this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2025
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The article (or one of the linked ones) says the max design temperature is 105°C, so it doesn't throttle until it hits that.
Which makes me think it should be able to sustain operating at that temperature. If not, Intel fucked up by speccing them too high.
I'd expect it to still throttle before getting to 105C, and then adjust to maintain a temp under 105C. If it goes above 105C, it should halt.
Then you misunderstand the spec. That's the max operating temperature, not the thermal protection limit. It throttles at 105 so it doesn't hit the limit at 115 or whatever and shut down. I can't find a detailed spec sheet that might give an exact figure.
The chip needs to account for thermal runaway, so I'd expect it to throttle before reaching max operating temperature and then adjust so it stays within that range. So it should downclock a little around 90C or whatever, the increase as needed as it approaches 105C or whatever the max operating temp is. If it goes above that temp, it should aggressively throttle or halt, depending how how far above it went and how quickly.
No it shouldn't slow down at 90C, it should clock up until it can sustain exactly 105C and stay there. That's the optimal performance point.
Again, you misunderstand. The max operating temperature is where Intel has stated that the CPU can safely operate for extended periods of time, including accounting for situations like thermal runaway (though ideally they engineer the chip that that doesn't happen in the first place).
If that situation does occur, the chip attempts to throttle at 105, and if that fails then it presumable halts at whatever the protection threshold is before it hits the actual damage point, as I said.
Interesting, so it only throttles at that temp? That'd a bit different than how AMD handles it IIRC, which think stops boosting around 80C or so and throttles around 90C, and the max operating temp is closer to 100C.
It's not really that different, the exact temperatures are slightly higher but most intel processors will boost up to 105C, then start throttling to maintain that 105C as a maximum, and if that's not possible they'll halt at 110C.
AMD does the same, just the temps are (for the one specific CPU I remember them for) 80-85C for starting dialing down the boost, 90C for throttling below the normal freq, and 95C for TjMax which either halts the system or just drops the power usage so low it doesn't matter - I'm not about to take a heatgun to my CPU to see what it does as it wasn't capable of hitting that on its own.
But it shouldn't be possible to break your CPU from over temperature, no matter what those temps are, because they should be capable of protecting themselves, even if that means dropping to 386 speeds when you are running them in the Death Valley with not cooler whatsoever.
The 7000 series had the Intel behavior of just clocking up until like 95C and staying there indefinitely
That's why people thought the 9000 series was disappointment - AMD went back to balancing power efficiency and performance
Yes.
Whether Intel fucked up by saying "oh yeah works great up to 105" if that isn't actually true is another question, as I mentioned.
Why? It’s designed to run up to 105c.
I think it was when AMDs 7000 series CPUs were running at 95c and everyone freaked out that AMD came out and said that the CPUs are built to handle this load 24/7 365 for years on end.
And it’s not like this is new to Intel. Intel laptop CPUs have been doing this for a decade now.
CPUs should throttle as they approach the limit to prevent thermal runaway. As it gets closer to that limit, it should adjust the frequency in smaller increments until it arrives at that temp to keep the changes to temps small.
105c is the max operating temperature. It's not going to run away the second it hits 106.
Your CPU starts throttling at 104c so that way it almost never hits at 105c for long If it can't maintain clocks then it drops them until 104c can mostly be maintained.
If you have an improperly mounted cooler, you could very well get to 105C incredibly quickly, and 115C or whatever the halt temp is shortly after.
My intel mac's cpu (i5-5250U) throttles to maintain 105 C