Comment by paimapi
3 days ago
It also doesn't matter except for the most extreme overclockers. Even the worst tests are granular enough to tell you which ones are terrible and which are competent. The rapidly diminishing returns when you aim for the top 10% of performance in CPU building seems to hold here. Plus Steam's hardware survey puts the vast majority of users within factory overclock ranges. With so much of tech 'journalism' funded by ad views, you'll rarely get anything like extremely rigid methodologies outside of a few rare uber-nerds with dedicated followings (eg Igor's Lab, Snark's Domain) simply because it doesn't matter if, for eg, your 5700X3D is 70C or 73C under load.
Indeed, also, the variation between individual applications is enough to invalidate the results of the number of tests isn't large. It is super easy to mess this up. Too much paste, too little paste, a little bit of grease left behind or maybe a small piece of dirt... A nice way to practice application of paste is to use a piece of glass instead of an aluminum cooler. That will show you exactly what happens between the piece of aluminum and the CPU and it can be quite revealing how hard it is to get a perfect layer without any air trapped. Once you can do it perfectly with the piece of glass you'll be in a much better position to lay down a nice layer with the real thing.