I'm an old fart :)

Intel tried to scale frequency up with the Pentium 4 in the name of performance, and it ended up extremely hot and power hungry. Just like some high end CPUs now, but then it applied to every model from Intel.

I suppose you don't remember when a Raspberry Pi could run fine even without a heatsink, let alone active cooling. That's more recent than the Pentium 4.

It's already there really. It's heat output on the 4 and more so the 5 benefits from active cooling. The good news is the pi is practically pointless as a product for most people these days, and vastly better options are available cheaper, so unless you genuinely need the gpio theres little reason to buy one - very much their own fault for focusing on commercial applications but the Pi 5 as a product is practically pointless for a consumer use at this point. An old Pi 2 or 3 which dont need any cooling are very useful still for a range of applications but the newer ones are in a bit of a weird niche where they're overpriced compared to most options.

Thanks for giving me yet another reminder that I’m old. I caught the reference immediately and thought nothing of it, and then this shattered that.

The early ‘00s were a wild time. Intel boldly stating they expected to get the P4 up to 10 GHz, AMD having to assign clock speed equivalence ratings for their chips… I also remember thinking the P4EE was insanely priced ($1000, or about $1700 in 2025 USD), but now we have >$10K Threadrippers.