I would expect the CPU to start throttling at high temperatures in order to avoid damage. Allegedly, it never did, and instead died. Do you think that’s acceptable in 2025?

Thermal throttling originated as a safety feature. The early implementations were basically a "thermal fuse" in function, and cut all power to the system to prevent catastrophic hardware damage. Only later did the more sophisticated versions that do things like "cut down clocks to prevent temps from rising further" appear.

On desktop PCs, thermal throttling is often set up as "just a safety feature" to this very day. Which means: the system does NOT expect to stay at the edge of its thermal limit. I would not trust thermal throttling with keeping a system running safely at a continuous 100C on die.

100C is already a "danger zone", with elevated error rates and faster circuit degradation - and there are only this many thermal sensors a die has. Some under-sensored hotspots may be running a few degrees higher than that. Which may not be enough to kill the die outright - but more than enough to put those hotspots into a "fuck around" zone of increased instability and massively accelerated degradation.

If you're relying on thermal throttling to balance your system's performance, as laptops and smartphones often do, then you seriously need to dial in better temperature thresholds. 100C is way too spicy.

What does room temperature have to do with any of this? Yes, you can lower your CPU temperature by lowering your room temperature. But you can also lower your CPU temperature by a variety of other means; particularly by improving case airflow. CPU temperature is the interesting metric here, not room temperature.

No but it's also important to realize that this CPU was running at an insane temperature that should never happen in normal operation. I have a laptop with an undersized fan and if I max out all my cores with full load, I barely cross 80. 100 is mental. It doesn't matter if the manufacturer set the peak temperature wrong, a computer whose cpu reaches 100 degrees celsius is simply built incorrectly.

If nothing else, it very clearly indicates that you can boost your performance significantly by sorting out your cooling because your cpu will be stuck permanently emergency throttling.