system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
If someone overheats their computer and it slows down, what exactly is physically happening to cause it to lose performance?
gpt
Clock throttling. It simply detects overheating and slows down to protect itself. Thank the thermal sensors and BIOS for that.

The clock frequency changes pretty often (it's lower to save power and heat when idle), mostly you don't notice it. When said phenomena occurs, though, it slows down more than it normally would, otherwise it would overheat faster.