Intel’s 13th Gen Raptor Lake processors are some of the hottest chips I’ve ever worked with, and not in a good way. Even with a 360mm AIO cooler, our Core i9-13900KF hits 100C during multi-core workloads like Cinebench R23 in seconds. Increasing the radiator fan speeds to over 70% ensures temps stay below 90C at the cost of worse acoustics. With the upcoming 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh, it will get toastier.
For enthusiasts and overclockers, MSI has a solution. The 14th Gen Raptor Lake Refresh chips will throttle at temps as high as 115C if you set the “CPU Fast Throttle Threshold” to 115C. This will only work with the 14th Gen Core processors and allow users to extract every last bit of performance from their chips.
By default, the over-temperature protection kicks in at 107C for the 13th and 14th Gen processors. MSI’s exclusive (for now) feature increases this limit to 115C. Remember that Intel processors start throttling as soon as you hit 100C. Momentary spikes to 107C that aren’t noticeable via monitoring apps kick in earlier than most notice.
That said, I’m not comfortable with my CPU running over 100C. I try to ensure that the CPU cores don’t cross 90C, with averages of 80-85C being optimal. We will have to wait and see if that’s possible with the 14th Gen offerings.
Source: Kuroberumo.
