Are CPU coolers 100% necessary?

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Yes, it's necessary. However, Intel and AMD give you a moderately good one with the CPU, called a stock cooler (except LGA2011, where you have to get your own).

If you're OCing, you'll want an aftermarket one.

Without any cooler, the chip will smoke.
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It is absolutely necessary. Especially for gaming.

If you were to not have a cooler on the CPU, it would have no way to effectively dissipate the heat it creates, which would mean it would likely shutdown your computer after about a minute of being on, otherwise it would simply fry itself.
 
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if overclocking yes, absolutely. If staying at stock, no the stock cooler will be fine. Either way aftermarket coolers increase the longevity of your hardware by keeping temps down and they generally make the system much quiter
 
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yes unless you want to ruin or cook the processor to oblivion and waste money or kill the pc all together the stock is fine for everyday tasks but when gaming the cpu will jump to hell
 
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If you are overclocking yes, but if not it is an option; depending on the cooler it might run a lot quieter, even at full loads. It also helps cooling the GPU, so if you are overclocking the GPU it is betterto have an aftermarket cooler.
 
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Depends on the CPU and what you intend to do with it. If its an haswell CPU which tends to heat more u might need a cooler or if you like to OC then definitely you will need a cooler but if you dont OC and stuff the stock cooler is just fine i have i5-3470 with stock cooler temps never go above 60C when under full load..
 
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I want to change my answer. No as long as you don't need anything faster than a 486. Heatsinks, usually with fans, became necessary somewhere between the 486dx25 (the first intel cpu to require passive cooling) and the Pentium 1(the first intel cpu to require active cooling with a fan).
 
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If you want something way faster than a 486 with no fan, then get just about any current mobile phone or tablet.

I remember when CPUs with fans first came out. I thought "Wow, they must be REALLY fast!".
 
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Think of it this way. Any decent modern CPU can dissipate anywhere from 65 to 125 (or more) watts, depending what it's specs are and how hard you are pushing it. Now you know how hot a 60 watt light bulb gets.
Basic premise: the cooler your electronics run, the longer they will last. Also they electronics tend to slow down when they heat up. For running word processors, spread sheets and stuff like that, a standard heat sink with fan will do the job. If you are gaming with an AMD 8 core processor, you want to have some serious cooling, liquid I mean.
If you meant to ask if it can run without a heat sink, no, it will burn up before you finish booting up your computer.
And make sure you keep you air cooled heat sinks clean and free of dust. I have replaced more than a few CPU's on laptops where people have had a build up of dust and lint which completely blocked air flow thru the fins. And don't forget the heat transfer paste. They don't last long without that either.
 
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It depends if you have an extremely powerful cpu which produces more output voltage than standard cpu. If it is standard cpu, then there is nothing to worry about unless you overclock it
 
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Like the AMD FX 9XXX CPUs
 
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