Hardware issue, I think my vent affects game performance Options

[balduran]

For those of you who don't know yet, I resumed work on my mod Azure NPC after almost a year. However, it appears that there are going to be some technical difficulties in the line of modding, connected to my ancient computer with its 400 mhz processor (Yes, I know it needs upgrading, but it's really not an issue, as I'm considering buying a car, which is now a priority. And I really don't NEED new comp. for the lack of free time to play the newer games. Heck! I don't even have time to play BG and try the mods that you guys and girls release.). For some time the PC's vent (I'm not sure the one on the power supply or the processor, but I gues it's the second) started making some very weird noises. It didn't bother me till now, because all I used the PC for was writing some articles, and the occasional game of Heroes. But now that I'm working on the mod and have BG2 installed I noticed that the game runs slower than it did before. In fact it's so slow that even the starting cutscene with Jon makes the computer get out of breath and the framerate drops from 30 to one or two per second.

My wild guesses about the problems are:
1)What comes to my mind is that the vent is rotating too slow (which makes the sound), and with the Celeron not being able to cool as effectivly as before, performance goes drasticaly down and even affects the clock frequency. Is this last thing actually possible?!?
2)Another wild guess is that something went wrong with the video card, and that's why I don's see all frames. But the card is still working, and when I tried to play a video file on the computer, it was just fine.
3)The last thing that comes to my mind is that the slowdown might be caused by installed mods. I have the major NPC mods (Kelsey, Sola, Valen, Tashia + a few others that are significant in install size, like Saerileth and the others that can benefit from the Crossmod banterpack), Tactics, Refinements, Ease of use, Bettles, Ascention, EMaD, D0Tweak, Baronius' potions mod, TS, the Druidic Sorcerer, NPC Flirtpack, the regular Banterpack, my own mod (Improvements), and probably others that I cannot remember.

Anyway. If someone has a solution for my problem (other than replacing the processor or the entire copmuter) or even an idea what's causing the problem, I'd really apreciate it if you post it here.