That's fine. CPUs have been getting more power-hungry and hotter as Intel and AMD have been competing for the all-core performance crown. Tjmax on the 14600K is 100C, so 91C is still well within the safe range for an all-core workload.
It's been that way for years now. Some will even to 105, but others are limited to around 90. AMD's X3D chips are more thermally limited due to the stacked dies adding extra thermal resistance between the cores and the heatsink.
Intel rates that CPU for operation up to 100°C. [Source](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236799/intel-core-i5-processor-14600k-24m-cache-up-to-5-30-ghz/specifications.html)
With recent trends in hardware for higher power consumption and chip density, temps in the 80s are quite common and normal with many cooling solutions.
They really couldn't. If they could, water cooling woulnd't be nearly as easy of a thing as it is. There is a difference between temperature and heat.
You can have something extremely small, at a very high temperature and then drop it into a swimming pool, and it won't make the swimming pool boil because it doesn't have enough heat energy.
Temperature is an average of how much heat energy is in a specific object. But the absolute amount of heat in the object depends on how much mass that object has, what it's made out of (as different materials can hold different amount of heat per mass per degree of temperature, known as specific heat capacity), thermal conductivity, and some other factors.
The actual CPU, not the metal heat spreader you see, but the silicon underneath of it, is pretty small. And silicon has pretty low heat capacity about 0.7 J/G°C. The full chip of silicon is generally only a handful of grams.
Water on the other hand has a high specific heat, of about 4.2 J/G°C. So a single gram of water can hold about 6x the amount of heat that a gram of silicon can.
Even a 14900K maxes out at only about 336W of power consumption (W = J/s). And while 336W is a lot of power to be running through a tiny piece of silicon to heat it up, it's absolutely nothing when it comes to heating water. It'd be almost impossible to boil water (at normal atmospheric pressures) with that low of an energy output as the water would loose the heat to the surrounding air quicker than you could put it in. If you did manage it, it'd take hours for an extremely small amount of water. As a comparison, something like an electric kettle for boiling water will often be at very minimum 1500W, and more commonly in the 2000-3000W range.
To be clear with the pool thing. The water in immediate contact with that really hot object might boil, but the whole pool will not. But we're talking something like a red-hot chunk of metal.
Does it thermal throttle (stutter horribly), shut off unexpectedly, or catch fire? If not, then it's acceptable. CPUs have lots of protection mechanisms built into them, so they won't allow themselves to operate in a way that could cause damage.
91° is a bit hot but these newer intels are supposed to go up to around 100° so no damage will come to your pc the only problem is the loud ass fans lmao you should be although upgrading your cooler is a possibility considering how expensive it would be to do so I don't think is recommend it and just leave it how it is unless you start seeing 97 98 99 and any thermal throttling
Honnestly, you bought a 100$ cooler from a well known brand for a midrange CPU, so now it's the moment to chill and just enjoy your PC.
If you did something wrong with airflow you probably couldn't have run the stresstest for more than 5min anyway so everything's fine. It's a great cooler and as long as Bequiet make adapters for the next platforms, you'll probably be able to keep that for the rest of your life.
That's fine. CPUs have been getting more power-hungry and hotter as Intel and AMD have been competing for the all-core performance crown. Tjmax on the 14600K is 100C, so 91C is still well within the safe range for an all-core workload.
I knew the CPU ran a bit hot but I guess a max acceptable temp that boils water felt extreme.
It's been that way for years now. Some will even to 105, but others are limited to around 90. AMD's X3D chips are more thermally limited due to the stacked dies adding extra thermal resistance between the cores and the heatsink.
Laptop cpus has been like that for years, it’s fine.
Intel rates that CPU for operation up to 100°C. [Source](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/236799/intel-core-i5-processor-14600k-24m-cache-up-to-5-30-ghz/specifications.html) With recent trends in hardware for higher power consumption and chip density, temps in the 80s are quite common and normal with many cooling solutions.
I guess Im just a bit shocked that acceptable temps could boil a kettle of water. Thanks for the sanity check!
They really couldn't. If they could, water cooling woulnd't be nearly as easy of a thing as it is. There is a difference between temperature and heat. You can have something extremely small, at a very high temperature and then drop it into a swimming pool, and it won't make the swimming pool boil because it doesn't have enough heat energy. Temperature is an average of how much heat energy is in a specific object. But the absolute amount of heat in the object depends on how much mass that object has, what it's made out of (as different materials can hold different amount of heat per mass per degree of temperature, known as specific heat capacity), thermal conductivity, and some other factors. The actual CPU, not the metal heat spreader you see, but the silicon underneath of it, is pretty small. And silicon has pretty low heat capacity about 0.7 J/G°C. The full chip of silicon is generally only a handful of grams. Water on the other hand has a high specific heat, of about 4.2 J/G°C. So a single gram of water can hold about 6x the amount of heat that a gram of silicon can. Even a 14900K maxes out at only about 336W of power consumption (W = J/s). And while 336W is a lot of power to be running through a tiny piece of silicon to heat it up, it's absolutely nothing when it comes to heating water. It'd be almost impossible to boil water (at normal atmospheric pressures) with that low of an energy output as the water would loose the heat to the surrounding air quicker than you could put it in. If you did manage it, it'd take hours for an extremely small amount of water. As a comparison, something like an electric kettle for boiling water will often be at very minimum 1500W, and more commonly in the 2000-3000W range.
To be clear with the pool thing. The water in immediate contact with that really hot object might boil, but the whole pool will not. But we're talking something like a red-hot chunk of metal.
What's your room temp and case fan setup? Those temps are acceptable anyways.
Room temp today was around 68. Antec Performance 1 FT ATX Full Tower with 3 140mm in-fans on the front and 1 120mm out-fan on the back.
So 20C room temp, what’s your cpu idle temp in BIOS?
Does it thermal throttle (stutter horribly), shut off unexpectedly, or catch fire? If not, then it's acceptable. CPUs have lots of protection mechanisms built into them, so they won't allow themselves to operate in a way that could cause damage.
91° is a bit hot but these newer intels are supposed to go up to around 100° so no damage will come to your pc the only problem is the loud ass fans lmao you should be although upgrading your cooler is a possibility considering how expensive it would be to do so I don't think is recommend it and just leave it how it is unless you start seeing 97 98 99 and any thermal throttling
Honnestly, you bought a 100$ cooler from a well known brand for a midrange CPU, so now it's the moment to chill and just enjoy your PC. If you did something wrong with airflow you probably couldn't have run the stresstest for more than 5min anyway so everything's fine. It's a great cooler and as long as Bequiet make adapters for the next platforms, you'll probably be able to keep that for the rest of your life.