Thermal protection is entirely built into the hardware; the OS doesn’t generally do anything. It is possible for the OS to take over running the fans, so that y

Thermal protection is entirely built into the hardware; the OS doesn’t generally do anything. It is possible for the OS to take over running the fans, so that you can adjust the fan response curves, but if the temperature for any reason goes above the CPU’s limit (which is almost always 100°C), then the CPU will throttle itself down to a very low clock rate so that it can cool down. This is in contrast to older CPUs where overheating them would have immediate and fatal consequences to the CPU.