Benchmarked: Raspberry Pi 4 Hits 2 GHz with New Firmware

I'm fairly sure you can get more stable overclocks, when using thermal paste instead of thermal pads, and use the thermal pads for the bottom of the motherboard, on the other side of the CPU, as well as surrounding the CPU, so the bottom is passively cooled, and the top, actively cooled.

The motherboard itself needs a way to extract heat, and sticky, non-conductive thermal pads might be able to transfer this to heat sinks.

Thermal cameras could indicate other areas on the board, as well as other chipsets that need extra cooling.