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So I built a desktop and have been using it for over 30 work hours now without knowing I need thermal paste. How screwed am I?(r/buildapc)
That means you used the stock one. You’re fine. It comes with thermal past pre-applied. I was going to say, from the temps you’re getting, it sounds like you had a TIM on your CPU. If you didn’t have thermal paste on there, there’s no way it would be running that cool.
54C to TJMax tells you that your CPU can be 54C hotter before it will shut down your computer automatically.
Edit: Looking at the temps you get in SC2, I wonder if you didn’t lock your heatsink all the way down. That seems like it’s running hot under load. Not as hot as you would get without a TIM, but hotter than it should. Is it overclocked or are you running at stock?
If you want to grab an aftermarket heatsink, I’d grab a Hyper 212+, Corsair A70, or Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme. In addition to that, I’d grab some Tuniq TX-4, AC MX-4, or Masscool G751 Shin Etsu.