Peel before use: mistakes were made

The stock AMD Wraith cooler on my linux box was getting loud. Since I recently migrated the complete system from a (too) tight mini-ATX case to a larger Corsair 4000D Airflow, I decided to splurge on some new cooling.

Thermalright has a nice and affordable offering of CPU coolers and case fans.

So when my Peerless Assassin 120 arrived I immediately set out to install it. You know where this is going…

Upon booting up I ran stress-ng to put some load on my CPU and see what amazingly cool my Ryzen 3700X would stay. Well, it hit 94C within 10 seconds. Not good. Idling at about 50-60C.

Please peel before use

So yeah. It turns out plastic “Peel before use” are not great thermal conductors.

With the plastic now removed and the perfect amount of thermal paste the CPU runs at 35-40C at idle and < 70C when at full load for 5 minutes. Noice!

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