM CPU @ 2.30GHz

RAM: 8 GB

Graphics Card: I'm not sure if it's Intel HD Graphics 4000 or nVidia GeForce GT 630M 1GB

That's all I can think to put, I will gladly provide more information if needed.

Laptops generate a lot of heat. You can try a cooling mat and see if that helps.

Get a cooling mat, they are $20 to $30 online, a bit more at the local store. This is what they look like

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=a9_sc_1?rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3Alaptop+cooling+mat&keywords=laptop+cooling+mat&ie=UTF8&qid=1371245330

BTW, you can't really upgrade a laptop outside of adding RAM or a larger Hard Drive.

Even then you could be limited to what you can add in terms of RAM.

Typically with laptops, when it comes to graphical performance you're stuck with what you got.