Question MIGHT have forgotten to apply thermal paste

[Proprietary Software]

I’ve finished my custom water cooling build for about a month. Today, it suddenly came to me that I might have forgotten to add thermal paste on my CPU... I am using a ryzen 9 3900x, and it averages 45 degrees idle. The high temps have perplexed me for a while, and not having applied thermal paste would have explained them perfectly... The thing is... there is still a chance that I have applied the thermal paste, as it has been a few weeks, and I have no recollection whatsoever... I don’t want to risk taking my whole loop down just to discover that thermal paste has been there the whole time... what should I do?

 

[jimmysmitty]

It depends on what your load temps are. Although a bit of reading shows that the 3900X tends to run hot:

Help: High Temps on New Liquid Cooling Loop

I just built a new liquid cooling loop. At idle, temps are 32C. When I put load on it, temps instantly spike up. Prime95 Smallest FFTs (high heat): 82C Prime95 Small FFTs (max heat): 87C Temps jump up instantly, then when I stop the test they instantly drop back to idle ~32C. I hadn't expected th...

linustechtips.com

Unless you are running hard tubes I would double check. Wouldn't hurt.

 

[Proprietary Software]

It depends on what your load temps are. Although a bit of reading shows that the 3900X tends to run hot:

Help: High Temps on New Liquid Cooling Loop

I just built a new liquid cooling loop. At idle, temps are 32C. When I put load on it, temps instantly spike up. Prime95 Smallest FFTs (high heat): 82C Prime95 Small FFTs (max heat): 87C Temps jump up instantly, then when I stop the test they instantly drop back to idle ~32C. I hadn't expected th...

linustechtips.com

Unless you are running hard tubes I would double check. Wouldn't hurt.

The temps are within safe ranges. I am indeed using a hardline...

 

[jimmysmitty]

If you forgot TIM I doubt the temps would be very safe. As little as it is it makes a massive difference going with or without unless you lap your CPU and water block to be near perfectly flat.

If the temps are within acceptable levels you probably applied TIM.