> Only the very top of the line largest air heatsinks are practical, and even then you spend much of the time thermally limited. Air cooling is just not adequa

> Only the very top of the line largest air heatsinks are practical, and even then you spend much of the time thermally limited. Air cooling is just not adequate these days. For extreme CPU loads, it hasn't been adequate for YEARS. I've had an i9-9900K since about two months after its release, but had an air cooler on it. I'm a gamer, but nothing pushed all its cores until I got Cities: Skylines 2 last year. Even with my fan at 100%, I was bouncing off the thermal limit and getting a BSoD about once every hour or so. I had to turn down the thermal limit (and of course lose some performance, though I don't think I noticed) in order for my system to remain stable. Upgraded to liquid cooling, now I never go above 70C, and I could probably go even lower with a more aggressive fan profile. My wife did a system overhaul to a 13th gen i5, and we got a liquid cooler for her. She was like "I don't do crazy overclocking, why do I need a liquid cooler?", and I said that liquid cooling is basically a necessity for modern CPUs unless you're buying something low-end.