2013 MBA Fan goes full speed for no appearent reason

[mert0]

Summary:When I'm doing some simple stuff, the fan quickly gets to full speed and my CPU temp gets to over 90°C.

Hello
After some browsing, which didn't heat up my computer, I opened up Chess. My fan quickly got to full speed and my CPU temp got to over 90°C. Is this by any means normal? At the activity monitor I see Chess consuming between %95 and over %100. (It sometimes shows a process using more than %100, like iPhoto %160 or sth when first importing pics)

Extra infos: i7, 8GB Ram 13" 2013 model Macbook Air with all the updates etc.

Update: Just now the fan slowed down to normal but activity monitor still shows same level of CPU usage. Basically my CPU randomly heats up without any heavy load and then cools again. Should I be worried?

 

[Intell]

That's normal. It isn't overheating, if it was the machine would shut down to prevent damage.

 

[filmbuff]

If it's using 100% of the CPU that's a heavy load, simple program or not. They will get hot running 100% CPU but it is not overheating unless it shuts itself down.

As another example, my MBA will get really hot when running the simple "mechanical clock" app. It's just a clock, but it uses a lot of processor power.

 

[hockeyfanatic]

You must be good. The computer was sweating

 

[Chatran]

I think Chess is not that "simple". It requires good amount of calculation like prime number generation.

 

[mert0]

Thank you all for the answers. What concerned me the most was, that it was totally random. Basically chess uses about 100% cpu and then out of nowhere the cpu heats up to over 90 from around 45, stays there for a couple minutes and then it cools down. The thins was, that it stayed at 90, even though the fans were full speed.
EDIT: It goes randomly up again. I was video-calling on skype, then after a couple of minutes fans go full speed. I check the activity monitor and there is this SystemUIServer working at %102 cpu.
These heating problems are really spoling my first mac experience

 

[ylrd]

I'm more surprised by the fact that there are people who play the built-in chess.

Mine gets a bit warm after some movements but the fans don't kick in. The activity monitor says it's using 90-100% CPU, so I wouldn't be surprised if I had the same issue as you when playing for an extended period of time.