There's pretty much a 1:1 link between CPU load and CPU temperature, so relying on temperature probes is good enough for almost all situations.
That’s why I didn’t talk about user software and was focusing more on mobo (since it knows the current state of all usage and is not os-dependent) or low-level OS hooks which can have battle-tested processes to make sure that the fans are not left uncontrolled. I appreciate you bringing up the point though, it’s vital to make sure the chips don’t fry.
> There's pretty much a 1:1 link between CPU load and CPU temperature
Yes agreed, but there’s a lag time between the two
But even if you just forced all of your fans to run at 0% (or physically removed them) I would expect the CPU to trigger PROCHOT and throttle it's performance, hard crashing if it has to.
If the OS can't keep up with the fan speed update schedule, go into your failsafe mode.
If you cross that maximum temperature while being commanded by the OS to run at maximum speed, then that's presumably not an OS bug. If otherwise, treat it as an OS bug and put the OS back into diapers, to re-try the big kid underwear on the next restart.