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Yes, otherwise you end up with this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y39D4529FM4 ;)

(I'm well aware it's not a realistic experiment, but it's a fun demonstration nonetheless.)

That video reminds me of childhood, good old Tom's Hardware :)

Those poor CPUs. The first two no-heatsink temperatures are lower than my 2600k's idle temperatures - what's changed?

The Intel CPUs throttled to an absolute minimum state of power draw in order to keep itself from frying. Those chips also came with an integrated heatsink, like modern chips, that provides just enough heat dissipation to keep the CPU from frying itself before it can throttle down.

That video was made because AMD didn't incorporate such protective features back in that era. That's why their chip absolutely fries itself within moments of removing the heatsink. 100W through an area the size of a Tic-Tac (die area dedicated to cache uses almost no power) is a recipe for catastrophic failure if left unchecked.

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