In this video I'm showing you some of the basic mistakes to avoid making with your CPU thermal paste application. You might have made some errors when applying thermal paste without even knowing it. It's really easy to do frankly.

One thing is the traditional method of applying a "pea" sized amount of thermal paste to your CPU and then hoping your CPU cooler will squash the thermal paste out sufficiently doesn't work so well with modern CPUs which are more rectangular. As you'll see this can sometimes mean that the thermal paste doesn't entirely cover the CPU's integrated heat spreader and therefor you might find your CPU is runinng too hot in certain spots.

Many modern CPU coolers include preapplied thermal paste, so you can just pop them on with the right mounting brackets and then happily get on with your life. But during the installation if you damage that thermal paste it can also cause problems.
The other thing to watch out for is accidentally ending up with a plastic sticker on the copper plate of the CPU cooler that could impede cooling. This is far too easy to do.

So I often recommend this...

Download Cinebench and HWMonitor or HWInfo and run a benchmark with Cinebench
Check benchmark score against "normal" ones to see if yours is significantly lower
Check max temps to ensure CPU is not too hot (and GPU while you're there)

If you CPU is in the high 90s, then there might be a problem. A simple solution might just be checking the pump head thumbscrews are tight enough or checking the thermal paste has actually applied to the entirety of the top of the CPU.


Watch these videos:
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Important downloads:
Hardware monitor https://www.cpuid.com/softwares/hwmon...
Cinebench R23 https://www.maxon.net/en/downloads/ci...
HWInfo https://www.hwinfo.com/download/

Specs of this build:
Motherboard Gigabyte Aorus Z790 Elite AX    • Gigabyte Z790 Elite AX motherboard fe...  
CPU Intel Core i513600K
RAM Crucial Pro 32GB Kit (2x16GB) DDR55600
NVMe SSD Corsair MP600 GS (   • How to install and setup Corsair MP60...  )
PSU Corsair RM850X PSU    • Corsair RM850x Power Supply unboxing ...  
GPU Nvidia RTX 3060 Ti    • Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060 TI unboxing ...  
Fans Lian Li SLINF 120 fans (   • How to connect Lian Li Uni SL Infinit...  ) and Reverse fans (   • Lian Li SL Infinity Reverse Fans are ...  )
AIO Cooler Lian Li Galahad 2 Trinity SLINF (   • Lian Li Galahad 2 Trinity SLINF all ...  )

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