Exactly. Temperature measurements are a lot like available memory measurements in that regard. People wonder why the OS uses up all available memory, and it's because the OS knows that empty memory is useless, while memory used to cache disk is potentially useful (and can always be discarded when that memory is needed for something else). So, the persistent state of memory is always "full".
Similarly, processors convert thermal headroom to performance, until they run out of thermal headroom. So if you improve the cooling on a processor that has work to do (rather than sleeping), it will use up that cooling and perform better, rather than performing the same and running cooler.
(Mobile processors operate differently, since they need to maintain a much tighter thermal envelope to not burn the user. And processors can also target power levels rather than thermals. But when a processor is in its default "run as fast as possible" mode, its normal operating temperature will be close to the 100C limit.)
> People wonder why the OS uses up all available memory
This is really no excuse to have Windows eating 12GB of RAM with an Edge (with 2 static tabs), excel some antivirus and Teams running.
This (12GB) is just sick.
The good news is: you do not understand how modern (last 30+ years) OS memory management works.
If you have free ram the OS will cache all the recently accessed things. It costs effectively zero to cache them when you access them, and it costs effectively zero to evict from the cache if you actually need the memory for "useful" work. And if the cached thing is useful in the mean time, you win because RAM is still orders of magnitude faster than SSD. None of the scenarios are a perf loss. The only scenarios are "win" or "no gain."
"But won't the next application I load, load faster if there is free RAM?"
If you are asking this question, please refer back to the previous concept -- "it costs effectively zero to evict from the cache if you actually need the memory for 'useful' work." This is where people typically get confused. They think it takes work to evict things from the cache, just like it would require work to remove frequently used objects from your physical desk if you needed to free up space.
Once you understand that the rest should fall into place.
There's a side benefit to this as well, your cooling solution is more effective at 90C than it is at 40C, you know, highschool physics, deltaT and all that.
That also comes with the side effect that the transistors are leakier at high temperature, leading to higher power for the same performance as compared with operating at a lower temperature. This effect is significant: in mobile systems it can easily be the case that turning on a fan (or speeding it up) leads to a net decrease in power consumption because the power saved by making the chip less leaky is more than the power spent running the fan.
Similarly, processors convert thermal headroom to performance, until they run out of thermal headroom. So if you improve the cooling on a processor that has work to do (rather than sleeping), it will use up that cooling and perform better, rather than performing the same and running cooler.
(Mobile processors operate differently, since they need to maintain a much tighter thermal envelope to not burn the user. And processors can also target power levels rather than thermals. But when a processor is in its default "run as fast as possible" mode, its normal operating temperature will be close to the 100C limit.)