[SOLVED] I screwed up my thermal paste application kinda badly.. is my CPU okay?

BrandonFitzpatricc

Commendable
Jun 23, 2019
141
3
1,585
What I’m about to say is probably gonna make any experienced PC builder cringe, just a heads up.

I built a Ryzen 3700x PC recently with the Cooler Master ML240L. When I was installing the thermal paste, I wasn’t expecting it to come out so quickly and ended up putting on more than I was supposed to. Not a huge amount, but probably like 1/3 more than the average amount of thermal paste that should go on a CPU. And to make matters even worse (this is the bad part) I forgot to take the plastic off of the bottom of the pump that goes on the CPU. I realized this and removed it afterward, but that was still a really stupid mistake on my part. Anyway, the thermal paste didn’t spread around the entire CPU, probably because of the plastic, so I ended up putting a little bit more near the spot where it didn’t spread because I figured a lot of thermal paste on a CPU would be better than having one spot with no thermal paste. I think I’m okay, because no thermal paste leaked through, I’ve seen people put thermal paste on their CPU’s while installing a cooler that has already stock thermal paste who still have functioning PC’s, and I’ve been using this PC for a few weeks and things seem to be working well. My CPU is at 29-31° while idle, and I can’t check it in game due to MSI afterburner not being updated yet, but I haven’t had any issues unless I overclock it to 4.0 GHz or higher. But I don’t believe that has to do with temperatures, and simply has to do with Ryzen 3000 CPU’s not having much overclocking space. Can someone just confirm whether or not I could have affected my CPU?
 
Solution
As these guys said, should be fine since you're PC is turning on. It doesn't hurt to reapply the paste. If temperatures look fine (35-45C Idle & 55-65C Gaming) to you then there's absolutely nothing to worry about.