Question How hot would a Ryzen 5900x become if it was not cooled at all?

[NP]

Like, of course it would shut down eventually, and before that throttle. But in theory. How hot could the motherboard could make the processor, any processor, hypothetically?

 

[drea.drechsler]

Like, of course it would shut down eventually, and before that throttle. But in theory. How hot could the motherboard could make the processor, any processor, hypothetically?

About 115C at most...that's the point it shuts down the CPU and computer, called the Thermal Trip Limit. And it's not really hypothetical since it is built-in protection.

It will start throttling at about 90C but a temp spike when boosting from a really hot condition could easily take it to the 115C limit. That's very likely to happen with no cooler at all. I can't imagine it making it through POST before shutting down, maybe as far as the spinner.

 

[USAFRet]

Any CPU in the last 20 years...about 100-110C.
And really really fast...less than a minute.

 

[hotaru.hino]

By "if not cooled at all", no heat sink, it actually depends. Of all the videos I'm willing to look up on YouTube, I've found these:

There's also that now 20 something year old video from Tom's Hardware , but I don't think that's representative of today. Of all of these, de8auer's video is closer to what you're looking for. But the summary is the moment you put a load on the CPU, it'll climb up to to at or over 100C (curiously de8auer recorded ~115C ) and then the thermal protection will trip and cause the computer to shut down.

However for lower power CPUs, it'll still get up to around 100C. Whether or not thermal protections trip is another story.