3DMark 2006 - No Cooling

I ran all the benchmarks available in 3DMark 2006 Professional. It runs a series of 3D performance, CPU and memory tests. It pushes everything to their maximum capabilities. I was already concerned about how hot things were running in the notebook under standard gaming. How bad would it get in benchmarking, or perhaps with more stressful newer games?

Both of the Intel mobile cores peaked at 98° C(208° F). To my knowledge, the maximum temperature these things are allowed to reach before they basically die or are at risk of damage is 100° C (212° F) . So I was only at 2 degrees away from critical! Although I knew the notebook got hot during gaming and 3D applications, I had no idea it was going so close to the edge! Keep in mind that I was testing in an air-conditioned office environment, where the temperature was a mild 22° C (71° F) . If I decided not to have the air conditioning on, on a slightly warmer day, there would have been a good possibility that it would have run above and beyond the recommended max. temperature for the CPU. So therefore, if you're going to be gaming on a notebook, it's almost crucial that you have some sort of extra cooling.